Homeland

Note to the Wall from a Fixer

As one who is historically a wall Myself - steadfast -brave -keeper and giver of confidence -cool yet porous- alive …and so shrapnel-scarred as others expect demand delude over –and- underestimate others and try to take shots over my head, pound me for the sins of themselves… I understand your name: Wailing.



Development Town

Beit Shemesh is a centrally located small town that started as a backwater, graduated to developing suburbia, and, having inherited from exorbitantly priced Jerusalem both a strong middle class and a si[...]



The Jewish Bookshelf Goes to Knesset

Back when I was working as a journalist, I became interested in the growing study of Jewish heritage texts by avante-garde secular Israelis.



How to Say “Happy Hanukkah” in Greek

On Wednesday, we helped children in a Jewish elementary school in Greece prepare decorations for Hanukkah, the upcoming winter holiday which celebrates the victory of light over darkness, of the miraculous over the commonplace, of Maccabees over ….Greeks . (In Greece, the children learn that the victory was won over the Assyrians. What I would call a nice save. And true-ish.) I cut out shapes of menorahs and sivivonim (dreidels)[...]



World Enough and Time

Minutes before we begin Passover, I can think of nothing better to do with some surprising free time than to revive my blog.



Daughters of Light

The experience of protesting alongside you has been super, since, really – where else would we have met? Unfortunately, I don't really have that many friends from other religions, so it has been nice to expand my horizons. It is amazing that in your religion, all of the Torah that matters really *can* be learned on one foot, as long as that foot is covered by a stocking.



Taurus Babies Named Justice

I predict a baby boom in Israel this Spring. That's more mouths to feed and larger apartments to rent, but the passion of protest and the warm mid-summer night air…It's all pretty intense, in tents. It's an amazing amount of unity, kind of out of the ordinary for here, and, I guess, for Jews in general. Also, Joe Average, and his wife, Lily White-Citizen, seem to have awoken from some type of cable-TV-induc[...]



Summer Prayer of a Hebrew Redneck Wannabe

virginia_route_613_shield_-_old This post is about 95% recycled from 2009. But it's still true, so I figured, what the heck: Every summer, right in the hot, soft belly of July/August, especially on thick, soupy nights like this one, I'm hit with it in the head, like the skillet of an angry housewife: the[...]



On Memory

photo by: Susan NYC .......Is a memory something you have or something you've lost? – Woody Allen Today we think of who we do not have and why, and then what that lack demands of us. Tomorrow, about how we celebrate being alive to meet those demands. Today is Memorial Day in Israel, honoring fallen soldiers and victims of terror, observed here a day before Independence Day. The connection is essential since it is widely recognized that without [...]



Suburban Economics

Communal warmth comes with communal heat, just as residential cool comes with a lonely chill.