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 …
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, …
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 …
“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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …