Yearly Archives: 2008


Rain at the proper season

My son Facebooked his cousin, Annie, a day before Hurricane Ike slammed into the Texas coast to find out how it was affecting her and her family. He was excited in that way the weather announcer gets when a big storm is brewing. He sensed something big was about to happen. Annie, the child of […]


The price of return

In the middle of the summer, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser came home. They did not return to Israel in triumph. They came home in two black boxes. For two years, Jews everywhere had prayed for their return. They prayed and wished and hoped. Some added the names of other Israeli soldiers taken over time. […]


Memories of my father

Last Father’s Day I had a dad. This Father’s Day, I have memories. And I’ve been sorting through them ever since he died in January. My husband warned me that in morning minyan they might ask me to share some thoughts about my dad. Fortunately, this only happens on the yahrtzeit, which is seven months […]


Finding the way through time, mourning and ritual

In the first weeks of saying kaddish for my father, the sun still hung below the horizon when I’d wake to go to minyan. I’m just now out of sheloshim, the first thirty days of mourning proscribed by Jewish law, and now, instead, the morning sky is the cold milky white of late winter. Watching […]


Champion of charity

Rubin Josephs, philanthropist and developer, dies at 82 by Marla Cohen Rubin “Ruby” Josephs, philanthropist, developer and Holocaust survivor, known in equal measure for his generosity, his determination in business and the inability to accept the word “no” for an answer, died on Feb. 27 at his home in Piermont where he had lived since […]

Rubin "Ruby" Josephs at RJCC