One of the most powerful prayers of the entire high holidays is found not before the sounding of the shofar of Rosh Hashana nor during the ‘al chet’ on Yom Hakippur, not even in the heartfelt prayer of U'netane tokef, rather it is a simple plea hidden during the time the Torah is taken out and brought to the bima...

Sibling rivalry is not just for siblings, and family’s not just the nuclear kind. Yesterday at 5 a.m., wanting some quality time alone with my Creator, the fact that the #2 to the Western Wall was packed full of my brethren didn’t seem like anything to celebrate, nor did the sight, when I stepped off the bus, of two long lines already at the turnstiles, waiting for the security check.

Rummaging through your basement is like going to the Museum of You. You can browse through artifacts from the different eras of your life, and see how you have evolved from a homo dependent, to a homo adolescent, (the stage at which you are still totally dependent, but think that you are independent) all the way to your current form of homo adultus...I recently had the pleasure of visiting my museum...

If you want to face yourself, face the Wall. If you want to see your life more clearly, come here and close your eyes.

Spring cleaning and summer cleaning are completely different animals. Spring cleaning throws open windows to let in sunlight and fresh air still tinged with winter. Spring cleaning looks forward. There’s that mad scramble to get the matzot in and the last of the chametz out before Pesach. Spring cleaning is frenzied...Come the tail end of summer only the wasps are frenzied...

One morning last week I awoke to a mercifully cloudy sky. After six weeks of blazing sunshine and unrelenting heat, the grey canopy above my head offered both a measure of relief and blissful anticipation of cooler weather and rain. Blessed be the clouds which hide the sun, I mumbled in a silent, personal prayer of thanksgiving...

Cognitive dissonance hung heavy in the humid air. The people of Maranello, Italy were unsettled. A fire-engine red Ferrari had been driving through town all morning causing quite a racket. Usually, the snarling growl of a Ferrari didn’t bother the people of Maranello, au contraire, it was sweet music to their ears...

My 10-year-old daughter Ariella - our first child - lost her last baby tooth… yet another sign in a long line of signs I’ve been ignoring... signs that my baby is growing up. As the resident tooth fairy, I am now in possession of the last tangible remnant of her childhood…