Category
father
Pop’s Act
We\’re at dinner in New York with a few of my friends. My father has never met any of these guys before, so he\’s free to begin his repertoire at the beginning, tabula rasa. Pop had quite a storied career in the music business, and an evening out with him is like buying an interactive audio tour at the Museum of Contemporary Musical History.
A Father’s Loss
Against the Dying of the Light: A Father\’s Journey through Loss\” by Leonard Fein (Jewish Lights Publishing, $19.95)
Tragedy or Exploitation?
The photograph of the Palestinian father cradling his terrified son moments before the boy was killed in Gaza this fall was viewed live on television and reproduced on the front pages of newspapers around the globe. Like the photograph of the boy with hands raised standing in the Warsaw Ghetto, nobody who saw desperate Jamal Al-Durrah vainly trying to shield 12-year-old Mohammed can ever forget the terror in their eyes.
Hoo-wah!
Memo to first-time fathers: If your baby is crying, she\’s probably wet. Or tired. Or hungry. Or angry. Or confused about what\’s happening in the big, new, strange world she lives in.
Downhill Doubts
My father has disowned me. We did not get into a fight about the family business — there is no family business. I did not marry out of the faith, and I have no children about whose upbringing we can disagree. The source of our irreconcilable differences is that we went skiing together last year, and he is convinced that I cannot be his natural child.
Daddy Track/We’re No Angels
What does it mean to be a Jewish father? If you\’re from a religious Jewish background, you know just what to do. You basically raise your child the way you were raised.
My Father’s Blessing
On Sunday, as is the custom in my family, I will receive a Yom Kippur blessing from my father. The image of my father gathering me in his tallis, placing his hands on my head and asking God to grant me a good year is one of my fondest childhood memories. My father concludes his blessing with the words a gut yor meyn kind (a good year, my child).
Having grown taller than my father, I now bend my knees so he can place his hands on my head. When I left home to attend yeshiva, I would call home on Erev Yom Kippur to receive his blessing.Even now, when I hear my father\’s voice, the wool of his tallis brushing against my face, I am transformed from an independent adult to meyn tate\’s yingel (my father\’s little boy).
Mourning an Alcoholic Father
According to myth, Jews don\’t drink. This is false.
According to the \”Big Book\” of Alcoholics Anonymous, alcohol is cunning, baffling and powerful. This is true. Otherwise, why would my father choose to move in 1991 to Portland, Oregon, to live alone with his Dalmatian and begin drinking after 18 years of sobriety?
Ten Days of Atonement
A year after my father\’s unexpected death from a kidney transplant, I returned home.
Six months earlier, my mother had sold our house, the one I had lived in my entire life.
New Articles
Print Issue: Who’s Funding It? | May 10, 2024
Magen Am Expands: Strengthening Jewish Community Security in Orange County
Who Does Yom HaZikaron Belong To?
Campus Watch May 9, 2024
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.