Thought of the Week

I have been thinking about all of the suffering around us, all the pain in the world and all the recent tragedies, and I’ve been wondering about the why. If God is infinite and can do anything and everything, why is there evil, why is there suffering, and why is there so much destruction? Truthfully,…

Faith is the ability to hear the music beneath the noise. -Rabbi Jonathan Sacks This coming Sunday evening is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, it is the day of atonement. Truly the greatest gift we have, is the day itself forgives us for all sins between man and the divine. It’s the one…

This week is Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. It is also known as the Day of Judgement, where our entire year is decided and decreed in the heavenly courts. Throughout my entire life, I have come into the holiday with fear, overwhelm, and concern of what will be this year, focused on the negative…

I just had the privilege of going to Israel, and together with my sister, we helped our mom move into a retirement community. The experience was wonderful and the camaraderie with my sister made me feel so close to her. It also made me sad because of how far away we live from each other,…

Expectations are resentments that are just waiting to come out. However, the truth is we all have expectations, and it isn’t at all realistic not to have them. To take it a step further, extremes of any emotion aren’t healthy, and in fact they can be deadly; it’s all about the happy medium and finding…

What exactly is forgiveness? Is it something that everyone deserves? We have all been hurt in ways which we didn’t deserve, and some of us have been hurt in ways that don’t warrant forgiving the person who has caused the pain. However, I still will argue that forgiveness—as I define it for myself—is valuable to…

Great leaders have many qualities, but humility is usually not one of them. With rare exceptions, they tend to be ambitious, with a high measure of self-regard. They expect to be obeyed, honored, respected, even feared. They may wear their superiority effortlessly—Eleanor Roosevelt called this “wearing an invisible crown”—but there is a difference between this…

The antidote to sadness isn’t happiness, it’s joy; it’s finding a way to celebrate the wins amongst the losses and embracing the sunshine amongst the storms. It’s a way to appreciate all the good this world has to offer, even though it’s much easier to focus on the bad. I want to explore the ways…

I just got back from a truly magnificent vacation. I had a wonderful time, however my inability to turn off my mind, disconnect from my electronics, and escape my anxiety distracted me from being present, making it difficult for me to fully enjoy the experience. I find that when I’m engaged in my favorite activity…

“What makes Abrahamic monotheism different is that it believes there is an answer to the question, why. Neither the universe nor human life is meaningless, an accident, a mere happenstance. As Freud, Einstein, and Wittgenstein all said, religious faith is faith in the meaningfulness of life.” -The Great Partnership from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Every great…