Wednesday February 08, 2023 | 17 Shevat 5783
My folks would take me along when they visited family who were buried at Mound Zion Cemetery. When we arrived, usually between the High Holidays, dad would park the car and we would walk to the family plot. Dad would have picked up two small stones and then placed them on the monuments to […]
Our name is the first thing we own when we enter the world. Names honor ancestors, recall favorite characters, evoke nature, and bring joy to those who bestow them. We write our names in crayon on our kindergarten drawings. We scribble it on receipts, carve it into trees, wear it on necklaces, display it […]
As another High Holiday season is upon us, I can’t help but recall what I thought about as we ended last year’s High Holiday season. “I am so hungry!” We all hunger for “things” in our lives. We have physical hunger – such as after a 24-hour fast. We have hunger for loving relationships; […]
I attended my first pride parade when I was 10 days old. On the corner of 15th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, my sister, Emily, and I napped in our shady stroller, which was absolutely covered in miniature rainbow flags. Countless LGBTQ members and allies stopped to take in what appeared like a […]
Depending on circumstance, Halakha regards prospective abortions as permissible or not, advisable, or even required. Halakha takes a balanced view, as it weighs many considerations in play. As an American and a Jew, I have found proper the latitude American law has – from Roe until now – given Americans to approach abortion from […]
Imagine you’re a 17-year-old boy from abroad whose parents have both belief in the value of education and the means to achieve it — sufficient means to send you to a private boarding school in the United States for high school as the first step to an American university education. As your senior year […]
It was early autumn in 1964 and Kathy and I were engaged to be married on Nov. 1. We were caught up in the seemingly millions of things to do for the wedding. We were talking with my folks and her mom in Florida as we ironed out the details. All but one. What […]
My heart aches as my head panics. My child came home again from school with a play-by-play of sideline reporting from recess. Depending on the day, a peer got picked on for looking different, acting different or sounding different. Again. This feels like a conversation between a child and a 1939 war-torn Polish mommy. […]
I have always been a voracious reader. As a child I was a flashlight-under-the-covers reader. A buckled-up-road-trip reader. A rainy-day-cozy-nook reader. A just-one-more-chapter! reader. I gobbled up historical fiction, poetry, joke books, mysteries, Sunday comics, and a well-worn issue of Dog Fancy magazine my Papa bought me at the airport. I revisited the girls […]
At birth, I was given an English name along with the Hebrew name Tziporah. The English name (ask me sometime) was a name my parents liked. I always hated it. Tziporah was after my paternal great-grandmother, Faigel Weinberg. Faigel and Tziporah both mean bird. I always felt connected to my Hebrew name. I heard […]
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