When I was growing up, Temple Emanu El in Dallas would hold an annual art show and sale we would attend. There was work by local, national and Israeli artists and I it always seemed very sophisticated and special to get to attend. Sometimes, my parents would even buy prints, and we acquired a series […]
By birth year, I am at the very tail end of the baby boom. But I am so close to that tip, that most of what defines baby boomers seems foreign to me. Woodstock doesn’t register. The Beatles are a band that had already split up. President Kennedy’s assassination? I was in a stroller. Selma? […]
The woman walked into my office at the Jewish Federation, a little breathless. I had no idea who she was; but she seemed excited to tell me something. I was used to this. As editor of the local Jewish newspaper, people frequently came into my office to give me story tips, to share their thoughts, […]
This spring, I was writing an article and I wanted to look up some background from something I had written when I was editing the Rockland Jewish Reporter. I went to the Jewish Federation of Rockland County’s website, where I had always been able to reliably search for these things, only to find that at […]
Early this summer, I was worrying about Shapira, a neighborhood in Tel Aviv. Shapira is near the central bus station, about a mile from the boardwalk, and teeming with recent immigrants from Africa. It also happens to be the neighborhood where my 17-year-old daughter, Lily, is living for the year. Through July and much of […]
I stood at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza with a group of colleagues fromwork, barely able to move, sweat trickling down my back. I have been here before, I thought. But this time, it feels different. I scrolled through Facebook seeing people I know post that they were in the crowd, “Am Yisrael Chai!” I kept […]
Sometimes when you publish or post something, the news overtakes it. And something that seemed so relevant one minute is hopelessly out of synch with reality in the next. That’s what happened yesterday, when sadly, my post about the three kidnapped teens in Israel was overrun by the kind of news I never wanted to […]
Their three faces, laid out in tiny mug shots across my Facebook feed, stare back, accompanied by the hashtag #BringBackOurBoys. Pray for them, hold a vigil, condemn their captors, bring them home. It is not the message, but their number that brings me up short. I see three faces and I am transported back to […]
A yeasty smell emanates from the lower level of my house. It’s heavy and warm, both sweet and sour. It reminds me of my son when he was a baby — the smell of his neck on a hot summer’s day, a little…fermented. Fermentation is what’s going on in the dark of my basement. My […]
Golf, the venerable sport of country clubs, the Masters green jacket, sand pits, birdies, bogeys, Tiger Woods and tradition, is in trouble. Yes, golf. According to a recent New York Times article, the game has lost 5 million players in the past decade, a number roughly four times the size of the 2012 census for my […]
