We live in an age of radical autonomy. Each individual zealously guards his or her own independence from everybody else. We resent when someone presumes to tell us what is right or wrong, seeks to impose external limitations to our discretion or our behavior. In the words of a popular song, we assert, "It's my prerogative!"
You can imagine the fear of the former slaves as they fled toward the wilderness, toward the desert of Sinai.
Risking what little they had in Egypt, facing a precarious and dangerous future, these brave men, women, and children were driven by desperation, by a faith in God, and by a passionate rejection of human domination. Determined to meet their destiny with dignity, they packed their belongings and proceeded to flee from Egypt.
Each of us is a greater theologian than we can possibly know. In the ways we treat each other, in the ways parents raise children, in the way that lovers protect their beloved, we transmit profound and intangible lessons about the reality of the world. Take, for example, the baby who wakes up screaming. The parent who gets up in the dark to cradle the child teaches—without words—that when we cry out, there will be someone to cradle us. Most children have the luxury of parents and relatives who can offer them comfort. But who is there to comfort the adults? 
An ancient Midrash portrays Alexander of Macedon, conqueror of the known world, standing at the gate of the Garden of Eden. He demands admission and is told that only the tzaddikim, the righteous, may enter there. Alexander becomes indignant: no one has treated this monarch with such indifference before! To try to save face, Alexander insists that at the very least, the angel guarding the gate should offer him something of great worth. So the angel gives him a human eyeball.
One of the abiding truths of human nature is that we delight in discovering the faults of each other, and we hate to reveal our own shortcomings.
While we know in our hearts that “to err is human,” none of us likes to acknowledge our own humanity, our own propensity to make mistakes, even to sin.
One of the stumbling blocks that often makes it difficult for contemporary Jews to embrace Jewish tradition fully is the perception that women are treated as second-class citizens, as somehow less than equal within Judaism.
Life can be painfully lonely. Even with the best of health, with adequate incomes, friends, and a fulfilling career, it is still possible to succumb to a sense of the futility and the isolation of life.
How involved should parents and children be in each other's lives? Is there a graceful way of allowing those we love and live with to be responsible for their own lives while still offering whatever support and nurturance that lays within our power?
The issue of where parental responsibility ends and where a child's begins is hardly new to our own age. In every generation, parents have struggled with their appropriate role as their child reaches adulthood and begins to live an independent life.
Each year, the Torah repeats the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and each year I am puzzled by the same thing: why did Lot delay leaving the city, why did Lot’s wife look back, and why did she turn into a pillar of salt?
Notice how it's easier to criticize from a distance than it is to make a positive difference? Sitting in a comfortable chair in the safety of our suburban homes, we peruse the newspapers and comment on the "obvious" solution, even though that solution seems to have escaped the attention of everyone else in the world.
Almost everyone succumbs to the temptation to solve the world's problems, over coffee, or while watching the nightly news.
But notice how few are the numbers of people who volunteer at the local hospital, for the AIDS walk, or at a nearby synagogue.