This week, I had the tremendous brochah of welcoming a new baby granddaughter into my family (simchos by all of Klal Yisrael!). As I held this gorgeous, pink-cheeked baby in my arms and looked into her cloudy newborn eyes, a strange (and maybe slightly weird) thought popped into my head:
“Hey, baby...

A gutten vinter! There is something so comforting about settling back into routine after a long Yom Tov season. I’m enjoying these days before the schedule gets stale and I find myself longing for another break. I’m working on a couple of new courses that I’m excited about, but for this week’s new...

Hi friends. 

Many years ago, I heard a thought from Rabbi Frand that resonated deeply, and I want to pass it along in case someone else needs to hear it. To me, it feels particularly appropriate right now.

We are entering a very serious time of year. If you were properly taught, you know that in j...

I have been fascinated with psychology for as long as I can remember. Whether the goal is self help, or just self awareness; discovering the reasons people do what they do is endlessly interesting to me. (I'll confess, I often find the way people's minds and emotions work to be more interesting th...

Something I’m noticing more and more as I get older: Optimism isn’t a character trait (although it is certainly true that certain people are more naturally aligned to that state of mind than others). Optimism- at least my way of understanding it- is nothing less than a superpower.

In my mind, opt...

There’s always been a certain vagueness, for me, around the avodah of the Three Weeks. Especially after a year—or two—when sadness and tragedy seem to ebb and flow on a regular basis throughout the months, the beginning of the Three Weeks can feel almost anticlimactic. There’s a sense of, “Been th...

In the last installment of On My Mind, we were talking about the fact that the Nefesh Habihamis (there were no better spelling suggestions, so I’m sticking with that wonky looking one) is the stronger force, but the Nefesh Elokis is the smarter one. This explains something that has always bothered...

Have you ever noticed that the pull toward your nefesh ha’bihamis, the animalistic, instinctive side of you, seems to be so much stronger than the pull to follow your nefesh elokis? It seems to require an incredible amount of willpower and self control not to eat the thing, or watch the thing or s...

Ready for a short, powerful idea that I just heard in a daily Tanya series which I’m currently learning (more about that later)? As we all know, sefarim constantly speak of the importance of not just doing the right thing, but of experiencing a real, felt relationship with Hashem. 

As we also ...

One of the first lessons I teach my students is something I call The Game of Life. Without going into too much detail, it is essentially (what I hope is) a novel way of presenting a pretty basic concept. There are some people who go through life spending their time and energy on things like amassi...

Why self care makes me roll my eyes 

At the risk of getting a ton of unsympathetic feedback – which might be kind of fun in its own way – I’d like to make the statement that none of us really work as hard or get as stressed about Pesach preparations as our mother’s generation did. I am also acute...

There used to be a small book called ‘Life’s Little Instruction Book’, full of super short entries (one or two sentences each) of different facts that the author had learned over his many years of adulting. Examples of his directives were: “Take any opportunity to take a kid to the zoo”, or “Use c...