There are many instances in which our relationship to God is compared to the relationship between a bride and groom. The upcoming dual holiday of Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah is one such example. As we dance with the Torah, it is compared to the wedding celebration; when we are…

You can pick your friends, but not your family.

That’s what I’ve always been told. But from a young age I began to wonder whether the old saying was really true. Don’t you choose a spouse? That seemed to completely disprove the adage. As I grew older, I learned that…

Last week, I used this space to express my belief in Keith Wasserstrom’s innocence, and to take my colleagues at other newspapers to task for presuming him guilty in the manner in which they reported on his case.

Today, some of my colleagues may be pointing their fingers back at…

"[Journalists should] make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context."

From the Code of Ethics of the
Society of Professional Journalists

It seems to me that…

There is an old joke that says that if the Rabbis were to finally agree that due to its harmful effects, smoking is forbidden according to Jewish law, Orthodox Jews would simply sell their lungs to non-Jews and continue smoking.

Unfortunately, the joke gives us Orthodox Jews a…

To the family that brought your noisy kids to that nice restaurant for dinner and let them run around shouting at the top of their lungs:

We hired a babysitter so we shouldn’t have to listen to our own kids. Why do you think we want to hear…

This week, we observed Tisha B’Av, the day set aside on the Jewish calendar to commemorate some of the darkest days in our history, including the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash (the Holy Temple in Jerusalem). As we gathered in shul to begin the Tisha B’Av service Tuesday evening,…

You work for a living, and you work hard for your living, at that. You spent many years and many more thousands of dollars to receive a higher education, and you value the fact that you are a worldly, well-rounded person. You follow the news in a variety of…

I recently attended a social gathering where I kept to my usual habit of working the room; I must have spoken to about twenty or thirty people, most of them friends, before one of them subtly ran her fingernail between two of her front teeth: the universal sign that…

Last week at the annual conference of the American Jewish Press Association in San Francisco, the hot topic was whether or not the Internet was going to put our print publications out of business. 

Titled "An Israel Unknown," the Travel section of this past Sunday’s Miami Herald was largely dedicated to visiting the Holy Land. Six articles on the subject centered primarily around Lin Arison’s "Nooks and Crannies Tour," which focuses on Israel’s off-the-beaten-path cultural and historical spots, gourmet eateries, and (especially) wineries.…

This week, I saw my oldest child off at the airport as he departed for his first ever overnight camp experience.

As a kid, I never had the opportunity to go to sleep-away camp. But it wasn’t until the summer before my wedding, when I had the chance…

In my pre-newspaper days, I used to work with businesses that needed help with their marketing.

When consulting with my clients in the area of inviting customer feedback, I often pointed to two local retailers that I occasionally patronize: A dry cleaner and a restaurant. Each of these…

David Sax, a journalist from Toronto who is working on a book about the decline of the Jewish delicatessen, visited me in my office a few months ago to hear my views on why this icon of Jewish culture was losing its footing on the North American culinary landscape.…

I walked around at the stadium on Jewish Heritage Day with a microphone and a film crew conducting impromptu interviews with Jewish baseball fans who had come out for the big event.

One of the questions I asked a lot of the people I met was, "What’s Jewish…

Troubled times, they had come
To my hometown
My hometown
       - Bruce Springsteen

The Jewish community of my hometown, Baltimore, Maryland, has come on troubled times.

The problems facing the community are not new, nor are they new to Baltimore. But an article…

During the five years that I ran summer camp programs in Hollywood and Boca Raton, I must have heard every excuse under the sun as to why a child should be exempt from something that was mandatory for everyone else. On any given morning, it was not uncommon…

In the past, I’ve used this space to vent my frustrations about people who forward emails without questioning, even for a moment, whether they are forwarding the truth.

In general, we believe what we want to believe, and many of us are…

This past week, Jews in Israel and around the world spent Yom Hazikaron remembering Israel’s fallen soldiers. Unfortunately, in recent years, more and more Israelis have begun to use this day to mourn victims of Arab terror as well.

As the afternoon…

Does Daniel Pearl's name belong on the Holocaust Memorial Wall?

"My father is a Jew, my mother is a Jew, and I am a Jew."

Daniel Pearl’s last words…