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Get Out of the Car
Parshat Ki Tetzei 5779We crossed into Egypt at the Taba Border Crossing around midnight. I was exhausted, dirty, and bone weary after two utterly crazy days in Jordan, but I trudged up to passport control with resigned indifference. If it were up to me, I would have been in one of the many five star hotels in Eilat, […]
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Dorian’s Done it Again
Parshat ShoftimThere used to be four seasons a year; spring, summer, fall and winter. But these days we have created many more seasons for ourselves. There is constructions season from April to Nov, Pumpkin Spice Latte season, which had an early start this year, showing up on August 27, and will likely run through mid-December. There […]
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Last Time I Got Shot
Parshat Re’eh 5779Taking a walk in the woods can be a pretty mundane activity, but never when you are in Yosemite National Park. In Yosemite, a walk in the woods is a child’s first walk into a candy store. Every bend in the path reveals an abundance of flora and fauna, every hill crested opens up new […]
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Tanner Street Trouble
Parshat Devarim/Tisha B’AvAs a child, Will always seemed to gravitate to more violent forms of play than the other boys in his neighborhood. Even when his mother took away his toy guns and swords, Will always found a way to turn innocuous toys into weapons. By the time he was seven, many neighborhood kids wouldn’t play with […]
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How to Survive a Kidnapping
Parshat Matot/Masei 5779Disclaimer: This email contains depictions of a graphic crime, readers please use caution if reading in front of children.
There are two dominant theories about triathletes. The first is that they are supremely cowardly human beings, and spend their life preparing to run away from danger on any front. You’re relaxing on the beach and […] -
Avocado is Back in the Headlines
Parshat PinchasAvocado is the headline hogger of the fruit world. There are about 2,000 species of fruit eaten by human beings, from pedestrian fruits like the apple, banana, clementine, and date, to the more exotic ones like the atemoya, bignay, calabash, and durian. But no fruit manages to push itself into the headlines as often as […]
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I have Seen the Writing on the Wall
Parshat Balak 5779This is a rerun of a previous Shabbos email. My wife did not re-give birth to our eight year old daughter, but there will be an update at the end of the email….
I have seen the writing on the wall…
and it is colorful. There are blue and orange streaks all across one wall of our […] -
Every Step Counts, but Some More
Parshat Chukat 5779The New York City Subway system has 472 stations stretching over four boroughs, making it the largest subway system in the world. It is clean, efficient, reliable, inexpensive, and most importantly, it saves people hours of snarling traffic every day. In 2017, the most recent year data was presented, over 1.72 billion rides were provided […]
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Of Navy SEALs and Tea
Parshat Korach 5779About seventy five percent of the trainees who start the Navy SEALs training program, drop out before it’s done. And it’s not like anyone can get into this program, one must first excel in the regular Navy and then successfully finish a grueling three-week SEAL Officer and Assessment and Selection program which weeds out anyone […]
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I Can’t Get Him Out of My Tires
Parshat Shelach 5779Traveling to the Amazonian jungle in the mid-1800 was dangerous and harrowing. Bringing your entire mishpacha with you would either be described as blindly optimistic or just plain foolish. But when Henry Wickham decamped from England to build a plantation in the jungle, he took with him his wife, mother, brother, brother’s fiancée, brother fiancée’s […]
Leiby Burnham has created 162 entries
Leiby Burnham
