"I don't want a niche – I want an empire!" – Michael Wex, Globe and Mail
This is the fourth of five guest blog posts I wrote for Powell's Books.
Michael Wex - not a rabbi.
I could never see any point to getting out of school. Coming from a family that occasionally clawed its way into the lower middle-class for up to two years at a time, I was acutely aware of the fact that the kind of jobs available to people like me embraced nothing that anybody ever dreamed of being: general... 
This is the third of five guest blog posts I wrote for Powell's Books.
Minibrix was about as handy as Wex ever got...
Anybody who's ever seen me try to hammer a nail into a piece of wood or build a scale model of the Temple of Solomon out of kitchen matches and popsicle sticks will know what I mean when I say that forcing me to sit through two years of shop class just because I happened to be born with a... 
This is the second of five guest blog posts I wrote for Powell's Books.
I'm working desperately to finish a book manuscript in the next four to six weeks, so accounts of my day-to-day adventures in the world at large, not to mention life in the fast-paced Yiddish lane — where Polident seems to be replacing KY as the gel of choice — don't tend to feature much in the way of incident.
Today, for instance,... 
This is the first of five guest blog posts I wrote for Powell's Books.
It's been quite a while since I attended shul — synagogue — with any regularity. Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, holidays that feature memorial prayers, and the anniversaries of my parents' deaths are about the only time you'll find me there these days, other than for weddings, bar mitzvahs and similar celebrations. And work — let's... 