August 7, 2026 · 7:30 am

The telephone call I wish I could answer on Shabbat

by Steve Lipman (Forest Hills, NY)

I miss my mother’s telephone calls on Shabbat, which is an unusual statement for an Orthodox Jew to make. Talking on the phone, as any Torah-observant Jew knows, is forbidden on the Jewish day of rest, for a combination of halachic reasons. 

Ordinarily, I honor the Sabbath in the traditional way, not driving in a car, not using electronic devices, not writing, etc. And by praying our established tefillot, in shul, and, since Covid, largely at home, and by eschewing phone calls until a period of a few years that ended, unfortunately, a year ago.

Mom, in various assisted living and rehabilitation institutions in the Houston area, was aging rapidly, physically and mentally, as she passed the century mark, and calls from her on Shabbos kodesh became a reality.

I let Mom and my siblings know that if I saw one of their numbers on my cell phone’s caller I.D. on Shabbat, I would answer the call. I didn’t need to ask a rabbi for a psak about such an apparent violation of halacha; common sense dictated that honoring a parent (Dad had died two decades earlier) took precedence over any other consideration. 

Maybe Mom was having an emergency; maybe she needed to talk; maybe, in her fog of dementia, she had lost track of what day it was (though not shomeret Shabbat, she was always respectful of my observance, and would not try to reach me on Friday night or Saturday or on a chag). Maybe one of my sisters, in touch with Mom, had some need to speak with me.

In any case, if I saw that one of them was calling, I would pick up. Similarly, I faced this challenge of what to do or what not to do on Shabbos when I visited her a few times a year – in her apartment, or in a health care facility — and she would need me (support staff were not always available) to do a task I would ordinarily not do, like turn a light on or off, or get her some food from a refrigerator whose light was likely to go on.

I usually “erred” on the side of what would keep Mom comfortable, or not upset her. I trusted that G-d would understand. 

Jewish law and Jewish ethics were clearly on my side. Says Maimonides (Mishneh Torah, Sabbath 2:1):

“Where there is doubt whether or not the Sabbath laws must be violated on a [sick] person’s behalf, one should violate the Sabbath laws on his behalf, for the Sabbath laws are suspended even when there is merely a question of danger to a person’s life.”

When I went to a friend’s home for Shabbat, I would inform my hosts in advance of my policy so they would not be surprised in case they saw me on the phone between candle-lighting and Havdalah. No one objected or questioned my priorities. None of my friends, whose ages ranged from their 40s to their 70s, second-guessed me. Many of them had – or had had – elderly parents. My friends understood.

I always set the phone’s ringer loud enough that I would be able to hear it wherever I was. Not that I looked forward to a phone conversation on Shabbat … or to the reason, probably a matter of a health emergency, for Mom or a sibling calling me. But my conscience was clear. Usually, time permitting, I called Mom and my sisters before Shabbat to make sure that everyone was OK. Relieved, I knew it was less likely that my phone would ring within the next 25 hours or so.

Of course, if I saw that one of my family members was trying to reach me, I would be more alarmed. Had something happened? As Mom kept aging, things did happen. Falls. Ambulance trips to the ER. Other unpleasant events.

Fortunately, this happened infrequently. Mom and my sisters figured that whatever happened could wait until Saturday night or Sunday morning to inform me about it. Besides, I was several hours away by plane – what could I do, even if there was an emergency?

Not that my phone was always silent. Like most people in our in-touch age, I would often receive calls from sources worthy and unworthy – folks seeking my monetary donations, reminding me of the need for blood donations, trying to sell me insurance or offer me a loan. And so on. After a while, I began to recognize some of those callers’ phone numbers and area codes. Those calls, of course, I did not answer. Or acknowledge. Even during the week.

As for the calls I did answer on Shabbat or yom tov … not too many, thank G-d. Mom would call – not frequently – because she needed to talk. Because something had upset her; at her age, with her deteriorating mental condition, this could be predicted. Because she hadn’t looked at a calendar. Because she wasn’t aware of a holiday like Shavuot. Because …. the reason didn’t matter. If I recognized Mom’s phone number on my caller I.D., I spoke with her. I didn’t rush her. I didn’t necessarily remind her of the day’s sanctity; if I did, she would apologize for the call. Ditto if one of my siblings, very infrequently, called. Their psychological health, their need to share Mom’s condition with big brother, trumped all other considerations.

