True Colors
The latest DreamWorks children’s film is Trolls which pits the mean, depressed mono-chromatic Bergens against the fun-loving, exuberant, multi-colored Trolls. The Bergens hold the belief that the only way they can experience happiness is by eating trolls. The Trolls are led by Poppy. She is adorable, she sings, she dances, she is fun and that […]
The Spiritual Revolution
Copernicus did not have it all figured out. Neither did Galileo. They had the right instincts but got caught up in circles. Kepler refined it by thinking elliptically but it took Sir Isaac Newton to finalize the heliocentric view of our solar system with the discovery of gravity. Why did it take so long for […]
Body Worn Cameras
Those familiar with Malcom Gladwell’s book Tipping Point might recognize that technological advances are now tipping the scales of justice. It is a matter of time before every police officer in this country will be outfitted with a body camera. Statistics do not tell a personal story but they do tell a collective story. […]
The Depth of Forgiveness
Forgiveness is really nothing more than an act of self-healing and self-empowerment. I call it a miracle medicine. It is free, it works and has no side effects. The day I forgave the Nazis, privately I forgave my parents whom I hated all my life for not having saved me from Auschwitz. Children expect […]
Dayenu — The Present is Enough
I recently received a message from my computer, which can be very courteous if it is in a good mood, alerting me that memory was almost full. Any one of your external brains may signal you about reaching critical capacity—too many photos, texts, emails etc. Can you imagine if you periodically received a message from […]
Wishes for a Meaningful Pass Over
Dear KE Community: A few years ago a group of hip Jews wrote and published The New American Haggadah for Passover. For me there was not that much new about it, and beside it being in English, I was not sure what made it American. So this year I created a new Haggadah based […]
A Fork in the Road
I am, and I suspect many of you are as well, at a crossroads. This intersection though is ever present—where past meets future at the juncture of now. It happens every minute and in the broader sweep of decades and generations. Technology is a wondrous marker of these transitions that has us contemplate: “Do I […]
The Darkness of Male Supremacy
In 1947, amidst the struggles of the birth of the State of Israel a young Bedouin shepherd boy stumbled across a half-dozen or more clay jars secreted in a cave in the area of Qumran. His findings, which he sold for less than $50, are the priceless Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of mostly Hebrew […]
A Calendar of Blessings
When Pope Francis assumed the papacy almost two years ago he greeted the thronging crowd in xt” The he bowed his head and beseeched those in attendance (and around the world) to bless him. Do leaders need our blessing? In Hebrew, the word for blessing is Baruch (Beit-Reish-Kaf) and as pointed out in an […]
Why ask Why and other Burning Questions
One of the most profound questions ever posed is “Why ask why? “ Sakichi Toyoda was not only intrigued by the question, the founder of Toyota, devised a system for his engineers to reveal the root causes of problems. Toyoda’s 5 Whys is an iterative question-asking technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a […]