לחם חן — Lechem Chein

I was getting the kids into the car this morning when my son looked at the dashboard and said, “Daddy, it says tire pressure low.” I looked down. Ugh. I got out and found the problem pretty quickly. One tire was almost completely flat, and there, buried in the tread, was a screw. I pulled out the little compressor I keep handy and started filling it back up so I could detour to the tire shop. While waiting for the air to fill, a classic Jewish thought came in:  Zol zein a kapparah. Let this be the kapparah. And then I stopped myself. Wait. I literally did Kapparos last night. I stood there with my kids, swung the chicken, and said: Zeh chalifasi. Zeh temurasi. Zeh kapparasi. This is my exchange. This is my substitute. This is my atonement. So now what? I’m double-delegating?  The chicken already took care of everything yesterday, what’s the tire for? Except then I thought about the few hours that had passed since Kapparos. Apparently, I had already managed to find some new thi...

The first time I intentionally skipped Tefillin was 2 days after my Bar Mitzvah… …In August 2023, I finally went to the dentist for the first time in over five years. Between COVID and moving across the country twice, it just hadn’t happened. But the visit surprised me. The dentist was warm, easy to talk to, and the whole experience felt better than I expected. We ended up schmoozing during the cleaning, and afterward she told me how jealous she was of that clean-mouth feeling. I walked out thinking, this was actually kind of great. I decided I’d start going regularly. The next time I went, she was gone. A new dentist came in after the cleaning. Right away, I didn’t love the vibe. He was already recommending extra work, even though the hygienist had just said it didn’t seem necessary right now. It was our first time meeting. It felt pushy. I gave it another try at my next cleaning, hoping maybe I was just being picky. But the feeling was still off. Something in me knew this wasn’t the ...