Beit GamalielBeit Gamaliel

We often treat contentment like a destination—a quiet room we finally get to lock ourselves into once we’ve accumulated just enough stuff, status, or stability. But according to one of history’s most famous deep-thinkers on the subject, contentment isn’t a static room at all. It’s a muscle trained in the extremes. In his letter to […]

I have always been fascinated — and a little unsettled — by how confidently people extrapolate beyond what the data actually supports. A public school education steeped in humanist assumptions didn’t help calibrate that instinct. But recently, my daughter said something that stopped me cold and forced me to examine my own. What the Trendline […]

When I served as a principal, our team mascot was the “Ambassador.” Living inside the Washington D.C. Beltway, an ambassador was traditionally a delegate from a foreign nation residing here to support their citizens. In our context—a Christian school—the theological logic was that we are “not of this world,” serving as foreign dignitaries to an […]

Over the past few years, I have spent a lot of time thinking about why relationships—of all kinds—disintegrate. Whether it is a professional partnership, a long-term friendship, or a marriage, the underlying catalyst for decay is often universal: the continued failure to meet expectations. Psychologists often cite unmet expectations as the primary source of frustration, […]

Last week, I sat in a large meeting of clergy and stakeholders, watching a tragedy unfold in real-time. The chairman—a highly regarded religious leader—stood before us and blatantly lied about three distinct issues. In my view, the motivation was clear: he was desperate to maintain control over a catastrophic voting error from the previous year. […]