This is my first Yom HaZikaron (Israel Memorial Day) with a soldier in my home. What a heavy change. Last night, as the memorial began and I thought about my son, out there somewhere in his uniform near the beginning of his service, I had trouble breathing. I’ve been preparing for his service since the… Read More The Soldier In My Home
Last night, we were sitting at the dinner table discussing that it would soon be Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) and that there would be a siren at school tomorrow. My 12-year-old started thinking about the word siren. Here was our conversation. Z: “Are there different words for sirens in English? Like, do my cousins… Read More A Life With Sirens
During our Passover vacation, we continued on our journey down the Israel Trail. We started about two years ago up at the very northern tip of the Trail and are making our way south to Eilat (eventually!) with our six kids in tow. On the first day of chol hamoed (Passover vacation) when the entire… Read More There Is No Wrong Way In Nature, and In Life
Sometimes, Hashem has a great sense of humor. And I love when I catch it. It was 22 years ago that my husband and I first sat down with a member of the Torah Mitzion Kollel in Potomac, Maryland to learn. We had been growing in our Jewish knowledge and practice for only a few… Read More Hashem’s Sense of Humor with our Triple Pidyon Haben
On a cold Saturday night last month, my husband and I were out for a walk when we got a call saying that there might be a chance to get vaccinated with leftover vaccines. We turned around and ran back to the house, jumped in the car and drove to the location. We were silent… Read More It’s the Best Shot We’ve Got
These are three of my favorite words. ‘I don’t know.’ As an employed person and a mother of six, you might assume that I don’t use this phrase often. If you were to poll a group of 100 people, I believe that most of them would say that this phrase shows weakness. It shows that… Read More I Don’t Know
I think it’s fun to see the whole collection of books that I’ve read for the year in one visual place. Goodreads does a great job of offering this list, although I do think it would be fun if they broke it down so that I could see how many mysteries, historical fiction works, fiction… Read More Reading Roundup & My Top Five of 2020!
I love the dreidel. Every year the dreidel gives me a sense of deep satisfaction. Why exactly does a little plastic item like a dreidel inspire such an intense reaction? The dreidels I played with as a kid, and that you see outside of Israel, have four letters on them that represent the words, “A… Read More Oh, Dreidel We Will Play
I’ve got terrible bunions – inherited from my mom. I figure that I’ll eventually have to go through surgery, as she has. But for now, I definitely have an interest in avoiding that route. I don’t wear heels and I’m quite sensible about my feet. My husband and I like to joke that you know… Read More Just Call Me The Barefoot Backpacker
We started a new Masechet of Gemara yesterday, moving from Eruvin to Pesachim. Yeah! This isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy Eruvin, or maybe it is. I really found many things about Eruvin to be over my head, really complicated, and cumbersome. The moment that we started to talk about geometry, I knew that… Read More Letting the Light Shine In
