The Schrift - Ancient Jewish Wisdom for Modern Times

It is often said that “three is the magic number.” Might it be two ? The fairy tale of The Three Little Bears and the three chances to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name should not be altered. Two , however, can be as equally enchanting as three depending on the context. Benjamin Franklin once claimed that: “Well done is twice done.” The music of Mozart and the poetry of Isaiah demonstrate the magic of...

The Hebrew word "Shalom" means "peace," sure, but it also relates to paying and to completing . When we pay back our debts, we are experiencing "Shalom" just as much as when we sign a peace treaty. We typically think of debt only with regard to money, yet we can be in debt in an array of areas. We can learn from German culture the peacefulness which comes from living with a "time surplus." And Isa...

Isaiah swore the exiled Jews that one day it would be kings and queens who would lick the dust of their feet. We do not literally lick the dust of another's foot anymore in the twenty-first century--or do we? Malcolm Gladwell teaches us how to get out of our own way--a life tip which some German Jews who remained loyal to the fatherland tragically never heeded.

Sixth sense or phobia? Our feelings try to warn us when we are close to our triggers, even if a wall or a decade or a thin layer of gabardine provides a workable barrier. If we take Isaiah's advice to see ourselves as grasshoppers--and to move accordingly--we will feel better about landing in Germany or having a roommate who doesn't wear underpants.

Until Columbus, nobody in Europe had heard of a tomato or a potato. We think of tomato sauce as quintessential Italian cuisine, but really is it (Native) American. The more savvy one gets with language, the more quickly one can go to a supermarket and size up which foods are in their “hometown” and which are either imported or New World transplants. It might be time for me to eat more borscht and...

The word "luck" does not once appear in the Torah, and yet "blessed" is all over it. By contrast, today, we see the world as a luck-based rather than blessing-based place. Capitalism has conditioned us to view ourselves as fragile beings subject to the whims of others. To become blessed, we must think ourselves blessed.

Weinberg, Steinberg, Greenbaum, and Blumfeld. Do these names evoke a law firm or a Goethe poem? It depends whom you ask. Unlike Israelis, and most nationalities, Americans often do not know the meaning of their names. To understand the story of our names is to change music into information. Discover your name's meaning ... if you dare.

I knew what Mountain Dew was before I knew what actual dew was. Cute--or disturbing? Each morning the dew simmers on the grass for a few hours. Heidegger claimed to be connected with German peasant life, but did he hear the dew's whisperings? Micah wishes us to be among those who do not miss... the dew.

"German--what an ugly language." And yet, Mozart loved to write his operas in German. Was Mozart a stupid man? Had he no understanding of beauty? The reason why German gets bashed has little to do with the language's inherent sound. If we learn foreign languages, we might realize that our silver tongues are really stainless steel.

Marie Antoinette once said "let them eat cake." But what else did she say? As children of the French Revolution, we will never know. Edmund Burke wrote that in our servitude to the queen, we enjoyed more freedom than after we chopped her head off, because we replace one form of slavery with another. Judaism treats freedom very delicately; only Moshe could meditate properly, and that's probably a g...

In 1936, Walter Benjamin lamented that the art of storytelling had been lost. Today, with the rise of the iPhone and Instagram, people are telling less stories than ever before (and no, Instagram stories don't count). Instead, we cry for information, for meaning, for Tacheles! The Book of Joshua tries to hook us with an opening story involving spies, concubines, and kings. If the "point" of this s...

A generation after King Cyrus had let the Jews back into Israel, the Temple still had not been rebuilt. Sometimes, tasks seem so gargantuan that we do not know where to start, causing us to never start at all. When Beethoven wrote the Fifth Symphony, all he needed was four notes to get going. And to practice yoga, the hardest move is the one onto your mat.

The Torah knew long before the FDA that pregnant mothers should not drink alcohol. The Torah relied on intuition, rather than scientific studies, to impart this medical advice. Kant said that he had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith. This statement is increasingly applicable to the mysterious world of nutrition. We might not "know" that butter is healthier than margarine, but never...

