I have a principle I often invoke in class: comfortable people don't grow. Good teachers need to engage in the paradox of making students feel comfortable and uncomfortable in equal measure.
If we are indeed created in God's image, then we, too, must create and then we, too, must rest.
For some reason, I write about crash-landed spaceships quite a lot and my wife is sick of hearing of hearing my ideas for new tales about them.
In every life there is a challenge. For every challenge that I take on, if I follow through, I accomplish. When I have accomplished, then I have achieved. If I achieve, than I can proudly say I did my job well.
I love lighting Shabbat candles at the onset of Shabbat. It helps me create a strong and firm demarcation of time.
For me, study is a divine and daily imperative, and I study a page of Talmud daily so that I am not only teaching. My teaching is constantly being fed by my learning.
If our writing is worth anything at all, then we have to put ourselves into it.
If people are not safe, they will not make themselves vulnerable. If they feel too comfortable, they can become complacent or lose their curiosity. They can become intellectually lazy about what matters most.
Teaching is almost like an act of prayer for me. I feel that I am present at the intersection of people and ideas in a very holy way. There are not many places where successful adults can take a break from work or domestic issues and freely and safely explore their inner lives or global issues through an ethical lens.
I don't read or write SF for cutting edge ideas; I read and write it for the storytelling, and every story is new. So have I brought anything new to it? Only in so far as no-one before has written about the characters I've invented in their particular situation.
That's true of every form of literature - each writer brings new things to it because each of us is an individual.
I love space opera, and I believe that every sub-genre has potential no matter how old it is.
In order to survive, the human race must defend itself.
I love going to synagogue on Friday night and being swept in the melodies. Everyone seems more friendly and unburdened by the week and ready to be taken elsewhere.
I would advise anyone who is at the start of a rest ritual like the Sabbath, to take it slowly and grow incrementally into it. Recognize that it will be hard at first. It's a discipline but then it is a true and deep joy.
In fact, because I am very time conscious and want to make the most of every moment, I make it a practice to remove my watch before I light the candles as if to suggest that for this brief period, my life must transcend time.
I took to religion at about age 12; it was very hard for me to be Sabbath observant as a kid in a home which was not Sabbath observant. I think my parents thought the whole Jewish thing was a phase.
