Jewels 2007

Joe Lapchick was one of the great basketball players in the pre-World War II era and played center for the legendary Celtics. When his 7-year-old

Genuine compassion is irrespective of others’ attitudes toward you.But, so long as others are also just like myself, and want happiness, do not want suffering,

As we enter the Holy Days, I am reminded that our greatest hope for the future rests with our children. As parents, we have an

The great thing about the world of the spirit is that gravity doesn’t apply. Inertia can be overcome.Our secular culture teaches us to focus on

Seeking spirituality doesn’t have to be somber. It can be joyous, and no one needs joy more than young people.I have written “Let’s Face It,”

I received this letter following the murders of my husband, Dr. David Applebaum, and our daughter Naava, in a terrorist bombing the night before her

It seems unfair, a waste, To journey like a shooting star, One thousand cosmic years through space. To smile one time, just once, Emit your

On Rosh Hashanah in the mid-1960s, my father received a cancer diagnosis. The doctors scheduled radiation treatments, but the initial treatments fell on Sukkot and

At this moment, nothing is more important for healing the world than to link all those who believe that we must set forth a new

Bill Gates said recently, “Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy,

It’s the summer of 1979, and I am in Utah driving Norman, a young Paiute fieldworker to Indian Peaks, a sacred Paiute site.A converted Mormon,

  As a political cartoonist, I’m obsessed with the past and the future, but the future is hypothetical and the past is…well…the way we remember

I stand at attention facing the Kotel Hama’aravi, the Western Wall, as the army ensemble begins to play. Only a few weeks ago I enlisted

My father, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, created this parable:Imagine you are on a subway and suddenly realize that your soul mate, the one you’ve been waiting

I was addicted to despair. What’s the point? Why bother? Life is hard, and then you die. In those days I called it existentialism, which

There is a biblical obligation on a patient to seek healing from a physician. The natural search for health and its maintenance is both a

“Jews, alone, are vulnerable…But Jews must never be alone.” Elie Wiesel is a Nobel Peace Prize winning novelist, political activist, and Holocaust survivor. www.eliewieselfoundation.org

People today are broken and depressed. One of three doctors’ visits by a woman in America is for an anti-depressant, and the rate of depression

Elul inspires me to ruminate on the state of the world. There are many who fear that we have entered the Age of Excuse. While

Who has inspired your life? My mother. I was taken away from her and put into an orphanage after she gave birth to me when

As the new year approaches, I resolve to focus on joy. This has been my kavannah every year since September 11th.It isn’t easy for me.

On the wall of the pool at my Jewish community center is a line from the Talmud, “A father should teach his child three things:

There is an enormous, untouched potential inside every one of us. It is hope. And hope’s incredible power enables us to survive.Hope contains spectacular power,

I was unpacking my suitcase after a short weekend getaway when I realized I couldn’t find my scarf. A great sense of loss overwhelmed me.

In a world of conflicting ideals, how do we seek what is essential in ourselves?As the poet Edward Young asked, “Born originals, how comes it

Modern medicine has contributed enormously to the improved health of the modern world: lower infant mortality rates, better prenatal care and prevention of many infectious

When I was 17, I left home after the first day of school and rode with a friend in his red ’72 Volkswagen bus to

One year, my Yom Kippur sermon was on the theme of forgiveness. The next day, a woman came to see me, very upset about the

My mother-in-law’s mind is full of holes. She spends most of the day in a placid fog, a place where there’s nothing left to do