Deborah Kolben
By Deborah Kolben
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Life Jewish Baby Rituals, Revisited
When my uncle died at 60 from a stroke last year, my aunt, who is not particularly religious, threw herself into reading about the Jewish rituals around death. Among the many edicts were instructions not to go to movies or parties, during the 30 days after a loved one’s death. And my aunt quickly found…
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Life When Ultrasounds Are Used for No Good
I’ve thought about ultrasounds a lot throughout my pregnancy. I had my first one at five weeks. The doctor showed me a tiny black circle inside a larger white circle and said it was my baby. At eight weeks, the black and white image morphed into a head and body. I cried when I heard…
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Life Finding Meaning in Declining Circumcision Rates
I was living in Berlin when I found out that I was pregnant. My doctor there, a very exuberant Chilean woman, was doing an ultrasound around 14-weeks when she suddenly paused near the baby’s abdomen. “Oh! I see a tiny, tiny, oh so small little penis!” she exclaimed. This, of course, did not thrill my…
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Life Why Orthodox Women Are Choosing Natural Birth
Looking for a doctor to deliver your baby when you’re 30 weeks pregnant isn’t exactly ideal. But when I moved back to Brooklyn earlier this month, after living in Europe for the past year, that’s exactly what I had to do. In my perfect world I wanted to find a caring midwife who could deliver…
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Culture A Wife, Down and Out in Berlin
This Must Be the Place By Anna Winger Riverhead Books, 303 pages, $24.95. Days after moving to Berlin from Brooklyn this summer, I fell into a deep funk. It was the kind of can’t-get-out-of-bed depression where at 5 p.m. you realize that you haven’t left the apartment all day — except once, and that was…
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