Thought of
the week.

I want to talk about guilt vs. shame. I have always understood shame to be ‘I am bad’, and guilt being ‘what I have done is bad or wrong’. When I am bad, I have nowhere to go, I have no way of repenting, because I, myself am useless. However,…

What is love? My teacher Ted has taught me that life is the journey of falling in love with oneself. I have so often misconstrued what this means, thinking that if I love myself, I must be too egotistical, or I will automatically think I’m better than, or I’ll stop…

In the Talmud, it states that the sin God hates the most is someone who lends money to his fellows and then charges them interest. Personally, I can think of many worse things, and I’m sure you can as well, so why is this sin so terrible in God’s eyes?…

This week is the holiday of Purim, which in some ways is similar to Halloween in that we dress up in costumes and wear masks. I believe the reason for the mask and costume, on a superficial level, is that dressing up is fun and the holiday is about fun…

Depression, addiction, compulsions, anxiety, overeating… I have so often heard, “why can’t people have willpower, why can’t they just stop, why can’t they be happy, how selfish is it to kill oneself, get over yourself, what is wrong with you, go get help, and so on and so forth. Let…

The war in Ukraine is at the top of all our minds, and at least for myself, I’m thinking of the financial implications that uncertainty brings. Truthfully, this brings me a bit of shame; there are people hiding and fearing for their lives, and I’m worried about the economy and…

I had a really nice conversation with a thoughtful young man today, and I asked him if he believed in God, to which he answered yes. I then asked if he prayed, and he said he used to and that it felt good to pray, yet he felt he either…

Morality; how do you define it and what would be the basic tenets for creating a moral and just society? Personally, I choose to put God at the top of my list. Yet, even if you don’t, I see each and every one of us as part of God, created…

My daughter asked me a question this week that was extremely thought provoking and thoughtful. She asked, “if God is truly infinite and all-knowing, firstly, how do we as humans have freedom of choice? Secondly, and let’s assume we can answer question one— if we are a sum of our…