My Father’s Daughter, My Mother’s Faith
Every year, Father’s Day falls within days of the anniversary of my father’s death. A lifelong smoker, he died of complications related to lung cancer when he was only 45 years old. I was just 10 years old, and that year, Father’s Day came just one day before his death.
Galilee Diary: Sustainability
When the Holy One Blessed be He created the first humans, he showed them all the trees in the Garden of Eden, and said to them: See how wonderful and pleasant are my creations! Everything I created – I created for you.
Cause for Celebration in Israel: Tu B'Av, the Jewish Festival of Love
When I moved to Israel, it was easy for me to forgo some of the holidays that I grew up with in America that I knew had a distinctly non-Jewish origin. It was also a pleasant surprise to discover other holidays here that unite Israelis across the spectrum – such as Tu B’Av, also known as the festival of love.
Galilee Diary: Sustainability II
God placed in [the heavens] a tent for the sun, who is like a groom coming forth from his chamber, like a hero, eager to run his course. His rising-place is at one end of the heaven, and his circuit reaches the other; nothing escapes his heat.
Galilee Diary: Interfaith
I think the Jewish question is no more a social than a religious one, notwithstanding that it sometimes takes these and other forms.
Galilee Diary: All Our Children
We returned from the inspiring tour of the Galilee Jewish-Arab youth circus in the US to lurid headlines about a “lynch” in central Jerusalem, when a group of Jewish teenagers went from trading insults with Arab teens who happened to pass by, to beating them up, so badly that one was hospitalized in critical condition (in a similar event about a year ago, the victim did not survive).
Galilee Diary: Uncertainty Principle
The details of the lunar cycle have been understood for thousands of years.
Galilee Diary: One People
[The Eternal] will bring you together again from all the peoples where the Eternal your God has scattered you. Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world, from there the Eternal your God will gather you, from there [God] will fetch you.
-Deuteronomy 30:3-4
Alzheimer’s Disease: A New Frontier in Health and Wellness
My grandfather was looking at me through empty eyes. His scruffy mustache was unmoving; he was just staring. My dad was making simple, small talk, but grandpa was just staring.
Finding Blessings, Even With a "New Normal"
My husband Michael and I were big fans of the television show The West Wing. One could say that we watched it religiously.