This week I let my eldest child (my super responsible ten year old daughter) use a sharp knife for the first time. A couple days later, I let her take something out of a hot oven. But the real craziness began a week ago when I let my daughter walk to a playground – which […]

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 […]