Category Archives: Personal Reflections

New Children’s Book About Women Who Changed the World Leaves Out the Jews – Tablet Magazine
— Read on www.tabletmag.com/scroll/262015/new-childrens-book-about-women-who-changed-the-world-leaves-out-the-jews

Ask Unorthodox: What’s the Perfect Jewish History Book? – Tablet Magazine
— Read on www.tabletmag.com/scroll/261542/we-put-together-the-ideal-reading-list

Life has definitely not been quiet for the last few months. I don’t think anything can really fully prepare you for what a life with a newborn/infant would be like. Or at least perhaps I didn’t have a whole lot of a clue of how consuming it would all be. Sure some people told me sleep would be hard to score, sure he would need attention a lot, but very few went into specifics and perhaps I didn’t really listen well anyway. Well I definitely did not get a good enough preparation for how physically difficult postpartum would be but that’s a different story.

Anyway, would it have made a difference if I spent more than cursory amount of time with newborns or infants when I was younger? Maybe but really probably not. For me, as for a lot of new parents, until you are personally in the saddle, the reality of the end of YOUR days (and I’m sorry but once you have a child, your life as you led it before is over) and the need to accept that and adapt, became a key to survival. I’m still working on accepting it. Sleep is still a struggle on some days, so is performance anxiety but at least physically I no longer feel like I got totally wrecked. And my son is adorable. I live for his smiles and laughter which he gives with what seems like much forethought( the giggles, not the smiles-smiles are very much abundant :)). He’s learning constantly and doing and touching and leaning and wanting to do things his little body hasn’t mastered yet. And I do manage to read that aren’t total mush too!

I guess we will be learning each other for a long time to come.

Yossi Klein Halevi’s ‘Letters to a Palestinian Neighbor’ may not reach its intended audience, but it may well have another closer to home
— Read on www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/261166/return-to-sender

The embedding of Jewish material into the Soviet animated children’s TV series “Cheburashka” by its Jewish creators calls into question the narrative that Jewish self-expression was wholly suppressed in Soviet popular culture.
— Read on www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/260892/cheburashka-soviet-animation

Bay Area pride! Love to see pieces related to where I happen to live!

National Poetry Month: ‘Contraptions’ at Bay Area’s Contemporary Jewish Museum
— Read on www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/260192/jewish-contraptions

Is Israel an Apartheid State? One South African’s Encounter. – Tablet Magazine
— Read on www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/190413/my-parents-israel-my-apartheid

The Children’s Book That Introduced Young Americans to the Young Jewish State
— Read on www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/259996/habibis-adventures-in-the-land-of-israel

Helen Maryles Shankman Questions Whether Her Stories Trivialize the Holocaust
— Read on www.jewishbookcouncil.org/_blog/The_ProsenPeople/post/trivializing-the-holocaust/

Long-lost Yiddish songs from Soviet era shed light on under documented history of Holocaust and lost Jewish culture.
— Read on abcnews.go.com/International/long-lost-yiddish-songs-hand-stories-soviet-jews/story