If you turned on the television in Israel on the morning of December 21st, you’d have been greeted by news reporter Eli Rachlin — and by two little girls who look like they’d probably rather be somewhere else. Of course, with the public workers’ strike taking effect across the country and nursery schools and other…
We make a left out of our apartment and walk on Sixth Avenue, where a wide selection of pine trees are available for purchase. “I want a Christmas tree,” says Ravi, my 4-year-old. “What’s Christmas?” I ask. “I don’t know,” Ravi says. “I like the lights.” Why shouldn’t she want a tree? Pine trees especially…
I am a Jew by choice, I was raised a Muslim, and my mother is an ordained Baptist minister. One might think that I would encounter religious conflict with my family on all fronts. In fact, people are often incredulous at the ease with which I can navigate through these three Abrahamic faiths. Perhaps, because…
I am terrible at fasting, so Yom Kippur is a day I dread. This year, though, the Day of Atonement offered a liberating surprise for me, as a transplanted mother in Israel. Between my excruciating headache and bouts of vomiting, I marveled at the amazing freedom I could give my son on this day. It’s…
— The Israeli model Bar Refaeli has given birth to a healthy baby girl. Refaeli, 31, gave birth to her first child on Thursday at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, which is also known as Ichilov hospital, Israeli media reported. The baby, weighing seven pounds, was named Liv. Refaeli is considered Israel’s leading female model and was featured…
In my latest blog post, I complained about the gendered struggles I face, as a liberal Yiddish-speaking father, while reading and singing Yiddish children’s books and songs to my son. On one hand, I’m faced with a mother-oriented literature that erases my own lived experience as a father who changes diapers, cooks meals, brings his…
My oldest daughter, who is going on 9, was tossing insults at her younger sister, Moriya, heedless of my exhortations to cease and desist. The usual deprecatory remarks that fly around our Israeli apartment like arrows include “stupid,” “liar” and “crybaby,” in various combinations of Hebrew and English. This time, though, there was a zinger…
Last week, I was invited to read a Yiddish poem at the first of our library’s “Favorite Poem Community Readings.” The event, which happened last night, is part of a national, decades-long peace initiative called the Favorite Poem Project, in which Americans are asked to transcend divisive cultural boundaries by reading each other their favorite…
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