Don’t take away hope.
Ask any doctor practicing today and they will either tell you that they live by these words, or that one of their mentors told them this when training them. No matter how bad the news, no matter how grave the outlook, no matter how dismal the prognosis, don’t take away hope. Leave the patient and their loved ones something to cling to.
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Originally published June 20, 2022 at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-kaf-word/
Forget about being “cancelled” on social media, suspended from work or losing a book deal; when Miriam used a racial slur in Parashat Beha’alotecha, she was punished with leprosy.
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Originally Posted May 6, 2022 at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/kubler-ross-and-the-kohen-gadol/
There is a truism that we don’t speak ill of the dead. In Judaism that truism is anchored in the fact that the two weekly portions Aharei Mot and Kedoshim are often joined as a “double” parsha. “After death – holies.” Usually this is understood as meaning that after someone dies, we say holy words – words of comfort and praise, not criticism or conflict. But I think perhaps it can also refer to action: after death, we do holy deeds.
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Originally published January 17, 2022 at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/oasis-in-time/
The late Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Like most things Yogi said, his famous quotation was a malapropism, a fumbling of a more conventional truism about a particular individual belting the notes that mercifully signal the end of an opera.
But what do you do if there’s no one to sing, no signpost to tell you the end has arrived?
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