Cross-posted at the Times of Israel

I consider myself to be an incorrigible optimist. I’m an eternal searcher for glasses half full and silver linings. Yet, there was a day on which I couldn’t find a glimpse of optimism or a spark of hope. It was November 4, 1995, when an assassin killed Yitzhak Rabin and ended one of the most prolific and transformational lives in the history of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

Cross-posted at the Times of Israel

Jewish tradition has a lot of paradoxes, but Sukkot is probably the biggest of them all.

Yom Kippur probably hired PR consultants to make us forget that Sukkot used to be the most important holiday in the Jewish calendar. It’s called “Hechag,” THE holiday. When the Talmudic rabbis referred to the chag without adding a specific holiday, it was obvious they were referring to the Festival of Tabernacles.

Cross-posted on eJewish Philanthropy and the Times of Israel

Israel never had a victory parade.

Even when military triumphs were outstanding and even miraculous, Israelis knew wars are not something to be celebrated. They can feel proud of the way their soldiers and civilian sector dealt with threats and challenges to Israel’s security and very existence. Yet, pride is not joy.

Sometimes we need to spawn many new organizations, and sometimes we need intelligent birth control.

eJewish Philanthropy, August 10, 2014

The Times of Israel, June 3, 2014

Imagine a country that says “we are going to get rid of all law enforcement agencies.” There will be no police, no army, and no coercion whatsoever. Sound like a hippie utopia? Can you hear John Lennon singing in the background?

Wait, it gets better.

Cross-posted at the Times of Israel.

Those of you with young children or grandchildren surely know books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Big Nate. My kids love them and I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, of course, to wean them from these literary paupers. I started a quixotic quest to introduce them to the classics with one of the favorite authors of my youth: Alexandre Dumas.  In so doing, I couldn’t help but think about Pesach.

Cross-posted at the Times of Israel

I played an April Fool’s Day prank on the Jewish Funders Network staff last week. I told them a major funder wanted to have Pluto designated a planet once again.

Cross-posted on the Times of Israel

The biggest problem when driving in Israel is not that people are reckless, but that they don’t want to be “frayerim.” As in, “I’m not going to be the frayer who stays in the slow lane,” or “I’m not going to be the frayer who lets that car in my lane.”

Cross-posted at eJewish Philanthropy

The biggest fear of an Israeli is not a nuclear Iran; neither is a rain of missiles from Hamas or Hezbollah. It’s definitely not the global economic downturn or global warming. The only thing that Israelis are terrified of is of being a “frayer.”

The world of philanthropy and social impact is undergoing rapid change.