Category: 400 thoughts
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Thoughts from coronavirus quarantine.
It’s been bizarre, intense, frustrating, and a little bit panicky here in quarantine for 14 days. Especially as it started as soon we landed back in Israel two weeks ago. There was something eery about de-planing into an alternative universe. Aside from the empty airport… there was a somberness to getting in the taxi van, […]
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Thoughts in the Corona Age
Randomness written on a rushed flight back from New York City just as the coronavirus tidal wave started crashing over the tri-state area
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Why we need women’s empowerment programs at work
One time, I was doing the dishes, but for some reason I didn’t kick away the pink stool my kids use to reach the faucet; I stood on it. My posture was different. My angle was different. My perspective was different. And then my huz walked in, who’s 6′ to my 5’3, and as I […]
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What happens after the last baby
What happens after the last baby? Why is it so disarming? And why do so many of us go through it while feeling so alone?
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The national condition of feeling stuck
Everything feels stuck. Every post on my feeds is “hoping for the best, but…” “I didn’t know what to do, so I just…” “well, nothing’s going to make a difference, so…” I sense the stuckness in the street, I sense the stuckness at work, I am pounded over the head with the stuckness over social […]
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From Drags to Bitches: The implications of mainstreamed drag culture on women
In December 2018, I watched an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race, a decades-old reality show featuring a competition for drag queens. The episode was a doozy to start with, because the week’s challenge was to not dress up in glamour but dress down – as nude women. This set me off on what became an […]
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Hammock for one.
It gets harder every year. Yom HaShoah. Yom HaZicaron. Every year the ticking accelerates. Every year I realize all over again how important it is to not take any of it for granted. Every hug, every cuddle. Every whispered secret. Every question. Every silent moment, holding hands. Feeling up-down-up-down of a tiny chest against my […]
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I’m up here. (The value of eye contact)
Yesterday two men from a neighbouring town and vastly different demographic approached me to ask for directions in my town. One did not look me in the eye as he spoke to me, but looked at the ground, eyes nearly closed. I know why. I felt lower than low. Human contact is core to our […]
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A synagogue into a slaughterhouse makes us wonder: what the hell happened to us?
11 Jewish congregants were slaughtered by an anti-Semite with an assault rifle. It’s a timeless tale. A baby was being accepted into the covenant. A timeless tale. The blood of the akaida, delivered by an enemy, the Angel of Hatred, of Spite, of Terror, of Death. And yet… “They should have been armed.” “Around the […]
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Hear o’ Israel, it’s never too late for an old school prayer.
I hadn’t said the Shema in earnest or even in unearnest in over a decade. Like riding a bicycle or worshipping a childhood god, the words are not forgotten once you start to move your mouth. The מ’s are plentiful; an exercise for the lips. The ך’s, too, are plentiful; an age-old exercise in patience […]
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We cast our lot.
When people ask me why I came here, my answer is that no matter what I believe religiously I’ll always accept the fact that by being born into what I was born I have no choice but to cast my lot with the rest of my people. So even now, as there is this man […]
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The Prime Minister makes a PowerPoint
It’s night three of my daughter’s cough and it’s gotten much better. I’m sitting uncomfortably on the Hello Kitty stool next to the crib, with my forefinger making lines in her palm, my phone on ‘play’ in the other hand, and in my left ear, an earbud is loosely holding on. The prime minister is […]