October 2013

October Blues

It’s only been a month and a half since my son Jonah returned from sleep-away camp and I’m already feeling ...

Have a Little Faith

A lot has been made of the new Pew Study on the Jewish population. I am enjoying reading the various ...

A New Spiritual Comfort Zone: Reflecting on the Pew Study

As Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz says, statistics in the Pew Research Center’s survey of American Jewish attitudes and beliefs are wide ...

Camp and the “Real World”

Campers and staff often state at the end of a camp session or summer that they wish camp could last ...

On Writing a Fictionalized Account of Baruch Spinoza’s Family

I’ve often been asked both by journalists and by my readers why my novel  The Elixir of Immortality  tells the ...

Thoughts on the #Shutdown: “For Our Nation And Its Rulers”…

I was listening to National Public Radio on the way into work this morning, hearing more and more details of ...

The Hobby Lobby Hanukkah Hubbub

This week, my Facebook news-feed is filled with outrage about the fact that Hobby Lobby won’t carry Hanukkah decorations. Many ...

A Jewish Family Tree: The Genesis of The Elixir of Immortality

I left Stockholm in the fall of 1998 and moved to Oslo, for I had discovered the neighboring land’s greatest ...

The Pew Study: What the stats can and can’t teach us

It’s probably one of the first things that I learned from my time as a social science researcher – the ...

It Looks the Same

The Davis Academy 8th Grade Gibush Retreat (A Summer at URJ Camp Coleman) It looks the same. (It looks different.)Two ...