\”Chanukah Lights,” by Michael J. Rosen and Robert Sabuda (Candlewick: $34.99) is a Chanukah book like no other, a beautiful collaboration from two masters of their fields: author Rosen and pop-up-book artist extraordinaire, Sabuda.
Ian grew up with two much older sisters, but “I was kind of like an only child … good life, good childhood, maids … I even had a wet nurse.”
Anna Melman and Ari Bronstein are in the midst of planning their wedding, which will be held in January in Israel. They have a venue and a rabbi. But they want to find ways of making the traditional ceremony more egalitarian.
My name is Nadine Fahoum and I am a 21 year old Israeli Arab Muslim from Haifa. When I was 6 years old and it was time to enroll me in elementary school, my parents faced a very complex dilemma—whether to enroll me in the ―Reali Hebrew School or in an Arab school in Haifa.
Esther walks into Starbucks to sit down with me, recognizes a young guy at the table next to us and gives him a hug. “He’s my acting coach.” She sits down, continuing, “I noticed people come off kvetchy [in the column]. I want to come off on a higher level. On a sophisticated level.” Her accent is the Jewish Bronx of the 1940s.
It’s hard to find a Jewish woman without a direct connection to breast cancer. With nearly one in 40 women of Ashkenazi descent possessing a genetic mutation that greatly increases their chances of contracting the disease, breast cancer, like Tay-Sachs and Gaucher’s, is a disproportionately Jewish disease.
Jaclyn spent her childhood moving from place to place: “We were a gypsy family.” So she has a lot to compare it to when she says, “I love L.A. I love living here. It’s got everything. And I like the people. I dispute most of the clichéd descriptions of the people in L.A. I found very intellectual, deep-thinking and smart people out here.”
I was 10 years old. My father left us and moved to the United States from Winnipeg, leaving my mother, my 6-year-old sister and me destitute. After spending a bitter Canadian winter and spring with friends, we moved into my mother’s parents’ home in Minneapolis.
Each culture has rituals and customs surrounding death, and Judaism is no exception. Jewish tradition and the Jewish community provide mourners with structure and direction during the grieving process.
The purpose of the High Holy Days (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) is moral introspection: Every year, Jews meditate on the issue of becoming a better person.
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