For the past few decades, I have written two articles every week for distribution in my synagogue and through the Destiny Foundation. One article has always been based upon the teachings and insights that one can derive from understanding and studying the Torah portion of the week that will be heard publicly in the Sabbath services. The other article was based upon my own personal thoughts and...

For me, the holiday season that we are now in, is a time of mixed emotions. They engender within all of us the understanding that circumstances change in the progress of life and its events. Therefore, I am taking the liberty of sharing some of my holiday memories with you. Nostalgia can be very alluring, but there is also always a modicum of hard-headed realism that memories of the past always...

In my younger days, I had great certainty about life, people, events, and the future. Because of this, I had an opinion regarding almost every issue and every human being known to me. However, my years of being a student of great teachers in the yeshiva tempered me in this, as in well many other life matters as they arose. I began to observe that my teachers oftentimes would not express any...

There is no question that the most prevalent and constant feeling during our lifetime is that of frustration. We are frustrated by great and small things, that are often beyond our control and ability to handle. Every day, and sometimes even every hour, we suffer from some frustration – a phone call that refuses to be answered, mail that is misdelivered. There are certain people who are not...

One of the accepted experiences here in Israeli life, and I suspect that it is also the situation in Jewish life generally throughout the world, is the necessity to invest time, money, and the accompanying aggravation into what is euphemistically called “home-improvement”. There are various causes that necessitate the human desire never to leave well enough alone. There is, therefore, an...

As often happens when I sit down to my computer to write this weekly opinion article, I am faced with several choices as to the subject that the article should be. Often, I am bereft of ideas and subject matter, and I find it difficult to produce an article that would have some benefit to the reader about a subject in which I am not vitally interested. At other times, I suffer from pure writer's...

It has often been stated that no individual person is indispensable. In spite of all rumors to the contrary, the world continues to go on apace even after we have departed from the scene. Yet, there is an important caveat to this corollary. It is the statement that though no one is indispensable, and no one is really replaceable either. Even though we may think of ourselves as mere cogs in the...

Lately, I realize that I am reaching a new status and level in life. I receive calls and requests daily from people whom I do not know, who apparently have no relationship to me, and who wish to hold conversations with me and seek my advice. Naturally, I am very flattered that somehow people both here in Israel, and in the English-speaking diaspora feel that I could be of help to them. The truth...

In our cashless credit card world, we have all been introduced to the concept and necessity for secret numbers. You cannot just use your credit card to withdraw money or make major purchases without also revealing to that heartless machine confronting and challenging you, your secret code or number. One is supposed to commit this number to one's permanent memory, and not even carry around a...

We live in a time when written letters and even typed letters are no longer the main means of communication. Everything today is done by either mobile phone or electronic mail. I’ve become so accustomed to the reality of rarely receiving any written mail, that I am perfectly content that my postman delivers mail to our address once a week, sometimes even once in two weeks. I have concluded...