Prayer

I try to get back to that place within in me that still reaches unceasingly for meaning. I can't get back. As I kiss my children good bye by the door, the glare of the morning sun is sharp and unforgiving. I want to climb, to run, to inspire. But the heav...

I can’t forget Reb Meir Levitt, the oldest member of our minyan in the 1990s. He was a survivor of Auschwitz, his life spared not only because he worked as a tailor, but through many open miracles which he would recount in awe. As he aged, his memory reac...

For most of my life, I never saw crying as an expected, positive, and even necessary part of life—not to mention something one would ever do in front of other people. I always thought crying was, well, shameful. At best, a sign of weakness and deficiency;...

There comes a time in a religious woman’s experience when you do things by rote, and everything numbs over.

After waiting for what seems like an eternity, his wife places a plate before him. He takes a look, and all he sees is a hard-boiled egg and a potato!

The few brief words I say out loud into the air, I hope are going to be heard by the Cosmic Source of the Universe. And I'm hearing them. So that makes, at least, kind of two of us. But I also am coming to believe that prayers, like a butterfly's flutteri...

"G‑d, I am sorry," Yussie began. "I want to go inside to pray, but I haven't eaten anything for a day and a half, and I am afraid I will pass out and embarrass myself. So, please, G‑d, would you mind hearing Yussie's forgiveness prayer out here?"

Another violent blow landed on my other cheek. “You are still praying?” the Blockelteste asked. Her face was crimson, contorted from fury, her eyes bloodshot. A sudden Jewish pride arose within me, like a pillar of smoke rising from a chimney . . .

Happily contemplating the way our family was now growing on the fast track, I didn't honestly consider the second ultrasound as anything more than a technicality...

Dan told me that in recent days, as images of the 9-11 attacks appeared on television again and again with the approach of the anniversary, Sasha had become even more depressed, to the point that he was suicidal.