This year, Passover will be like no Passover before. Self-quarantined
in our homes to avoid doing harm to ourselves, our loved ones, and
society, Passover will be smaller than ever before.
But it will also be powerful. We…
This year, Passover will be like no Passover before. Self-quarantined
in our homes to avoid doing harm to ourselves, our loved ones, and
society, Passover will be smaller than ever before.
But it will also be powerful. We…
I strolled into my parents’ home Friday afternoon about six hours before Seder, only to find them seated in the living room looking rather concerned. “Molly has Covid,” my mom said. Oh. My sister had gotten in from New York the night before. My parents had picked her up. Then she came down with a…
For the past few years, I have been adding a split open pomegranate to my Seder plate. In addition to the traditional six items on the plate, plus an orange as a symbol of LGBTQIA+ inclusion and, this year, sunflowers in honor of Ukraine’s fight for freedom, the pomegranate symbolizes something both personal and meaningful…
Stan and Esther Morhaime reviewed the receipt on the way back to their car. Their stop at a Los Angeles glatt kosher market was one in a series of several grocery trips they planned to make before they host two seders next week. They had just dropped about $400. Esther said the same items might…
That the doctor and I washed our hands shortly after arriving in the room wouldn’t seem unusual to the casual observer. Scrupulous hand-washing is common in hospitals. What might have piqued an outsider’s interest was the patient washing his hands. I held a basin over the bed as he carefully poured water from a cup…
This year has been a storm of enormous and unanticipated challenges, devastating loss and limited resources with which to respond. More than half a million people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19 in the past year, and millions more have suffered with illness, job loss and isolation from family and friends. In that sea…
As I unpack my Passover dishes and prepare to host a Seder that includes my aging parents — an enormous luxury compared to last year’s Zoom-only reality at the start of the pandemic — I find myself facing waves of an unfamiliar feeling. Vaccine guilt: That’s the guilt you get when you’re vaccinated and other…
Last year, as we prepared for our first physically distanced Seder, I wrote a poem, my first ever, about the ritualistic importance of U’rchatz: handwashing, in times of a pandemic. It ends with: To remember all those who have lost or have been lost. Tonight, we wash our hands for ourselves, and for others, We…
Julia Turshen is the best-selling author of several cookbooks. “Now & Again” was listed as a “Great Read” by NPR and a best cookbook of 2018 by Amazon, while “Small Victories” was named a best cookbook of 2016 by The New York Times and NPR. She is also the host of the “Keep Calm and…
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