Pinch never liked Purim. It was too happy of a day, and frankly, Pinch wasn’t into the whole happiness thing. Pinch hated passing playgrounds filled with kids happily climbing and swinging, he hated weddings filled with smiling dancing people, he…
The month of Adar has begun, and we are commanded to increase our happiness! The Talmud says (Taanit 29a): אמר רב יהודה בריה דרב שמואל בר שילת משמיה דרב: משנכנס אדר מרבין בשמחה Rabbi Yehuda the son of Rav Shmuel…
It took Sam Goldstein forty-three years to buy his Aston Martin Vanquish. It’s not that the waitlist was that long, the waitlist was only six months, but it took Sam that long to get to the place where he could…
The Mishkan (Tabernacle) - the portable sanctuary that accompanied the Jewish people during their 40-year trek in the wilderness - was built with the donations of the Jewish people who donated all of the necessary building materials. The Torah tells…
An operating room can be a pretty tense and chaotic place, which is why it is no surprise that about 70% of surgeons prefer to have music playing while they operate. Already in the early 1900’s, a Pennsylvania surgeon wrote…
And Parshat Mishpatim starts in a peculiar way. The Hebrew text (Exodus 21:1) begins with a “ו“, which translates as “And,” a word usually used to connect two ideas or concepts. But this is the beginning of a new portion!…
“Quit while you’re ahead” is one of the simple but wise rules of life. But for David Kime Jr., the rule was a bit different, it went something like this, “Don’t quit even when you’re dead.” David, a longtime resident…
Yitro, the person for whom this week’s portion is named, should have been the very last person in the world to have a portion in the Torah named for him. After all, he spent most of his life serving idols.…
Jim Spinnock turned the corner, and headed down Slade toward his favorite Starbucks. Nothing put a little fire in his belly like a cup of piping hot Colombian magic. Like almost every day of every workweek, his friend Frank DeMott…