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Our 2013 Trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida

For months, my wife Elizabeth and I had discussed going to Orlando and taking our son Chaim Yosef to Walt Disney World so that he could see Mickey Mouse and his friends as well as Lightning McQueen from his favorite movie — Cars. We spent quite a lot of time working out finances and started putting the plan in motion when we saw that the airline JetBlue had announced a sale — only $89 each way, quite a discount.  I called my mother and told her that we were thinking about going to visit Chaim’s pals in Florida and she lovingly started asking me if we had the money to go and how it was possible that we could afford it.

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Futile Button Mashing in New York

When I was growing up in New Jersey, I would dream of one day driving a car and being able to go wherever I wanted. I knew that it would be years before I would actually be able to steer and control an actual car but there was a way in which I could exert some kind of power over not just one car but many cars at once — the crosswalk button at most intersections.
Pressing that button gave me a dramatic injection of power and, as I have now learned, a dose of unwitting, medicinal, gullibility.

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How Can You Stick with the Winners?

Gordon Davidescu wrote this article.

Stick with the winners. That’s a powerful lesson as taught to me by none other than my dear friend, Joe Rich. What I am referring to is not the people who are necessarily successful in life, but the people who have positive, successful attitudes. By surrounding yourself with people that have such attitudes and avoiding people who are mired in negativity and a lack of motivation, he told me, you can be pushed to do better and rise above your own expectations. Here are some examples from my own life; they are of course exquisitely disguised as I am not too keen on libel lawsuits. You can judge for yourself which ones are the winners and which are the ones to be avoided and excised from your life.

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On Being Frum: A Three Year Update

Three years and eleven days ago I wrote an article about the process by which I went from being a non-religious secular (or “cultural”) Jew to gradually becoming a more religiously observant one. It’s fascinating, to me, how much has really happened in this time period. As this article has been the most commented upon article I have ever written, I think the time has come for a follow-up.

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Kate: Chapter 15

Sandy stared straight up at her ceiling as she lay on her back, which seemed a bit silly as her room was mostly dark, other than a tiny patch of light that was coming in through her window. Friday seemed particularly long this week, but this was probably related to how early Shabbos came in and that she had some people in her apartment that night for a meal.

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