Human Being, The

Soon the advice vultures descended. “Try holding your breath.” “Try standing up straighter.” “Maybe with a girdle.” “Maybe with a shawl.” I couldn’t believe it. Here was a gorgeous woman, and all anyone could see was what was wrong with her . . .

For most of my life, I never saw crying as an expected, positive, and even necessary part of life—not to mention something one would ever do in front of other people. I always thought crying was, well, shameful. At best, a sign of weakness and deficiency;...

The pressure of dieting and physical appearance is something that my eight-year-old daughter is already aware of! Occasionally she will pat her round little belly and ask me if I think that she is fat. She is a little chubbier than some of her friends, bu...

Can a child truly become anything he wants? To be raised with that mindset neglects one main fact—he already is someone. And that someone is not dependent on a “thing” to become...

The purpose of life is to end up where we began. The final destination of the soul is firmly rooted in its inception—the spark of G‑d preceding the cosmic descent into the physical world, the essential self achieved when the potential meets the actual . ....

Spiritually, we must internalize the balanced discernment of the mountain climber—simultaneously contented at seeing how far we’ve come and tenaciously eyeing the next mountain we must scale.

The clothes we wear are no more than an external facade, and the way you look today will not be the way you look in a few years from now. Fashions come and go. Make sure you don’t go out with the latest fashion . . .

What happened is that my soul, which has always been a Jew, woke up. But when it awoke it was empty, filled only with a yearning it didn’t understand . . .