It’s Purim time… time to get the sweet stuff baking.

This is for an apricot hamantaschen filling…

The rain stopped in L.A. this morning after several days. A few hours later, I decided to check out a local trail that is usually dry. I was amazed…

Last two days of Passover... I'll be back Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.

I'm fresh from the front lines of protest -- the "encampment" at UCLA -- and I'll have a lot to say about what's going on on campuses around the nation, as a generation of radical activists is, generally, being allowed to destroy education.

Or was education destroyed already? Isn't that how we got to this point?

I'll also introduce an excerpt from my audiobook, "The Trumpian Virtues." It describes the unique characteristics that made Trump's first term successful. I will probably play a chapter every week for the next few months, if you like it.

Special guests:

• Carolyn Siegel - founder of "If You Heard What I Heard" Holocaust memoir
• Rahul Sur - pro-Israel Hindu activist, on the imposition of sharia law

Tune in: SiriusXM Patriot 125, 7-10 p.m. ET, 4-7 p.m. PT
Call in: 866-957-2874

The Tanya is a mystical religious text written by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Lubavitch Chabad movement, in the late 18th century. It is studied by Chabad rabbis and congregants today; I read one chapter per day. (At that pace, coordinated with the Jewish calendar, one finishes in a year.)

Today's chapter seemed particularly poignant to me, given world events. It likened the spirit with which one should approach prayer to the sense of joy that a king would feel upon seeing his son released and returned from captivity:

"Now, all one’s intent in the surrender of his soul to G-d through Torah and prayer to elevate the spark of G-dliness therein—in the soul—back to its source, should be solely for the purpose of causing Him gratification, like the joy of a king when his only son returns to him after having been released from captivity or imprisonment, as has been explained earlier." (Chapter 41)

The theme of captivity recurs throughout Jewish texts. Evidently ...