When I was growing up, my father used to walk in the door punctually at six o'clock, and not too long afterward, the whole family would sit down to a more or less civilized supper.

Tzippy pointed to a framed picture on the sideboard in her dining room. I couldn't help but smile at the cherubic face of the handsome two-year old. His long brown curls covered the sides of his face and framed shining eyes and a winning smile. But Tzippy didn't return my smile; instead, a veil of sorrow briefly swept over her caring eyes...

Adi Huja, 16, observed the second anniversary of the terrorist bombing which almost took her life at Hadassah Hospital, preparing to undergo her 26th operation. On that fateful Saturday night two years ago, Adi and her friends had gone to eat ice cream sundaes at a cafe on Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall. Two Arab homicide bombers blew themselves up, killing 12 young people and injuring scores more...

How does one journey as a secular Jew and a producer for ABC's "Good Morning America" -- from attending White House Christmas parties and walking the sands of Saudi Arabia, to attending morning minyans (prayer services) at an Orthodox shul (synagogue) in Washington, D.C.? The short answer is, with a great deal of difficulty.

What My Rat Taught Me About Joy

Early one morning, I entered my kitchen and found a persimmon and an apple partly gnawed. Bits of persimmon skin were splattered on my kitchen counter. Horrified and disgusted, I shrieked for my husband. He called the exterminator...

On the Sunday between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, during the ten days of repentance, I went with my mother and sister to say Tashlich where the Atlantic flows into the New York harbor in Bay Parkway, Brooklyn.

It would have been nice just to stay there a while longer and fall into dreamland myself. Yet if I wanted to be in the world, which indeed I do, I'd have to get used to such inconveniences, wouldn't I.

A cat in a religious Jerusalem neighborhood is a persona non grata, regarded with contempt. Reviled, disdained, and viewed with suspicion, the cat's shied away from and scorned, shooed away harshly if it dares come near. It scares us when we take out the garbage. Children stamp their feet to see it freeze in mid-motion, shout to make it startle, throw stones to make it run.