There is a teaching in Masechet Brachot: Five things in this world are one-sixtieth something else. Fire is one-sixtieth Gehenna; honey...

My siblings and I were raised on more practical things than most children. We learned to play hooky, and speak to spirits, and avoid...

My grandma couldn’t keep a secret to literally save her life. “I’m Jewish,” she told the soldiers at the gate one day. “But I’m not supposed

I hadn’t intended to volunteer at the rally. The last time I went to one of these, it was a largescale federation that put it together....

This is a different kind of prayer. A wandering the city at night because it’s raining prayer. I can stay out here as long as I want and...

I have a dollhouse. My father built it for my sister and me when we were just little girls, but we added on to it through adolescence....

October’s festival was boring, so I left. It ended outside an old storefront. One I hadn’t set foot in since the festival this time last...

I jest that I learned to fight from a whole team of martial arts masters, at least a dozen. And it's not untrue. But at the heart and...

I was 31 years old when I learned I have a pretty smile. Beautiful tapestry, if I pull the right threads it’ll all unravel. And it’s...

These are the holiest days of the year. I don’t know how. I don’t know how to talk to G-d this way. We’re close, he and I. We share...

I think they call these eulogies. I’m not certain. He wanted to be a cowboy. A ranch, six horses. He taught me to ride, way back in...

My mother loves us in a way that defies this world. -- I glimpsed the woman’s face from the far side of the curtain, wisps of gray hair...

Once upon a time, I made you a promise. One day, we’ll look back on everything we’re doing now and wonder how the hell we did it. I was...

I plant mint in the courtyard. Ivy along the fence, though my mother would insist it should be lavender. I even pull weeds, every once in...

“Don’t cry,” my mother tells me. I am in first grade, with a pretty knapsack and a lunch she packed me, and first grade always made me...

I'm still searching for the ones who believe living feels like fire, Too busy saving the world to fold laundry A fucking hero complex...

I stepped into my father’s shop. “Are you Steve’s daughter?” I don’t remember the last time someone asked me that, if I was my father’s...

Are you prepared for Rosh Hashanah this year? Less than I ever was. This year I stand before you in the throes of everything I did not...

I’m sitting in the windowsill because this tastes like travel coffee, like the kind I used to drink right out on the fire escape of those...

I never believed in writing letters to dead rabbis. Didn’t need another man to pray on my behalf. Well, I’ll write him a hundred letters....