By Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb NEW YORK –It is an old word, and it describes a behavior that has been around since the very beginning of history. Yet the word seems to me to be used more and more frequently these days, and the behavior it describes has gotten out of control. The word [...]
By Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb NEW YORK– It was a year when the holidays fell on the same days of the week as they do this year. The first day of Passover was on a Saturday, a Shabbat, so that Shavuot fell on a Sunday. Saturday night was the beginning of Shavuot. That calendar quirk [...]
By Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb NEW YORK — He was a character straight out of the novels of Charles Dickens. Scholars have long found Dickens’ attitude toward Jews problematic. The character Fagin in the novel Oliver Twist is certainly a negative stereotype. But many are unaware of the character named Riah in Dickens’ last completed [...]
By Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb NEW YORK –He was an old man, and in many ways came from a very different world than I. And yet he taught me more than anyone else ever did. One of the things he taught me was that no one suffers as much as a parent who loses a [...]
By Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb NEW YORK — For several years now, I have been taking a train to work every day. Not a subway train, mind you, but an old-fashioned inter-city railroad train, complete with a conductor who collects the passengers’ tickets and even shouts, “All aboard!” I enjoy my daily train ride [...]
By Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb NEW YORK– ”There is no such thing as privacy anymore.” “There are no secrets anymore.” These are two complaints that are heard frequently nowadays. We live in a world of cell phones and e-mails, blogs, Facebook and Twitter. We have no privacy, for almost anyone can reach us wherever we are, whatever [...]
By Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb NEW YORK — We were walking down the long airport corridor on the way to the boarding gate. Somehow, it seems that whenever my wife and I have a flight to catch, anywhere, our gate is always at the farthest end of the long hall. We had plenty of time [...]
By Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb NEW YORK — She was a Hindu princess. She was one of the brightest students in my graduate school class. We studied psychology, and she went on to return to her country and become a psychotherapist of world renown. For our purposes, I shall refer to her as Streena. We [...]
By Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb NEW YORK– It is something I have noticed just about every election year, and I am always taken aback by it. This year was no different. Inevitably, the major candidates make their income tax reports public. Included in these reports are the contributions to charity that they have made during the [...]
