Purim – Vayikra 5776
I grew up as part of a large family during the final days of the PME. The Pre-Minivan Era, known for station wagons the size of eighteen wheelers, was America’s last attempt to fit growing families into cars by simply…
There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? – Pekudei 5776
What do you do when you finally get to the end of the rainbow, and there is no pot of gold? How do you move forward when you marry Prince Charming, and then discover that he’s neither a prince nor…
Five million people worked to give you this…. – Parshas Vayakhel 5776
Lying on my kitchen counter is an instrument that was produced by the hard work of over five million men and women. A marvel of international cooperation, its components come from dozens of countries. It is one of the most…
Emotional poison – Parshas Ki Tisa 5776
It was a gruesome way to die. The convulsions, vomiting, exhaustion, and gasping for breath lasted only a few hours, and then Thendara “Jagger” Satisfaction softly exhaled for the last time. His death would rock the world; the headlines screaming…
Big Brother is in My Car! Parshas Tetzaveh 5776
Steve Barkley was minding his own business. Cruising down the interstate near Campbell, CA, he was thoroughly enjoying himself. Depressing the gas pedal, he goaded his brand new Porsche 911 to lap up the pavement with increased urgency. The roof…
Who Stole White? Parshas Terumah 5776
One of the most dramatic thefts of the past twenty years was the decades-long attempt of Chinese manufacturers to steal the color white. You think white is easy, but white is actually extremely difficult to make, and is a multi-billion…
The L’chaim I had with George Washington – Mishpatim 5776
George Washington led a supersized life, almost nothing he did was in moderation. For starters, George was physically a giant of a man. At a time when the average male was 5”6, George was a towering 6”2. Long before he…
Yeah, I used to be good – Beshalach 5776
There was a time in my life when I was actually pretty decent at that game we call basketball. There was a period when I spent four or five hours every day playing pick-up ball in the park. Back in…
Bo 5776
When we think of the earliest explorers of our fledgling country, we tend to think of rugged adventurers of the Daniel Boone genre, people who would kill a bear with their bare hands and then eat its raw flesh for…
Va’era 5776
There are many things computer chips can do better than me, and I embrace it. They calculate better than I do, they find disease patterns for the CDC by culling meta-data, they control traffic lights of entire cities better than…