Category: Judaism
-
In the New Year 5785
A year ago today I was awake at 2 am when news started appearing on my social feeds about October 7th and what was happening in Israel. I was awake at 2 am because I was on a girls’ trip weekend with my best lifelong friends. In 365 days two of those women have since… Read more
-
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… Read more
-
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… Read more
-
Pondering Peace
Tonight I went to a vigil for Israel. Four days and the pain is still as constant as the numb feelings, the shock. New details every day highlight more horror. Kidnapped grandparents, decapitated babies, the sheer numbers. It seems too outlandish to even write as fiction. Despite the horror I’ve seen in the online discourse,… Read more
-
Rosh Hashanah Writing
Writing sometimes feels like the High Holy Days in Judaism (Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish new year, and Yom Kippur – the day of atonement). Writing, just like the holidays, is something I have to fit in around “work” and the wider expectations of a society that doesn’t recognize the meaning of the act or the… Read more
-
The Jewish New Year on Zoom
Waiting for the moment you are allowed to sit down during a Yom Kippur zoom service highlights how much we depend on one another for our customs, cues, and daily actions. Without the old guard sitting down around me I’m very alone and don’t always know what to do, when to rise and when to… Read more
-
I Work Where a White Supremacist Might Find Me
“I don’t speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don’t have the power to remain silent.” – Rabbi A.Y. Kook Today I must speak, once again, in solidarity with other victimized groups across our country. The tragic and heinous events this morning at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh… Read more
-
The Ten Plagues: Science Not Silence
A week ago today I was still refraining from eating most carbs, as it was the Jewish holiday of Passover. A holiday where Jews across the world come together to remember the exodus from Egypt. One of the better known elements of the Passover seder, the holiday’s ritual meal, is the recitation of the 10… Read more
-
In Broad Daylight: What I Believe
This time it is my city. This time it is my community. This time it is my people. This time it is not my family. I am lucky it is not my family, as I was lucky when it happened in St. Louis, and Philadelphia, and not here. But I am writing now when perhaps… Read more
-
The Second Holiday Season
“The Holiday Season” usually means December, Hanukkah and Christmas. But, I feel like spring is its own holiday season, with Passover and Easter always falling close together (the same week this year actually). My family also has its majority of birthdays in the spring, so that always adds to the celebratory nature at my house.… Read more