When the calls, always brief, ended, Mom and my siblings always felt better. I knew I did.

Mom died a year ago; her secular yahrzeit is on August 6. She was 104. In her last year or so, she became too weak, too hard of hearing, too confused, to use the phone. She didn’t answer when her phone rang and certainly didn’t make any calls. I knew then that I would not see her number on my caller I.D. when my phone rang on Shabbat.

And, of course, I haven’t seen her number during the last 12 months.

And I won’t again.

I miss seeing her number.

Steve Lipman was a staff writer for The New York Jewish Week from 1983 until 2020.



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August 3, 2026 · 7:30 am

Encounters with Yiddish: The Old in the New World

By Ronald H. Linden (Pittsburgh, PA)

Among the basic tools we carry with us in life are our personal language experiences; what we heard first as infants, conversations around the dinner table, the cacophony of our larger communities. If we pay attention and are good mimics, we can connect with people outside and inside our families and homes using the building blocks of these languages.

But language does more than allow our comprehension and expression; it marks us and links us to our past—to “the old country” and the old places. This is especially true if we were fortunate enough to have experienced an environment suffused with Yiddish, which Leo Rosten called “The language of the heart.” 

For most of us Yiddish flowed from our grandparents.  They brought this language with them from all over Europe and the Middle East.  But their intermediaries—our own parents—often walled us out of their conversations, preferring to keep an adults-only method of kibbitzing with the rest of the mishpochah.

Still, the expressive power of Yiddish could not really be contained; for example, when a bubbe held a grandchild’s face in her hands and gushed over a shayna punim.  Or when that same bubbe wondered why you were leaving so soon, “What, have you got shpilkes?” 

For my father and many of his generation, the first born here, Yiddish was their mama loshen. It was the language of mother and home certainly, but it was to be confined there as part of a fierce struggle to be as American as possible, to be part of the new–not the old–world. And he succeeded.

Yet the staying power of his Yiddish, relegated to a minor chord, never left him. I had the opportunity to see this close up in an ironic and surprising way.  Near the end of the Cold War my family and I were living in Munich, Germany as I had a position with Radio Free Europe. My parents came to visit. My father had fought in World War II and my mother had lost her first husband in the Battle of the Bulge. For these reasons and because they were Jews, a trip to Germany was not a casual undertaking.  My father demonstrably stomped the ground in Hitler’s favorite city to announce his—and our people’s–presence.

An outgoing person with Yiddish in his pocket, my father wanted to communicate with the Germans, but he was understandably hesitant.  Unexpectedly—and ironically–the opportunity came through a casual meeting with a policeman on the street. The officer’s youth, openness and interest in America pushed the right buttons. In response, and perhaps unexpectedly even to him, my father’s ancestral language rose to the surface. The distance between them closed. I could see his excitement grow in the exchange and for the first time in ages, I saw him use expressions and deploy the language’s natural rhythm. In this most unlikely of places he made a cross-generational, cross-cultural human connection. Yiddish made that possible. (As a bonus for me, learning German, I was now included.)

 I learned from this encounter that your mama loshen is always with you. I saw this even more vividly some years later with my wife’s grandmother, whom everyone called, of course, Bubbe.  As an orphan from a tiny shtetl in the Russian empire, she was matched to an older man, whose wife had died, and moved to western Ukraine. With her husband soon gone to America, she and her family of four children were engulfed by WWI, the Russian Revolution and Civil War. She survived by trading across fluid territories and borders, adding Russian and Polish to her native Yiddish.

When her moment came to flee with her family, she and thousands of Jews took up residence in the new state of Poland and soon after left for America. Still unable to read or write, she nevertheless learned English and embraced her new country with deep gratitude. More than her businessman husband, she plunged into American life; she shopped, went to the movies and travelled. The orphan girl from a village without electricity who once spoke only Yiddish watched a man land on the moon on American television in English.

