Dear Jew in the City, Why do some people approach Yom Kippur as a day of celebration? Sincerely, David Dear David, Um… because it is? On the surface, Yom Kippur may resemble Tisha b’Av, which is the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. On both of these days we refrain from eating and drinking, bathing, […]
Seinfeld has a joke that more people are afraid of public speaking than death. That means that more people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy. Not me. I was a natural born performer. Was it in my genes? Did my middle-child birth order push me to be louder in order to […]
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 […]
Rosh Hashana is also known as the day of judgment. We enter a proverbial courtroom and face G-d’s judgement from the past year. The day seems solemn and can invoke terror within, but if you look at the way we celebrate the holiday, it doesn’t fit in at all. We get dressed up in beautiful […]
Ani l’doni v’dodi li – I am to my Beloved and my Beloved is to me. (Song of Songs 6:3) The Hebrew letters at the start of these four words form the word Elul, the name of the month preceding Rosh Hashana. With the “beloveds” at the center of Song of Songs being metaphors for […]
A friend did a great kindness for my family and me, so I went to buy her flowers. White hydrangeas, pale yellow roses and bright yellow spray roses adorned my cart at Trader Joe’s as I proceeded to do my weekly shop. Somewhere along the way, I jarred the flowers while I was loading up. […]
