Tag: course

While there are great rates on fares to the Miami area this time of year, it's not a place most people want to visit in the summer, unless, of course, they have relatives or good friends to visit or a simcha to attend.

Anthony Weiner is the latest in a long line of public figures caught by surprise at the unveiling of their own closet misdeeds. Weiner (and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the still-presumed-innocent Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and so many others before them) lived in a bubble of false security, created in part by their own hubris. Perhaps their biggest mistake, however, was believing their personal lives were somehow sacrosanct, impermeable, separate and apart from their public lives.

Every team has a bad week. Good teams, however, go through it less often. It all play out over the course of the season, so don't pay too much attention to where good teams are listed in the standings early on.

Several readers took issue with the Monitor's statement last week that coverage of Israel by The New York Times, while still problematic on occasion, has improved markedly since Deborah Sontag left the paper's Jerusalem bureau nearly a decade ago.

In my last column I pointed out certain things people should - or should not do - to keep themselves and/or their loved ones off the Tehillim list. Of course, despite one's best efforts, whatever Hashem has decreed will take place; yet, we are admonished to do our outmost to "watch over our soul."To that end, we need to take precautions, educate ourselves and be proactive in taking the necessary steps to protect ourselves. Installing smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, putting up beeping motion sensors near swimming pools, learning how to swim - were some of the things to put on one's immediate "to do list."

Several new wines have arrived stateside just in time for Sukkot.

Several new wines have arrived stateside just in time for Sukkot.

A portrait of Ze'ev Jabotinsky may still adorn Likud conventions in Israel, but the ideas of this great Zionist leader - who passed away 70 years ago this week - are essentially forgotten and/or ignored.

What sets the Jewish people apart from the rest of the world is our ability to infuse everyday life with kedushah, elevating the mundane to a higher plane.

On its surface, The Pianist is "merely" the true tale of a great Jewish musician (Wladyslaw Szpilman) caught up in the unfathomable depths of Nazi occupation and terror. More profoundly, of course, it is a disturbing visual microcosm of the generic human struggle between good and evil, a titanic struggle that is sometimes utterly clear, but at other times also distressingly "gray." The Nazis in Poland were monsters, to be sure, but what are we to say about the others, including many Jews, who became actual and collaborative perpetrators in every corner of the Holocaust Kingdom? What pertinent lessons can we learn from this 2002 film for Jewish, and especially Israeli, preservation in our own perilous time?

Next week, Jews around the world will gather together to mark Tisha B'Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, which is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar.

While we're counting the Omer we'll also be counting Alex Rodriguez's homers. When the Yankees third baseman hits his 17th home run this season, it will be the 600th of his career. A-Rod, who'll be 35 in July, is a good bet to hit 800 career home runs - a number never yet reached by anyone - before he retires.

I have received much e-mail from my readers in response to my series on "Why Can't I Get Married?" There is one common denominator that unites them - finding a marriage partner has become one of the most challenging problems of our generation, and the older one gets, the more formidable this simple quest becomes.

Consumers beware: Shopping, gift-giving, vacationing, even making money may be hazardous to your health. Indulging in what should be routine activities can - due to a seeming epidemic of "who cares?" - induce extreme frustration, stress and anxiety, causing your blood pressure readings to be more like those of a thermometer just pulled out of a feverish child. Way too high.

Reality has become somewhat Scandinavian. It grows dark early and it is bitterly cold here in New York City and over a good portion of our fair land. Our Prince of Peace (The Norwegian Nobel, not the noble variety) is not yet asking whether "to be or not to be." Perhaps he is not entirely convinced that "that is the question."

In the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel’s military strategy and tactics displayed some notable strengths, but also some considerable weaknesses. Of course, in the years ahead, Israel is apt to find itself confronted with a far greater threat of belligerency. This is the unrelieved prospect of a nuclear Iran – a possibly irremediable enemy state, and one with well-established ties both to Hezbollah and to an already nuclear North Korea. It follows, at every level of possible threat confrontation, that Israel’s military doctrine will now need to be informed by an improved and appropriately expanded body of pertinent understanding. This, in turn, will require a more refined and updated intellectual orientation to national strategic studies.

For a nation that swore an undying oath of loyalty to Jerusalem more than two millennia ago, we Jews sure have a funny way of showing it.

Last week I wrote about how, through keeping a gratitude journal, we can program ourselves to experience more happiness in our lives. However, just as we can program ourselves to be happier, we can be programmed to be miserable and think less of ourselves. This can happen when someone we trust and respect tells us we cannot accomplish what we have set out to do. When our mentors or role models tell us that we do not have the intelligence or creativity to succeed, we begin to see ourselves as inferior. We begin to think less of ourselves, surround ourselves with a sense of failure and accomplish less because we feel incapable. After all, people rise to the height of their own expectations.

For ten years Bernardine Dohrn was a terrorist fugitive on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. Now she's a law professor at Northwestern University Law School where she teaches a course on law and the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

The weather is getting warmer, the days are getting longer - spring is in the air and Shavuot is almost here! The warm weather and dairy Shavuot meals provide the perfect excuse to pop the corks on the newest vintage of white and ros? wines.

The weather is getting warmer, the days are getting longer - spring is in the air and Shavuot is almost here! The warm weather and dairy Shavuot meals provide the perfect excuse to pop the corks on the newest vintage of white and rosé wines.

So often, when it comes to furniture in a home with children, there is a tug of war between functionality and beauty. Either get the industrial strength dining chairs that are ugly but never stain, or the elegant chairs that will force you to exercise your vocal cords all the time. There are those, of course, who get the beautiful chairs and cover them with industrial strength plastic, but they're not fooling anyone. I personally prefer the happy children.

I have written in the past about my visits to the Israeli Misrad Harishui (Israel's DMV) in the 1970's and 1980's. At that time, I served as a Senior Administrative Law Judge in the American DMV Traffic Courts, Vice-Chair of DMV's Appeals Boards, and Director of DMV Downstate Field Operations.

If Iranian-Israeli relations are ever to improve, will the miracle originate amongst policymakers and trickle down to the masses, or will civilians grow so tired of the conflicts that they insist upon crafting their leadership in their own pacifistic image? This question is of course well above the pay grade of a column on Jewish arts, but it is central to Motti Lerner's "Benedictus," in a limited run at Theater J at the Washington DC JCC.

Nestled in the picturesque village of Metullah in the hills of the Upper Galilee, hidden in the serpentine alleyways of the quaint cobble-stoned streets, is Zami's Music Box, Israel's only museum of musical instruments.

Writing a biography of the biblical Sarah, whether in text or images, is about as easy as hunting tigers in Africa or helping Pooh chase Heffalumps and Woozles.

We're in a recession. Nobody informed my twin daughters, who go through about 40 diapers a week or my son, in his first year of day school.

Now your rabbi has proof that coming to shul is good for you.

Liberal Jews have invented the myth that Judaism is a synonym for the pursuit of "social justice."

When my oldest grandchild, Penina Bracha, was born three years ago on Yom Kippur, the fact that there was now a third generation in the family - two after me, didn't really have any major impact on how I viewed myself.