Frank: The word resilience is defined as the capacity to withstand or to recover from difficulties and I believe is a word that defines so many aspects of Jewish history. While the Jewish people have not always recovered quickly, we certainly have proven to the world that we do recover when adversity ...
Mark: Examples of Courage abound throughout the Bible: Daniel demonstrated physical courage when he challenged Goliath; Moses displayed moral courage when he stood before Pharaoh demanding his people’s freedom; Abraham mustered spiritual courage when he debated and argued with God over the fate of ...
Frank: Mark, one of the essential elements of good character is kindness and it is this aspect of character that I want to discuss with you. An act of kindness – the conscious choice to do good - is never wasted and can take on a life of its own. A kind act not only brings pleasure to the one extending ...
Mark: Integrity is defined as the quality of being honest and possessing strong moral principles. A person of integrity is often described as an individual who will consistently choose to do the right thing and make the correct ethical choices, even when no one is watching them or looking over their ...
Frank: When I became president of the Nashville Jewish Federation in 1999, one of the hot topics that I had to deal with was the request by many of our donors to promote designated giving to the various Jewish organizations and agencies of the Federation, rather than giving a blanket donation to ...
Frank: Like all human emotions, empathy is on a spectrum and ranges from a complete absence to an overabundance of this feeling of caring and concern of others. Defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings and emotions of other humans, empathy plays a significant role in the evolutionary ...
Mark: Golda Meir, the first and only female Prime Minister of Israel, was well known for her many qualities, among them her acerbic and humorous quips about the human condition. Often, in the presence of those (mostly men) whom she considered as displaying a purposefully false humility, she felt it ...
Mark: Frank, as we once again approach Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we are made aware yet again of the tenuous nature of each of our existence. In fact, the words of the Hebrew prayerbook ask that we acknowledge this fact of our mortality. Looking at the start of a New Year, the prayerbook offers ...
Frank: In the fifth century B.C. one of the oldest documents in history was written by Hippocrates and involved a code of ethics for the practitioner of medicine. While this code of ethics has been modified over the years to fit in with a more modern time, it remains today one of the only such codes ...
Frank: It was 150 years ago when the phrase “nature versus nurture” surfaced in scientific literature and ever since a debate of which was more important in determining our personality, skills, interests, morality, and intellect, among many other characteristics has been a popular subject to discuss. ...
