My eight-year-old glances out the front window during Shabbos lunch and does a double-take. “Ima! What’s Mr. Smith doing?” For the last seven years, our home has looked out on our neighbors’ four lollipop-shaped ficus trees. They add a certain flair, a bit of joie de vivre to the neighborhood. Hearing our neighbor start up […]

When we first moved to Cleveland, people warned me about the cold, snowy winters. I was undaunted, having spent much of my childhood in Des Moines, Iowa, where snow is abundant. But to my dismay, those first winters were miserable. I was cold. My feet were always chilly or wet. My fingers were numb. My […]

On the 13th of Kislev (the Jewish month when Chanukah takes place), I was 9 months pregnant with my third child. I woke up in the middle of the night confused, sweating, and very stressed. I tried to get my husband up to tell him about my dream, but he was more interested in sleeping […]

Would you set out on an important road trip if you only had enough gas for the first 20 miles and no forseeable way of filling your car up for a week? If you were a Maccabee you would. I recently started wondering why the Jews decided to light the menorah with the paltry sum of oil they found. Why bother lighting an eternal light that you […]

When Chanukah came on Tuesday night, I was drained like I haven’t been drained in quite some time. My baby had begun teething the night before and had woken up half a dozen times. My older son (who’s been screaming out randomly at night) also woke up several times. Despite barely sleeping, I had to […]

Several years ago during a holiday visit to my in-laws, I was in desperate need of can-openage, and my nephew, who was six at the time, was kind enough to show me where the household can opener resided. Although I’d been successfully opening cans for close to twenty years at the point, something about this […]