Life Lessons

What I wanted was to take over at the wheel and push G‑d into the passenger seat. I’d had enough of His messing with my plans and rescheduling my events . . .

Growing up, my family wasn’t particularly religious, but there was one rule my mother enforced energetically: there was to be no pork in our Jewish home. That was our line in the sand. And Twinkies back in the 1970s contained lard, which put those all-American snacks firmly across that line . . .

The struggles we encountered with so many different ideas became a channel for us to understand ourselves and the world around us. It became (and still remains to this day) a means for us to both rise above and contend with the ups and downs of an ordinary day...

If we don’t know, we can’t grow. It’s as simple as that. Whether they say anything or not, people around you are noticing. I guarantee it. Enlist them to help you see for yourself what you need to see. Approach it like you are asking them for a gift—the gift of honesty and loving intention—and it will be...

At fourteen years old, I entered the local precinct to find out. Not by choice, of course, but because I was the ideal witness to identify two suspected muggers. I was one of their victims...

Jewish eating isn’t simply a gastronomical pleasure—it’s also a spiritual experience. That was why I was standing at the edge of Lake Naivasha, about to dip my mother’s new dishes into its murky depths, one hundred meters away from a group of four hippos...

When the street was wrapped in darkness and our mothers’ voices called us in a discordant chorus to come home for supper, Rachel rose, took one last look at the street, and disappeared inside her flat. No one raised their eyes to speak to her; it was as if she didn’t exist...

I thought I was special, your “favorite,” until I met and heard at the funeral about all your other favorites. I felt a tad disappointed, until I realized that feeling like the “favorite” amongst so many others was an indication of the enormousness of your love...

Is it no strength, or no desire? If I knew I was being paid big bucks to do laundry, would I find the strength? If I was preparing an important dinner for the royal family, would I find the strength to cook and clean? If a client called, would I suddenly find the strength to talk? I think that I would, because I would have desire...

Standing with Josh amid the madness, I experienced the elusive magic that beckons just beyond reach in those hazelnut instant coffee commercials. The calm. The peace. The comfort. Standing with Josh, I had what we all really need, and that’s each other...

With birth, the die is cast. Existence has been set into motion, and so too it will come to a close. We should not despair. The tragedy doesn’t lie in this end. The tragedy exists only if we fail to live...

You now possess three-quarters of a billion dollars. You make yourself a cup of coffee, and you sit at your kitchen table, thinking about the money. How does it change your plans? How does it change who you are?

I think about this often as I work at my projects. Do you think, if I make an effort to keep the back neat and tidy, snipping away the loose ends, my life will be tidier? Or appear tidier to me? Just a thought...

“You love all your children just as much as you love me . . . so that can’t be possible. But I only have one mommy. And I love no one just as much,” I reasoned...

Only later did I notice that one tiny tree had been planted so close to the playground’s fence that its narrow branches had become entangled in the mesh. Would it ever grow to independent maturity like the other trees?

Sadly, we are influenced by a society that eats not when it’s hungry, but when it’s bored. We are distracted by access, and it’s disheartening, because we are so much more than that...

From the moment I met him, I knew that Tal was someone special. But I could never have imagined how our relationship would shape my life.

Can you imagine how much easier it would be to move forward if we could look at our past and realize that just as we have changed, grown and developed, so too have those that let us down? The person they were may have caused us pain, but the person they are now would not have. If we can view them in the past, then we can leave their failures in the past...

It is through our gained maturity and insight, a precious gift bequeathed by time, that we are able to gaze back at our progression, giving us insight into the future. If we extend this trajectory, bending the rules of physics and the laws that govern “reality” as we know it, a fascinating new world emerges from the dust of exile...