Browse Topics

Because Of Jacob

When I swore I’d kill the bastards or die trying, he grabbed me by the shirt collar and commanded in a harsh voice I didn’t recognize: I never taught you to be stupid! At the bottom of hell all we can do is survive! Survive! His eyes burned like hot coals.

Scenes From A Wedding

Rabbi Alan Gershon sits in his Talmud-lined office preparing his comments for the ceremony. He has brought up his “Marriage Notes” file on the computer — general remarks that he adjusts for each occasion.

A Story

For years I would ask my wife each day at dinner, “Why must we eat this food? It’s terrible — knishes, chicken soup, challah, kreplach,” and my wife would say, “We have to eat this food. We’re Jewish.”

Survivors

“It was winter when the commandant ordered us girls loaded into the truck,” my mother says. “We were naked, all young girls, maybe twelve, thirteen years old. You —” she points at me, “you would die with embarrassment at being naked in front of so many people.”

Sunbeams

There is a bird in a poem by T.S. Eliot who says that mankind cannot bear very much reality; but the bird is mistaken. A man can endure the entire weight of the universe for eighty years. It is unreality that he cannot bear.

Ursula Le Guin

Uncommon Prayer

Toward A New Liturgy

There is something that loves you in the world. The voice that speaks to you within, in the worst despair, is not different from the voice that called the world into being.

Irving’s Way

I’ve taken one of the self-addressed envelopes you left on your father’s dresser and I’m writing to let you know a little about his first two weeks here at the Home.

Altars

The Doctor

On Friday evening, December 31, 1982, corresponding to 15 Teveth, 5743, Hyman Lebele Andower rose from his evening meal, sat on the couch to read his evening paper, and felt a sharp, twisting pain in his genitals.

In My Father’s Arms

My keeper hurled me into the hole, and jumped in after me. She pulled the floorboards back into place, over our heads, and we were engulfed in darkness as the hammering against the front door started. I tried to call out, but her thick arm snaked around my chest, and her calloused palm clamped over my mouth, as the sound of wood splintering, and then crashing, exploded all around us.