Almost exactly five years ago to the day, my parents got a call that all people dread: their home (the one of my childhood) was up in flames. Fortunately, no one was in it at the time of the fire, and the major damage was confined to the back of the house. But still, it came out […]

There have been a few people who have hurt me pretty badly this past year; more this year than other years, actually. Jew in the City’s profile has risen over these last many months, and I think, or maybe I fear, that that thing they say, that “it’s lonely at the top,” is truer than […]

I’m pretty sure that there’s a place in hell where the really bad people are trapped in a shoe store with hordes of short people who whine “Mommy” at them – forever.  There is a certain dread that fills my being at the end of every summer as we begin our back to school shopping. The […]

Tisha B’Av – the infamous day in Jewish history on which both of our Temples were destroyed and many other atrocities befell our people – is linked to the episode in the Torah where the meraglim (spies) set out to see the Land of Israel before the Children of Israel entered it. All but two […]

I watch her in awe – the way a sports fan might watch a great athlete – but the thing that this woman has mastered is herself. Every time I’ve been a guest in this friend’s home over the last fifteen years, I am blown away by what a person looks like when she truly […]

For not just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us…We will soon be saying these words at the Passover seder, but they ring so true right now. The murder of three Jewish children and a young rabbi in Toulouse this week was […]