109-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor: Look for Beauty Everywhere
Alice Herz Sommer is a survivor of the Theresienstadt concentration camp whose husband was murdered in Auschwitz. At 109 she is the oldest living Holocaust survivor. When asked “What is the secret to you feeling so good at your age?” she responded: “[I’m an] optimist. Looking for the good! Life is beautiful. Have to be […]
Read MoreMeet New Knesset Member and JewishMOM of 7 Shuli Mualem
I was brought to tears listening to the first speech of 1st time Knesset member Shuli Mualem (Bayit Hayehudi) yesterday. She discusses her birth only 2 months after her parents made aliya from Morocco, and how she became a young widow when she lost her first husband in the horrific 1997 Helicopter Disaster. She describes […]
Read MoreUs vs. Them
“Parasites! Extremists! Black! Primitive!” A few years ago, a guest speaker came to talk at my daughters’ National Religious elementary school about stereotypes. He started his talk by asking the girls what characteristics they associate with Charedim…and the words above were, of course, their immediate responses. My daughter, Hadas, like all of my kids, attended […]
Read MoreMy 1st Frum Purim by Peter Levavi
24 years ago, my husband, Joshua, was volunteering on a secular, Shomer Hatsair kibbutz when he met recent law-school graduate Peter Levavi. Despite the 8-year age difference between them, Josh and Peter became close friends, and spent many late nights at the kibbutz dining hall debating what it really means to be Jewish. Over the […]
Read MoreOur Weisberg Purim Miracle
2 decades ago, my divorced mother-in-law, Annette, fell deeply in love and got engaged to a man who broke her heart. Enno and Annette met at the airport in Toronto on their way to Germany. Annette had noticed Enno’s eleven-year-old son playing in a most imaginative way with two little six-year-old girls, keeping them entertained […]
Read MoreMy Father, the Sadigura Rebbe zts”l
A few months ago, Binah Magazine started featuring interviews with the daughters of tsaddikim to give us readers an insider’s view of what these great people were like not only as leaders of thousands, but also as fathers and human beings. I’ve been finding these columns really fascinating and inspirational, and especially loved this story […]
Read MoreOur Purim Costume Fiasco
At 7 AM this morning there was a smiley face storming around my house in a fit of fury. My daughter had been preparing for today’s Purim festival for weeks. She had hunted down 3 pairs of giant glasses and painted smiley faces on them. She had searched for the perfect sunflower-yellow satin and sketched […]
Read MoreApron Chizuk
I’m half-way through a too-long afternoon. The sky is stone gray and growling. The walls of my house are starting to close in on me like the trash compactor in Star Wars. I am unsuccessfully mopping apple juice concentrate off my kitchen floor. Or I am cleaning out the sink and up to my knuckles […]
Read MoreOnly in Israel: MK Ruth Calderon’s Talmud Lesson in Knesset (15-Minute Inspirational Video)
In the video below, Dr. Ruth Calderon, a newly-elected Knesset member from the secular Yesh Atid party, talks about the love of her life: the Babylonian Talmud. This speech brought tears to my eyes. I guess because the Knesset represents to me the sky-high walls that divide us Jews, and Calderon’s simple but powerful speech […]
Read MoreHelping Children Feel Happy by Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller
The following is an excerpt from Rebbetzin Heller’s newly-released book Balancing Act How do we instill a sense of simchas hachaim in our children? Young children exude natural joie de vivre. What happens as the years progress? The travails of life wear people down. Age brings illness and a steady weakening of the body. But […]
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