Category: non-fiction

1. The Birth of Auto-antisemitism       The psychology of a Jew hostile to his people was described in the early twentieth century by the psychologist […]

One doesn’t always know when one meets a genius. Then, I thought he was a slacker. He had been assigned with the rest of us […]

The abbreviation GULAG stands for Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps. The GULAG is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union.       […]

Seven years ago, I stood in biting wind at the edge of an empty field in rural Lithuania, feeling defeated. The field was not actually […]

  The decision has been made. We will make aliyah and join our children in Israel. It’s 1947; it’s time. Yes, it’s a pity that we are […]

  North Shore, Oahu Winter waves thunder against a quiet landscape. Clash and combine, an angry swirl of blues lifting up and crashing down, and […]

Episode I: Summer, 1999…… It is a hopeful time in the Middle East. A new Israeli Prime Minister has promised to make peace between longtime […]

  ‘What soap is for the body, tears are for the soul.’                                       Yiddish Proverb   The new direction of the train woke me. Vertical. I looked out […]

In 1995 I visited my cousin Vera in a London hospital, which struck me as a pleasant and welcoming place, despite it being a hospital, […]

Several children at the John D. Runkle Elementary School in Brookline, Massachusetts in the 1950s used to make fun of our classmate Claire. Her eyes […]

1. Orphan Long Island, 1998 During the summer of 1998, two major things happened that shaped my decision to find grandparents for Rachel:  during that summer […]

Don’t be a JAP. That was the clear message I had been given my entire childhood. It seemed like the most important thing NOT to […]

   “I don’t understand why, why they meekly went to their deaths!”           These words surfaced in my memory for the first time recently, five years […]

The Origin Story of Death – Chapter 7 After my daughter died, people asked whether I had received any signs from her. I initially was […]

  For the past few years, I have been leading a memoir workshop via Zoom for 12 daughters of Holocaust survivors in the DC area […]

“I’m afraid to wear this,” I told my fiancé. We were emptying Christmas stockings, and Matt had given me a delicate Jewish star.              “That’s fucked […]