November 2009      This past Shabbat I sat in synagogue, listening to the Blessing of the New Month, Kislev, which will begin tomorrow.   “May it be Your will, our G-d and the G-d of our forefathers, that You inaugurate this month upon us for goodness and for blessing. May You give us long […]

February 2010   I lay in bed in the morning, trying to decide, through transparent eyelids, whether daylight has truly dawned or whether I have a few more minutes to burrow back under the covers. But then the alarm clock rings and all sense of illusion is gone and I sit up, groggily groping for […]

April 2010 These past two days have been a roller coaster of emotions. Monday was Israel’s Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror. Every school, every city, every small community, had a ceremony commemorating the country’s heroes — those who fell in the battlefields of our endlessly long list of wars, and those […]

May 2010   In my home, as in many Jewish homes around the world, Friday afternoon, as Shabbat approaches, tends to be hectic. I call a five-minute warning upstairs to my girls who are putting the final touches on their Shabbat finery and remind my boys to turn off the computer and start setting the […]

September 26, 2006 – Reflections on Rosh Hashanah   I hosted seven people at my home for the two day Rosh Hashanah holidays. Add that to me, my husband and our seven kids, and we were quite a house full. Sixteen people to house, feed, and keep happy. The basement was set up with two […]

October 2010   The Shabbat morning services were coming to a close and I peeked through the partition separating the men’s section of the synagogue from the ladies’ section. I wanted to see which little boy was being given the traditional honor, this week, of leading the concluding “Anim Zemirot”,????? ?????? the Hymn of Glory. […]

November 2010   The Jewish Liturgy is filled with formal prayer services, performed three times a day, every day, with even more added on Shabbat and festivals! But there are also mini prayers—blessings, actually—which we sprinkle steadily throughout our days, adding significance and spirituality to the events which color our lives. You can find them […]

February 2011   Too many of us know, from personal experience, what it’s like when someone close to us is diagnosed with a serious illness. You feel like you have to do something… everything and anything possible in order to help. You go to the best doctors in that field; you ask for a second […]

March 2011    I can’t get those faces of the Fogel family out of my mind. Udi and Ruth, the mother and father, little Yoav and Elad the sons, and Hadas the baby girl. Friday night, two knife-wielding terrorist monsters infiltrated the Samaria community of Itamar, just outside of Shechem, and slaughtered these five members […]

May 2011   Last week I attended the ceremony commemorating Israel’s Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror at my son’s school. Every school, every city, every small community, has a ceremony commemorating the country’s heroes– those who fell in the battlefields of our endlessly long list of wars, and those who fell […]