Companies invest millions of dollars to create the best-smelling scents, coming up with as many different scents as one can imagine – flowers, fruits, plants, trees. Read more...

"In my middle" is Fynn’s answer to himself, when he asks "Where is Anna?" (p.180) after she crosses-over (my preferred term for ‘death’). Fynn learned this from Anna, for whom he was a guardian, when she asked, where is the place where she and "Mr. God" meet? "Mr. God goes through my middle and I go through Mr. God’s middle" (p.50), the seven year old theologian explained [Mr. God, this is Anna / Fynn]. It is ‘in the middle’ that our parashah also seemingly begins. Sometimes, as I have found many times in life, the beginning is in somewhere "in the middle." Read more...

On September 22, 2013, the Hollywood Reporter carried this headline on one of its articles: "Emmys 2013: 'The Colbert Report' Ends 'The Daily Show's' 10-Year Winning Streak" (of course, other media outlets had similar headlines and stories; this was just the first one that popped up in my Google search...). Read more...

From time to time I am asked to write letters of recommendation for a former employee or student. It's an honor because it means a person thinks I know them well enough to trust me to help them with the next step in their life. It's also a heavy responsibility because I'm signing my name as a kind of guarantor for their abilities and character. I also have the opportunity to read these same recommendations to determine whether a person is appropriate for a job or a school. Frequently, I have to decode the letter to figure out what the writer is trying to communicate. Read more...

"Remember what Amalek did to you... Therefore... you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under the heaven. Do not forget!" (Deuteronomy 25:17-19) These words, read as the Maftir portion of the Torah reading, and the accompanying Haftarah, which tells the story of Saul’s battle against the Amalekites, ring true to us when we consider the many times in which Jews have been attacked, maimed, and killed by others, most especially the Holocaust. There is a piece of every Jew who knows anything about these events that says, "Never again!" — and rightly so. Read more...