Mazel tov! The whole shtetl buzzed with the news. Chanka, the butcher’s daughter, was engaged to Yankel, the carpenter’s son.  It was a local match, so the whole town got involved in the wedding preparations. A week before the wedding, Chanka could be found sewing the last few stitches on he…

This piece originally appeared in Alma, 70 Faces Media’s feminist Jewish culture site. Content warning: anti-Japanese slur.

Having devoted fully half of my adult life to professional and lay leadership of the Anti-Defamation League’s work in our region, it is time for me to pursue other challenges in the arena of social and community justice. It is a departure laced with sadness as a lengthy chapter in my life en…

This essay originally appeared on Alma, 70 Faces Media’s feminist Jewish culture site.

This Shabbat, we find ourselves celebrating the 7th Day of the Festival of Pesach and preparing for this week’s special reading of the account of Kriat Yam Suf, the crossing of the Sea of Reeds, which tradition posits took place on this day. And yet, though we are knee-deep in our Passover c…

This year we celebrated Passover early, on a Sunday a few days before St. Patrick’s Day. My adult children will disperse before the official holiday, but with the darkest days of the pandemic behind us, we have much to celebrate.

We broke so many rules that day. 

I enjoy stories about Jewish celebrities in the Jewish Light. However, in a recent issue, the author of a “Jewish Guide to the 2021 Golden Globes” irritated me when he wrote about the film “Mank,” “(which) is about a ‘real’ Jew. … There are eight important, real-life Jewish characters in the…

Several years ago, I visited a preschool where a friend worked. I walked into her classroom just as she was asking her students to sit “criss-cross-applesauce” on the floor. The children found their way to a comically vibrant rug across the room and sat on their bottoms with their legs cross…