Besides the mandatory Belgian chocolate pretzel challah from Got Kosher?, I always try to bring a little food for thought for my kids to our Friday night Shabbat table — either an interesting story or dvar Torah or an experience I had that week. Last Friday, I decided to bring something I’d read in Tablet magazine on the modern-day obsession with Facebook: “What computers can do is think in code, a series of simple, mathematical statements. Human beings, on the other hand, can imagine and dream, hope and despair, hate and love with all their hearts. When they meet — truly meet, face to face and at leisure — with their friends — true friends, not an assortment of barely recognizable acquaintances living on the periphery of an enormous virtual network — they are capable of subtle wonders. If, instead, they opt for convenience, if they reduce their thoughts to brief posts, if they don’t bother finding out who they really are outside the bounds of their Facebook profiles, they’re doomed to wither into a virtual oblivion.”

It was not until I met David Hazony that I realized something odd about Orthodox Jewish life: We rarely talk about the Ten Commandments. Oh sure, we honor them in many ways.

One of the most important Jewish stories in years is unfolding as we speak, and yet, judging from the response of the Jewish establishment in America, you’d hardly know it.

It is fashionable these days to say that all causes and issues are complicated. Polarity is out, complexity is in. There’s more than one side to every story, and you must appreciate the nuances and subtleties of a subject instead of digging in your heels and yelling to make your point. A month ago, the coolest voice in America, Jon Stewart, gathered a couple hundred thousand people in Washington, D.C., just to make that point.