Raising my “threenager” (though she won’t be three until September, I’m pretty sure this term applies), I am constantly straddling the line between coercion and freedom of choice. In some circumstances it’s totally acceptable for my daughter to have the final say.

The Torah provides a set of boundaries for living. Would life be simpler without these guidelines? Perhaps. But just as we would be irresponsible parents if we didn’t set boundaries for our children, we would be irresponsible custodians of the world if we didn’t understand our individual limits as part of a broader community.

If you see me on a regular basis, you’ve seen the purple CamelBak water bottle that I carry everywhere. It may surprise you to learn that for most of my life I hated (I mean really HATED) drinking plain water.  There was nothing fun or flavorful about it, and it was a huge chore to force down anything other than Diet Coke.

We lament that our modern world is devoid of those bigger-than-life “parting of the sea” moments, but the thing is . . . parenting is full of them. This too is Torah.

As an executive chef, my Uncle Larry gets culinary inspiration from a variety of places, including my Nana’s recipe box.  Of course in order to use family recipes for commercial purposes, he has had to make some serious measurement conversions.

Stories we tell over and over again stick with us; they become part of who we are. As we we affirm each year in the retelling of the Exodus, the Torah is a part of our people not just because it was given to us, but because we continue to give it.

A 2012 study by a Polish university asked marathon runners several months after a race to recall the pain they had experienced when actually running the race. On average, the level of pain they reported after the race dropped by about 40%, regardless of how long after the race they were polled.