Tova Bernbaum

We spend our youth building up cynicism, and then we are suddenly expected to make all those big life changes, like marriage and kids, that require faith in our fellow human beings, not to mention in ourselves . . .

Actually, we don’t have to take it, exactly—we can share it with the kids.

In the old days, we were always asking the opposite question: the biology assignment was to prove that a car is not a living organism. But modern life has turned the question around...

Monday I edited a chapter on World War II, Tuesday I was given a collection of essays on 9/11, and Wednesday the subject was Vietnam . . . Then it hit me: the miracle isn’t that they found the flask of oil. It’s that they even searched for it.

Those who refer to the biblical story of Eve as a Divine endorsement of sexism are overlooking a simple truth: a curse is not something that should to be the way it is -- it's something that should not be the way it is...