Alas, Hineni

What other group has to share their location and promise to text their loved ones hourly as a matter of safety because they are going to a peaceful protest? Well, apparently, I, as a Jew, must, because that’s how my day began. But I was lucky. I came in contact with nothing but peace and …

A Time for Mourning

Tomorrow will mark the seventh day since Hamas massacred civilians in Israel. In Judaism, after a person passes away, a formal mourning period of seven days, known as shiva, is observed by the immediate family of the deceased. So, tomorrow, Shabbat will be the end of a sort of shiva period for the wider Jewish …

Happy Birthday Jackie Robinson

Today would have been Jackie Robinson’s 100th birthday. He passed away almost twenty years before I was born, and yet, I’ve been an obsessive fan all my life. I don’t remember ever not knowing who Jackie Robinson was, thanks to my grandfather who grew up in Brooklyn and shared both his knowledge and love of the …

Cultural Consciousness

It’s only Wednesday. But it’s already been a hard week. A bomb threat was called into the JCC in my community. And today I went on strike for International Women’s Day. These two events may seem unrelated, except in timing, but they have become combined in my mind. This week there were many people in …

Thank You: From Taking to the Streets to Talking in the Streets (1/22/17)

To the grandma on the metro in the pink kitty cap, thank you. Thank you for smiling and nodding at me across the train as if we were sisters, because we are sisters. To the middle aged woman who looked at me on the street corner, thank you. Thank you for asking me if I …