Last August, as I celebrated my fifth wedding anniversary, I quietly marked another anniversary of sorts: half a decade of searching, meddling, advising, consoling, celebrating—and

Who ever saw Jerusalem naked?/ Even archaeologists never did. —Yehuda Amichai Other than in Israeli poet Amichai’s works—and in the story of King David—Jerusalem is seldom

There was always a jar of chicken fat in the refrigerator when I was growing up. Interesting stuff, chicken fat. It is solid but soft,

Five years ago, my son, Yoav, and I were both lying on narrow cots in a corridor of Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. My

I recently spent two nights with my sister and her husband, Joshua Cahan, at a private beach house on the Pacific. The trip was a

In Jewish life, we frequently use physical objects to engage in God’s mitzvot, but while these rituals are transitory, the objects are not. In most

On a cold February day in 2008, my husband, Sid, and I heard the words we had long anticipated. a “Dad, Michele, Leslie and I

“The Jewish religion provides an exquisitely structured approach to mourning.”—Rabbi Maurice Lamm, The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning (Jonathan David Publishers). Everyone observing aveilut, the traditional