Pride in being “just a Jew”
There is an age-old question that frequently nags at us along our journey of life: “Who am I?” I’ve struggled with it, and perhaps you have as well. When you ask yourself “Who am I?” you probably start by listing…
Op-Ed
Torts and the Jewish holidays
I’m that grown-up who jumps to catch a kid who is about to fall off a playground slide, even if the kid isn’t mine. I’m saying, “Hey, be careful! You don’t want to hurt your bum,” or whatever concern is…
Writing in praise of neoteny
Campers being silly at Rockbrook Camp for Girls. (photo from rockbrookcamp.com) Today, the word of the day is neoteny. It’s really a term from evolutionary biology, but it describes the retention of childlike attributes in adults. You might think of a…
Growing and sharing our inner light
If we fear “advertising” our identities, we should do everything we can to maintain our inner light and self-worth in trying times. (photo from PxHere) Years ago, my husband lost both his grandmother and his great aunt. Several years apart,…
The omission of antisemitism
Many Jewish students are worried to go to campus in view of threatening and hateful messages and even open hostilities at some Canadian campuses. These are taking place within a wider context of antisemitic incidents in the wake of the…
As we light the hanukkiyah
When we look at our calendars – especially that darkest of recent days, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023 – it’s hard to imagine that that now-infamous date is part of a millennia-long continuum. About 2,200 years ago, the Maccabean revolt against…
Universities have obligations
My mom left Brooklyn, NY, to attend Cornell University in the early 1960s at age 16. Among other things, women students had nighttime curfews. This type of legal responsibility or intervention, called in loco parentis (in place of a parent),…
Under the bed, in the closet
If you’ve ever seen the movie Monsters, Inc. or its sequels, you may have an immediate visual image of what the craziest monsters look like when kids imagine what’s under the bed or in the closet. A few weeks ago,…
We are not here, there
These past weeks have been nothing we diaspora Jews have known for generations. We feel pain, anguish and horror. If our hearts are not just broken, but shattered, how can we begin to imagine theirs, in Israel, when we are…
Open letter – Jewish media outlets worldwide call for combating the surge in antisemitism
The following piece, an initiative of the Jewish News in London and the Jerusalem Post, is being published simultaneously in Jewish media outlets around the world. Two decades ago, the former British Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, astutely likened antisemitism…
