The first time I heard the ubiquitous 1877-Kars-4-Kids radio ads, I knew where this was headed. Who solicits donations for “kids” “… please help a kid today” … without saying who was to benefit? Which kids? In Brazilian slums? Mentally disabled kids in the Appalachians? Crack babies in New Orleans? If this fine organization was […]

We sports fans have had our world rocked in recent weeks with the horrifying sexual abuse reports coming from the Penn State football program, and (on a smaller scale) the Syracuse basketball program. The Penn State case has been uniquely horrid since it reveals the moral weakness of someone with a public persona of great […]

I’ve been thinking about the widening Long Island SAT cheating scandal, since another 13 people were arrested last week. Now five young men have been charged with taking college board exams on behalf of others, and 15 with hiring them to do so. It is time to do what Jews do in such scandals: examine the […]

What follows is not news – I’m nearly two months behind things. But then again, everything on the internet is simultaneous, isn’t it? So I think it remains worth discussing. Maybe it’s news to you. On September 30, perhaps the leading Palestinian peace advocate, Sari Nusseibeh, published an essay on why Israel cannot be a “Jewish […]

Ansche Chesed folks know that last week I undertook the food stamp challenge – the self-imposed commitment to live for a week as if all I could spend on food and drink was $4.50 per day, the average benefit. Since I went from Shabbat to Shabbat, I only went six days, not seven, and spent […]

Yesterday was the 12th of Cheshvan, the 16th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s murder, at the hands of a right-wing extremist, Yigal Amir. That day and the succeeding days are vivid in my memory. We were in Jerusalem, and had no television in our apartment, only a radio, which we kept in the bedroom we shared with our […]

Two-and-a-half days into my “Food Stamp Challenge,” and I have to say … it’s not easy. Generally, the experience is attuning my attention to just how plentiful and varied food typically is in my life. There is just so much food out there on the streets of New York, all of it attractive and fairly […]

Tomorrow after nightfall, we will recite Havdala and conclude Shabbat, and – as always – I will wish my family a shavua tov, a good week. But for me, this coming week will not be so good – or at least not so easy. Because when Shabbat ends, I will begin a week of the […]

This week’s Sunday NY Times “Ethicist” column was a fascinating reflection about honesty and deception. The questioner was a man who years ago had an adulterous affair with a neighbor, and he writes that he is the biological father of her child. Neither the child’s presumptive father – that is, the woman’s husband – nor […]

  Camp is over, after a great season. Today is Rosh Hodesh Elul, and I’m back in New York. Summer is departing, and autumn looms. (And I will resume blogging. Thanks for patience during a hiatus.) I love autumn, my favorite season. It brings me football, and leaves carried on cool breezes, increasingly frantic preparations […]