Thoughts on the Occasion of My Son's Bar Mitzvah

Author's note: It's Friday afternoon as I write and I am scheduling this post to publish on Saturday morning when our son Ezra will be called to the Torah as a bar mitzvah. What follows is a brief speech that, God willing, I'll be giving about the time this post appears. Begging the reader's indulgence, I thought that it bears on some of our concerns here at ENV.

With Ezra's permission I want to share a surprising fact about him. About two months ago Ezzie conceived an unexpected ambition: He...