Guest Bloggers

Tonight marks the beginning of Yom Hashoah - Holocaust Remembrance Day. This year's central theme - "My Brother’s Keeper - Jewish Solidarity during the Holocaust" - draws attention to the emotional and physical care Jews offered one another during the Holocaust. Individuals brought strangers into their homes, established communal kitchens, education and welfare organizations and much more out of fraternal solidarity towards their fellow Jews in the face of starvation and persecution.

My friends think I’m obsessed with the Holocaust. My husband claims that I can’t have breakfast without talking about it. They are all exaggerating of course, but the truth is not far away: the Holocaust is a crucial part of my identity as a person and as a Jew. I am the grandchild of four survivors. My father was born in the summer of 1942 in a tiny town in the northwest corner of the Ukraine. You can imagine it didn’t go well from there.

My Recipe for a Stress-Free, Fun-Filled Seder Night

Grandparents, what are you doing for this year's Seder? Are you getting out the fine crystal used only once a year? Same for the bone china. Perhaps you're worrying – or hopefully smiling – about the new wine stains that will adorn your tablecloth and Hagaddah?

Naming children seems to be an art that is balanced on a shaky tightrope strung between tradition and prevailing practice.

Some several years ago when I was born, a few years before the middle of the last century in fact, they gave me a name; and in those early years, I assumed that the name they gave me was the name by which I would always be known. My parents called me by that name -- and my teachers and my friends and my parents' friends and the men in shul on Shabbat. I had a name and that was who I was.

So there seems to be some sort of change coming over me now that my daughter is here (and over a week old). You know how when you’re watching or reading something and a woman is doing or saying something objectionable, and then someone who is with you (usually someone older) says, “Ugh…just think, that’s someone’s daughter.” Or they say, “Wow, she has parents. What do they think of this??” It could even go, “Doesn’t she have kids that are going to Google her someday? How could she do this???”

By: Akiva Fleischmann

So I am writing this first-ever inaugural blog while I’m waiting for the iMovie video that I’m making to finish exporting. It is the second of three films that I will hopefully finish by week’s end. Besides that, I have tests to make, papers to grade, worksheets to create, and I’m gonna try to make a basketball game later tonight. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention – I have a 4-day-old daughter.

by Kally Kislowicz

After being blessed with 3 boys (and by blessed I mean besieged), we finally welcomed a baby girl into our family a little more than a year ago. After boy #3 was born, I made my peace with being a boy family. Save the times when I walked wistfully by the baby girls’ section in Target, I was quite content with the number of Y chromosomes in our home.

by Kally Kislowicz

I am happy to report that this summer worked out really well. I had some kids in day camp and some at home with me, and there were times when I actually believed that each child was getting exactly what he/she needed.

by Shefa Weinstein

A gift from the past received in the present.

How does an American parent keep Israel alive for her kids? Natalie Blitt blogs for us on Yom HaAtzmaut.

One mother's reflections on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Our guest blogger, Yael Ribner, writes about finding fragments of memory.

Our guest blogger, Shuey Fogel, talks about leading by example.