A Friday night, a “Woman of Valor” and a table of family and friends check the tears and remind her that true beauty lies far beyond the grasp of chemotherapy; it lies within.

The word “tuition” may not have preceded the word “crisis”, but the circumstances were so similar and the consequences so identical that it’s probably worth a lead-in… In the late 1980s, the U.S. was experiencing a devastating economic downturn. With only one school age child at the time, and because luxury lifestyle choices took a

In retrospect, a lot has been said and written about enhancing the Tisha B’Av experience. For many of us the “loss” of our holy places is very abstract; we know that historically we’ve suffered national catastrophes, but feeling it on a personal level is another matter. For that reason, and for many years running, the

I’m going back to the 70s and a wicked winter in St. Paul, Minnesota. Winters in St. Paul can be brutal, especially if you’re a teen from another saint-city that’s over 500 miles further south. The trek from St. Louis to St. Paul meant a Greyhound bus all-nighter for the thirty of us who wanted

A recent Jewish Week article, “A Woman’s Place is in the (Kosher) Kitchen” by Amy Spiro caught plenty of attention. When Donyel Meese, a pre-med undergraduate and NCSY alumnus, was offered student employment in kashrut supervision (Ohio State University’s Hillel Cafe), she first consulted her Rabbi regarding halachic issues. It’s a common misconception that a

In military jargon, whenever the drill sergeant commands his troops to do an “about face”, he’s instructing the formation to pivot clockwise 180 degrees. I only mention this because a favorite Jerusalem relative recently did an about-face about Facebook and commanded his “troops” (his children, who are my nieces and nephews), to shut down their