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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The first time I put on tefillin, I was probably in a post bat mitzvah class. One of the madrichim from my Israel trip brought his set to class. I don’t recall what the lesson was about, beyond showing us the workings of the tefillin and how to wrap them, but this being a Reform […]
First, I’d like to give you a little background about how I learned to leyn as an adult, more than 20 years ago. Avrom and I moved to North Carolina, and not knowing anyone, we started going to Beth El, a small Conservative congregation, figuring it was a good way to meet other people. It […]
Corey Gradin has new lungs — and with them, a chance for a future. She received her lungs in late May in an operation that took place at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. Who they belonged to, and how the family members decided to donate his or her organs to a dying 16-and-a-half year old, […]
So much fuss over a matzah ball, nu? Well, not a matzah ball, but a knaidel. Or is it kneydl? Or knaydl? Or kneidel? Because when Arvind Mahankali, a 13-year-old from Queens, correctly spelled the word for a doughy dumpling that even the most unengaged of Jews have consumed, he unleashed an unabahsed frenzy of […]
In addition to writing, I also have a background in visual arts. Sometimes I get to combine the two in collaterals. At other times, I provide the words and concepts, and someone else creates the images. Whatever the case, it’s a nice change of pace that allows me to flex different creative muscles.
I’m an award-winning columnist, with an eye to the changes and forces that shape Jewish American life. I express myself in words, but have also been known to cook up a storm. I am the former editor of the Jewish newspaper that covered one of the most Jewish counties in America, but that no longer […]
