Rabbi Moskowitz's Blog

In 2009, Sonia Vallabh noticed that her mother’s memory had started to fail, soon followed by her ability to reason.  Over the coming weeks and months, it was painful to watch as her mother spiraled into a state of constant confusion and discomfort.  After her mother’s tragic passing in 2010 at the young age of 51, an autopsy showed that she had died from a rare type of disease known as prion disease.
At the time, Sonia was...Read more...

I never had the privilege of meeting my paternal grandfather.  Growing up in what is now Czechoslovakia, he came to America all alone at the tender young age of sixteen.  His plan was to work for a few years and earn enough money for the rest of his family to eventually come over from Europe.  Unfortunately, like so many other stories, that never happened.  World War II broke out and his entire family was murdered by the...Read more...

I was talking to a friend from New York this week who was sharing the ways that COVID has transformed his life. While he works in a Yeshiva and still drives to work, his commute has been cut down dramatically. Because more people are working from home, traffic is lighter and a commute that once was 45 minutes each way is now only 20 minutes.
It’s clear that he’s not alone. According to one survey of over 10,000 working Americans,...Read more...

While we in the Diaspora will begin praying for rain this Motzei Shabbos by adding the line V’sein tal u’matar l’vracha, many are aware that our Israeli brothers and sisters have been saying it since the seventh day of Cheshvan. Less familiar is exactly why they...Read more...

When Rabbi Jonathan Sacks zt”l recommended a book as “an astonishingly inspiring book” and “one of the most inspirations books I have ever read,” you obviously take notice.
Over the summer, I listened to a podcast where Rabbi Sacks zt”l was interviewed by popular media host...Read more...

Two years ago, on an early morning flight to New York, by the time I boarded the airplane the overheads bins were already full and I was forced to gate-check my bag.  Reflexively, despite the inconvenience, I quickly took my Tefillin out of the bag before handing it over to the agent.  Personally, I...Read more...

As we approach the upcoming elections, it is difficult not to feel discouraged at the current state of political discourse in our country.  Articles abound about voter frustration, increased divisiveness and Armageddon-like predictions, no matter which candidate wins.  The level of vitriol in...Read more...

Several years ago, the Guggenheim in New York hosted an exhibit called “America” that was nothing more than a fully functional public toilet.  Visitors to the museum were welcome to use it just as they would any other facility in the building.  It was located behind...Read more...

Visualization has long been part of elite sports.   Athletes use all of their senses to imagine how they’ll swing the bat or what the motion will feel like as they shoot the ball.  They...Read more...

In the mid 1960’s, George Leonard conducted research for Look magazine on the subject of human potential.  He interviewed countless psychiatrists, brain researchers, and philosophers across America on the subject of potential and found that “not one...Read more...

One of the deadliest days in American military history could have been easily avoided. On September 6, 1862, Union General George B. McClellan led 87,000 men into the Battle of Antietam against Stonewall Jackson and his 50,000 Confederate...Read more...

In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross famously identified five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining (struggling to find meaning), depression, and acceptance. 

In the years since her research, psychologists have found that while these stages are not linear and don’t...Read more...

In Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” having been summoned home to Denmark to attend his father's funeral, Prince Hamlet is shocked to find that his mother has already remarried Hamlet's Uncle Claudius, the dead king's brother.

Claudius has had himself crowned king despite the fact that Hamlet was the heir to his father’s throne. To Hamlet, the whole things reeks of foul play, and when his father's ghost visits the castle, Hamlet's suspicions are confirmed. The ghost describes that to kill him, Claudius poured poison into his ear; for Shakespeare, the act of pouring poison into the king’s ear isn’t just a physical description, it’s symbolic.Read more...

I’m tired of making decisions. It seems like the last few weeks have been filled with an endless litany of difficult decisions to make. Every night, after the kids go to bed, my wife and I go through our list of things we need to decide. Do we feel safe...Read more...

For hundreds of thousands of students and families across the country, we are at the tail end of graduation season, celebrating the hard work, persistence, and accomplishments of the many graduates. 

But there is...Read more...