Korbanot Pregnant with Meaning – Parshat Tazria 2024

Pregnancy is objectively difficult. The experience varies from woman to woman and from pregnancy to pregnancy, but there are common challenges that apply almost universally even if everything is going as expected. During the first trimester, a pregnant woman may have extreme nausea, cravings, and just a very weird relationship with food. I remember that …

Thanksgiving Expiration Dates – Parshat Tzav 2024

Aristotle was a brilliant philosopher whose ideas about ethics and living the good life are still relevant and taken seriously today. However, his record as a scientist has not held up quite as well. In his book The History of Animals, Aristotle explicitly endorses the idea of “spontaneous generation,” that some living things are born …

Moshe and the Butterfly Effect – Parshat Shemot 2024

It was in the Steven Spielberg movie Jurassic Park that I first learned about the Butterfly Effect, a phenomenon studied in an area of mathematics known as Chaos Theory. The Butterfly Effect concept is attributed to mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz in a 1972 paper about weather prediction. But using the metaphor of the butterfly …

Pelotons, Prophets, and Proper Appreciation – Parshat Vayeira 2021

The American holiday shopping season seems to be getting earlier and earlier every year. Whereas Thanksgiving used to be the unofficial start of shopping for winter holiday gifts, companies are now starting to advertise about sales for holiday gifts as early as early October. In Israel, I have seen on social media that they are …

Volunteer Appreciation – Parshat Pinchas 2021

Handing over a leadership position, especially one that you've held for years, and even more so if it is one with a lot of power and authority, is very challenging. In 1796, the first president of the United States, George Washington, modeled for the world the concept that a leader can choose to hand power …