I got the nickname, Holocaust Girl, back in college. Little did they—the poetry department mean girls—know, instead of feeling insulted and ridiculed, as they had hoped, I loved the designation. Holocaust Girl sounds badass, like a Jewish superhero. I envision Holocaust Girl as a mortal, modern, flawed, and more relatable version of Serach bat Asher, […]
This article originally ran in the St. Louis Jewish Light Though each of my children has gone through brief phases of packing her own lunch or buying at school, I am, for the most part, our family’s lunch packer-in-chief. I estimate that I have packed close to 4,000 so far. It is one of my […]
This year, the Passover journey from Egypt and slavery to freedom and human dignity feels particularly poignant. The Hebrew word for Egypt, mitzrayim, also connotes “the narrow place,” a place of constriction. These past two years of Pandemic, along with all that has unfolded at the same time, have challenged each of us differently, but […]
On Pesach, she would host 30 guests. Her siblings, children, friends without family nearby. The dining room table was extended to its maximum length, extra card tables snaking into the hallway and stopping at the edge of the living room where the floral sofa sat enshrined in plastic. Sunday before the first seder, her husband’s […]
Passover was on March 30 the first year I ever celebrated it. I remember it was a stormy spring in Los Angeles. Rainwater roared through the city aqueducts. I had never witnessed so much rain in Southern California before. Everything seemed to be moving in slow-motion, and everything seemed so vibrant and clear — grief […]
For those of us making seders, the list-making has been going on for quite a while now. For those of us who change dishes and pots and every damn thing in the kitchen — we are nauseous thinking of the drudgery of the next few days. For those of us who make the prep into […]
The first quarter of 2022 that just ended brought with it many unfortunate international developments. As I was born in Ukraine and still have close family there, I was worried about the situation in the area. While the whole world is watching Ukraine, another place where the security situation was recently escalating was Israel, giving […]
Parenthood is a complicated, often chaotic, adventure for everyone. Raising up young people to be kind, empathetic, strong, inquisitive adults is a challenge that few can claim to be prepared for. Still, we all try to get ready for anything that comes our way. We hope that our babies will be born healthy. When Debi […]
The story starts long ago. When I was growing up, my father was Jewish and my mother was Catholic. They attended services at a local synagogue before I was born up until the Rabbi’s sermon about how intermarriage was the greatest threat to Jewish survival. That was the last time my parents stepped foot in […]
Sometimes, the best way to open up your heart to another on Valentine’s Day is to show them a good movie or television show. Gal Gadot fans are in for a special treat this weekend at the theaters, so let’s quickly into what’s worth watching, reading on, and avoiding all together this weekend in Jewish […]