Adults often need parents just as much as children do. Therefore, adults must learn to be their own parents by cultivating the yin and yang of self-compassion. This switch is akin to the reversal from scripture to Life described by Walter Benjamin in his 1934 essay on Franz Kafka. In his prophecy, Hosea recognized that Israel must be her own mother in the temporary absence of a father.

Jack cures his deadening consumerism by trading weekly punches at Fight Club. Dr. Faust escapes despair by discovering the painful joy of dating. In this sense, they tore down the Tower of Babel within themselves. No longer Jeremiahian tamarisk trees, they let themselves be saved by God without uttering a single prayer. In short, they let go thinking in a manner far more Taoist than Buddhist.

That which has been around, tends to stay around. This truth of life is what allows Apple to continue to satisfy investors even if the heyday of the iPhone is long past. In 1886, Nietzsche knew that it was wiser to "invest" in the Jews than in Germany because the Jews counted their age in millennia whereas Germany counted its in decades. Jeremiah proves a wise investor when he purchases land in Je...

Tel Aviv fashion is cool. It also keeps you cool. The star of the Torah is not Abraham, Moshe, or even God, but rather, the Law. We sometimes forget how nice it is to have Law. Walter Benjamin would agree that the Law of the Torah was (partially) designed to set us off from the primitive world. Although Tel Aviv is often considered the new Babylon, its no-sweat fashion is downright priestly.

The answer is not always "yes we can." Sometimes, it's "no, we can't." But we should rarely answer "no" automatically. Take at least one breath before saying "no" to an idea. When Theodor Herzl suggested the Jews of Europe could handle having their own country, many people answered "No" without a second thought.

Sponges hang out on the ocean floor. All they do is absorb, absorb, unthinkingly and unquestionably absorb the water flowing in and out of their porous bodies. We, as humans, are much more like sponges than we realize. That which we surround ourselves with slowly becomes who we are. In one of the ultimate historical backfires, the German-Jews assimilated so much that they became, well, German.

Sartre once wrote that "we are condemned to be free." No matter in what situation we find ourselves, we always have choices. Ironically, sometimes the more imprisoned we become, the more we notice our freedom. But this is a dark freedom, which makes Kafka's Josef K. abnegate it. The four lepers outside the city wall in the Book of Kings show how even in the worst of times there are always options....

You need Judaism more than Judaism needs you. It is here to help. But the Torah is not just an astute self-help book. It has what Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, the Grimm fairy tales--for all their brilliance--lack: divinity. When you suffer from leprosy, as did King Naaman, you don't bathe in the rivers of Damascus, you bathe in the Jordan. And you don't read Homer, rather the Tehilim.

Do you feel different, misunderstood, alienated? You are not alone. As the "Holden Caulfield Paradox" shows, the people you'd least expect also feel this way. When Darwin showed that nature selects our genes, many German and English philosophers concluded that certain races are superior to others. In fact, Darwin's theory should have proved to us that we are all uncannily similar; all humans share...

It seems as though for some Jews today, there is often a strange refusal to take Judaism seriously. This trend can be witnessed in Adam Sandler's "Hanukkah Song" and the phrase "Jew York." Yet, the more we read original sources of Judaism (i.e. the Torah), the more we see this humorizing of Judaism for what it really is: a grasping in the dark for meaning when one is uninformed of one's heritage....

Sometimes, people behave in ways so foolish, so inexplicable, that we can only cry to the heavens in exasperation. Isaiah was particularly baffled that someone could pray to a "god" made of wood. Metta meditation teaches that we should realize that everyone is just trying to be happy, even if it's in a warped and twisted way. We might also consider telling ourselves that people are drunk. If the b...

If I could sum up NIetzsche's entire philosophy in one phrase, it would be: do the opposite. Don't try to appear strong, or moral, or compassionate, because it will just make you seem the opposite. Instead, BE strong and moral in your core and your actions will naturally overflow from this state. This is why all that was found in the Ark of the Covenant was "nothing but the two tablets of stone."...