Many who know me don’t realize that I am an avid weaver of tales.  My specialty: serial bedtime stories.
The main characters are always a family of cute animals whose names happen to be those of my kids.  The plot always involves them being agents in the triumph of good, with a certain amount of slapstick [...]

Amit Goffer was thrown from an ATV over 10 years in an accident that left him completely paralyzed.  Since  then, he’s been consumed by creating an invention that would allow the millions like himself to regain the gift of motion.
The result is ReWalk, a machine-skeleton that attaches to a person’s frame and allows paraplegics the ability [...]

Having sat in the optometrist’s chair for numerous dilations, lights, and vision tests recently, I was reminded of the gift of sight and a common proclivity to impaired vision.
We spent Passover at a hotel which hosted numerous, consecutive morning services.  I started in the 7:30am service, settling in to the spiritual flow, until suddenly I [...]

I was 20 years old, living the good life as an exchange student in Madrid, and running late to meet Spanish friends at a club one Friday night.
“Where are you coming from?” one of the girls asked nonchalantly.
“I was at synagogue.”
At age 20, synagogue was not a typical hangout for me, but as a stranger [...]

Rabbi Meir Pogrow is the Drill Sergeant Rabbi (at least in my eyes).  Several years ago when I submitted to his regimen, I got a glimpse of what it means to be tough – and highly fulfilled.
Rabbi Pogrow insists that the Torah’s command that a Jew know the entire Torah – both the Five Books/Prophets [...]

Have you ever felt like the Karate Kid laboring through one of Mr. Miyagi’s endless “wax on wax off” exercises? Here’s a shout out to the old Sensei from this week’s Portion.
The Jews experienced many miracles in the Exodus and their subsequent journeys. None caused ecstasy like seeing G-d’s presence fill the Tabernacle upon its [...]

“I can’t fall asleep!” my son said recently with growing agitation.  “I’ve been trying for 30 minutes!”
I looked around at his sleeping siblings and considered his plight.
“I’m going to be tired tomorrow and I won’t be able to concentrate,” he moaned.
“Avraham, just lie down and don’t worry about falling asleep,” my wife offered.  “Your body rests when [...]

I watched a video this week of 108-year-old Alice Sommer Herz describing how she and her son not just survived but thrived in the Holocaust to a great degree because she laughed.
“If a mother laughs, how will her children not laugh?” she asks.
This morning just after two of my sons got into a brotherly altercation, my wife [...]

Out shopping one night this week, I caught the fear in eyes of the small boy moving toward me.
“Poppy,” he called, lips quivering.
“You can’t find your father?” I asked.
“I don’t know where he is.”
My heart melted. I remembered being lost once as a kid. It might have lasted all of 60 seconds, but from a [...]

A dear friend once shared a great metaphor to explain “don’t covet,” the last of the 10 commandments.
“Imagine you had a puzzle,” he explained, “and as you worked on it, you noticed your neighbor, too, had a puzzle. And one of his pieces was strikingly beautiful.  Would you want to take it?”
I caught the envy [...]