My children, like all Jewish children, are very, very advanced. They can perform higher calculus and split the atom. They have a 10-point plan for peace in the Middle East. As we speak, Josie, age 3 3/4, is directing an avant-garde production of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” in the backyard (she acknowledges that her stuffed…
An unveiling is not a thrill. It’s sad, but also drab. And it’s sort of pro forma. It happens after the Kaddish period ends but before a full year elapses. You recite a psalm. You say “El Maleh Rahamim,” the prayer about God being compassionate. (Bad form to add, “Ha!” — even if in this…
I am my own bad middle-of-the-road radio station. I keep finding myself singing, “Hot town! Summer in the city/Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty.” No offense to The Lovin’ Spoonful, but at this point, belting out that old chestnut in public is like warbling “Yerushalayim shel Zahav” at the cool kids’ table at…
It’ll be a strange Father’s Day chez nous — the first since my dad’s death, the first since we had Maxine. On the actual Big Day we’ll all be at the cemetery, at my father’s unveiling. Good times. It is a testament to my husband’s wonderfulness that he has not uttered one word of complaint…
God knows I’m no theologian. But as we approach Shavuot, I do think about the whole idea of revelation. I don’t care to hypothesize about whether God gave us the Torah all at once, in a big ol’ Sinai thunderclap, or whether Torah is given over and over as we discover new planets, create new…
In the not-a-news-flash department: We live in an era in which children are accessories. They are like fabulous Birkin bags, only stickier. Now more than ever before, you can express your aesthetic, whatever it may be, through your child’s clothing and gear. Are you a nasal Juicy Couture-clad label whore? A hip-hop hoodio who covets…
You know that part in “The Shining” when Shelley Duvall thinks that her husband, Jack Nicholson, has been working on his novel all winter, and she sneaks a peek at his manuscript and all he’s written over and over is “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”? That’s pretty much the caliber…
Comparisons are odious. As the touchy-feely therapist who led my new mom’s group used to say, “Compare and despair!” (I find it fun to repeat this in the flat, nerdy Midwestern accent used by the school principal on “South Park,” despite the fact that the therapist was from Queens.) Yet how can the mother of…
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