I learned an important principle of how the world really works from one of my favorite animal books, the astoundingly illustrated book, Journey to the Ants. “If an animal is beautifully colored and acts with relative indifference to your presence it is probably poisonous or well armored.” An example of this principle is the South...
A study (conducted before inflation drove prices skyward) claimed that American women spend an average of $65 per month on anti-aging creams and treatments. American men spend just under $50 a month taking care of their own faces. These numbers seem wildly improbable but, either way, the Bible provides advice on how to look younger...
Are you a specialist in your field of work? What career field should I go into? Will history graduates find work in their field? Why is the word field by far the most common metaphor for work, career, or profession? Why not ask, “what river do you work in?” Or, “what road of work do...
A great deal has been going on in the corporate world recently, including Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, Florida’s revocation of Disney’s special status, and the failure of CNN’s streaming service, CNN+. While I am personally gratified that the millions of dollars poured into CNN+ did not convince people to appreciate the misguided content, I...
What parent, at one time or another, hasn’t wished for an absolutely reliable, invisible lie-detector? What business professional interviewing a potential hire hasn’t wished for exactly the same thing? Now I know what you’re thinking. ‘Invisible’ is impossible. True, but so is ‘absolutely reliable lie-detector,’ so I saw no harm in adding ‘invisible’ to the wish list. It is true...
You are how you eat I understand how someone who is hungry might dream of food, fixate on food and find it hard to concentrate on anything but food. Amazingly, Jewish women trapped by the Nazis in the Theresienstadt ghetto shared recipes with each other from memory. One woman wrote these down and her compilation...
You do it. I do it. We all do it. We find ways to avoid doing those tasks in our lives that will really make a difference. They might be unpleasant, hard, boring, perhaps even frightening. Often, they are the very ones we have to identify and tackle. There are the parents whose toddler is...
During Chanukah 2007, just before Christmas of that year, I published an article called A Rabbi’s Warning To American Christians. I think it is even more relevant today fourteen years after I wrote it. Today’s threat may be manifesting differently as rampant promoting of socialism in universities, as wokeness, as governments crushing religious observance by...
More words and more actions We recently observed the 30th anniversary of my father’s death. His influence on my life has not waned. One of his oft-repeated teachings still resonates with me. Saying, ‘thank-you for everything,’ really means thank-you for nothing. Merely mouthing the words ‘thank-you’ is an inadequate response to the good we have...
Among the many things for which we should be grateful, let’s remember to include the idea of a day set aside for giving thanks. In a modern culture that fosters ingratitude and resentment, such a day is ever more so needed.
