Book Club: My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy Andrea Askowitz has the best life in the world.  She's pregnant and healthy.  She has friends and family who love her.  She has money and meaningful work.  And all she can do is obsess about the one thing she doesn't have: Kate, her ... [Read more]

Circumcision is Somewhere Between Ear Piercing and Foot Binding I just finished Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See.  Someone in my book club last night said it was the only book in the past year that our entire book club enjoyed.  I nodded with the rest of ‘em.  I don’t know if anyone else ... [Read more]

Another Israeli Masculinity There’s this guy you keep seeing around. He favors muscle shirts and cut-offs, even when it’s chilly out. When he walks, he has a way of putting his weight on the balls of his feet, like he’s looking for something to pounce on. Sometimes, ... [Read more]

Rosh HaShanah Etiquette Tips from a WASPy Southern Belle? Look what I discovered in my quest to find cool Rosh HaShanah cards.  The "New Year Girl" collection from tastemaking stationary designer Bonnie Marcus (formerly a wedding planner and special events coordinator at the 92nd Street Y, ... [Read more]

The Heretic: Going Colorblind in a Jewish Nursing Home I caught early chunks of Obama’s acceptance speech at the gym of my local JCC. Not surprisingly, the crowd that night was heavily Republican, and there were mutterings of concern: Is Obama truly committed to Israel? Is Obama too soft on ... [Read more]

POEM: Secret Places of the Stairs Telling secrets in the secret places of the stairs: Fingertips, like lighted candles, reaching out, from the dark (O my dove, thou art in the secret places of the stairs) ... [Read more]

Sarah Palin: Anti-Abortion, Anti-Environment, and. . . Anti-Semite? My future father-in-law, Mike, and I have gotten in the habit of using election fodder to playfully taunt each other over email. I'm for Obama and he's for McCain.  I get the crazy email forwards that make the rounds of the circuit I like ... [Read more]

What’s in a Name? (When You're Naming a Baby of Mixed Culture and Religion?) Victoria has six post-it notes hanging above her desk:  Mateo, Nicolas, Tomas, Alejandro, Santiago, and Simon.  I have one:  Nikolai.   I love the name Nikolai.  This morning, I woke up thinking:  We can call our boy Niko.   When I ... [Read more]

Think Globally, Act: Turning Garbage into Gardens As I traversed the country last week, a few things became quite evident about middle America: The plain states love Jesus, hate any meal not smothered in bacon, and despite the thousands of wind turbines that have gone up in the past few ... [Read more]

How To: Compost Looking for a way to reduce the amount of your life that ends up in a landfill?  Composting is one of the easiest and most tangible ways to reduce your environmental footprint.  And if that’s not enough motivation, you’ll also decrease ... [Read more]

Priestly Idea (Did You Know Anyone Can Perform a Baptism?) I said, “Hey, why don’t we get Tuffi to do our baptism?” “She’s not Catholic,” Victoria said. I said, “I know, but I think of her as totally priestly.”   Tuffi, formerly known as Stephanie, but renamed Tuffi by Tashi ... [Read more]

A Personal History of Jewish Reading   Were someone to ask me what I do for a living, I'd respond: I'm a reader. Yet, I write books (maybe I write too many books), and by profession and sustenance, I'm a writer: I create stories, I reflect on ideas political and ... [Read more]

The New Jew Canon: Sefer Ha-Aggadah, Open Closed Open, At the Root of this LongingThe New Jew Canon is a long-term project that seeks to canonize essential Jewish (and some Non-Jewish) reads as recommended by extraordinary rabbis, experts, and cultural leaders. Suggestions are welcome via comments or ... [Read more]

Let’s Have a Baptism/Bris We know for sure we’re having a boy.  Got the amnio results.  All is good news, even the news that it’s a boy.  I mean right?  We already have a girl, and a boy and a girl is every mom’s dream.  And boys love their mommies.  ... [Read more]

War is AssurCommonly, the laws of war in Judaism are understood through the categories of milchemet mitzvah (commanded or holy war) and milchemet r'shut (optional war). These two categories-supplemented at times by the category of milchemet hovah (obligatory ... [Read more]

What's the Difference Between an American Life and an Ultra-Orthodox One? Joel Teitelbaum, the Rebbe of Satmar and the most coercive of all modern day ultra-Orthodox leaders, passed away 29 years ago this month.  A vociferous anti-Zionist, Teitelbaum is known for having exhorted his followers to stay in ... [Read more]

The Protocols: How the Jews of Europe Became Mascots and Souvenirs Hello Semites and anti-Semites! (Is that like matter and antimatter? Kind of, except instead of totally and mutually annihilating each other they seem to have maintained an antagonistic, yet symbiotic relationship for centuries, deathless ... [Read more]

Žižek For Jews Slavoj Žižek declares in his latest opus, In Defense of Lost Causes (Verso), that while postmodernism has caused (or allowed) every other kind of racial, social, and cultural identity to be in flux, Jewish identity appears to have become fixed ... [Read more]

Is Alejandro Springall the Mexican Woody Allen? Mexican director Alejandro Springall describes My Mexican Shivah as a film "about existence" and "acquiring the tools to continue living and re-organizing the family after a loss." While it does deal with such serious ... [Read more]

Putting a Face on IranI played basketball with my Iranian next-door neighbors lots of summer nights when I was growing up. The smallest one – Hafez – stood about 4’6”. He embarrassed us all over the court with moves that made the basketball--which was about as ... [Read more]