Then the mama loshen, which had never really left her, returned. As she grew older, Bubbe began to converse more and more in Yiddish only.  Her physical infirmities grew but her brain remained sharp—it just reverted back to its earliest tools for communication.  Even when she thought she was speaking English, out came Yiddish.  By then we had gained enough understanding of Yiddish ourselves to be with her and never let on. We entered her world as she was leaving it. The power of Yiddish was displayed once again in the form of a precious gift: the chance to create in America a meaningful and sweet goodbye to the orphan girl from the shtetl.

Ronald H. Linden is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he directed the Center for European Studies and the Center for Russian and East European Studies. He served as Director of Research for Radio Free Europe in Munich, Germany during the extraordinary changes ending the Cold War in Europe. In addition to his scholarly publications and international commentary (see his professional profile here) Ron has authored essays on “The Night The Berlin Wall Came Down,”; “Changing the rules — in life as in baseball”; “Finding Boba Fett: The Pandemic Leaves a Gift,” “The New Pogroms.”

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July 27, 2026 · 7:30 am

A Kugel Story

by Hillary Powell (Brooklyn, NY)

We crowded into a small apartment in Brooklyn after my mother’s second cousin’s funeral. My maternal grandmother was one of six children and maternal grandfather one of five. In many ways this childhood memory blurred into others, of crowding into living rooms across the tri-state area for reunions and gatherings, often meeting cousins I never met before and never saw again. 

But this shiva (circa 1980) stood out. The mood was somber and Rose, my widowed second cousin, looked wrung out, her face gray, her eyes rimmed red. Then cousin Susan brought out an unusually delicious golden, sweet noodle kugel. I recall Rose grieving, processing her loss openly, “I am just so sad Richard didn’t get here in time to say goodbye to his father.” Yet with each bite of kugel, her eyes lit up. “Have you tasted this noodle kugel?” she asked the mourners. We all began to try the kugel, to discuss how extraordinary it was, finding a bit of joy on that sad day. 

Nearly half a century later, after the unimaginable events during the weekend of December 13th, 2025, it seemed necessary to bake and share the most comforting of Jewish comfort foods. Over this weekend, tragic events unfolded in less than 48 hours: shootings at Brown University and MIT; an antisemitic terrorist attack at a Chanukah celebration on Bondi Beach in Australia; and the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner, likely by their own son. All of these events rattled me, even as these acts of violence have become shockingly commonplace. 

This time, one event was too close for the numbness to settle in quickly as it often does after the initial news flash.  My niece is a sophomore at Brown and hid in her dorm closet during the shooting. My sister called me a few days later. After rushing to get my niece safely off campus and home, she finally broke down, her emotions bursting the dam she had built to stay strong for her daughter. I did my best to soothe, reassure, and focus on the unfathomable idea that my niece’s survival was some kind of good luck. 

I couldn’t do much to ease all this pain, but I needed to do something. “I’m making kugel!” I announced. My children, accustomed to my mom’s fluffy but raisin-filled kugel, had a request, “No raisins, please.” I wanted the kugel to be light and fluffy the way my mother makes it. But I was also determined to capture the power of that legendary kugel from so many years ago.

What made the kugel from my second cousin’s shiva extra delicious? Those details were murky. Was it a streusel topping? Was it something else? In any event, I thought a streusel topping would be a good sweet substitute for raisins.  

Searching online, I found a kugel recipe with a streusel topping, but the recipe called for cream cheese which I know my mom doesn’t use for her fluffy kugel, and it needed to be fluffy — a light-hearted, flexible, resilient kugel! I worried the cream cheese would make it too dense. I asked my mom for a recipe, but she said she bakes it from memory and changes it every time, which is exactly what a Jewish grandma would say. 

I found a recipe with the ingredients my mother uses—many eggs, sour cream and cottage cheese. I combined the streusel topping recipe with the fluffy kugel recipe, baked a sample kugel and assessed. I took that first bite and determined it was not the Platonic noodle kugel I had imagined. It didn’t quite match the memory I had of that perfect kugel from years ago. But I also began to recognize that perhaps this quest was quixotic. I was attempting to recreate a feeling as much as a flavor, and I decided this kugel was pretty delicious and close enough.

In the end, I baked four noodle kugels for four holiday events over two days, coping with the tragedies of the week, of the year, of this era. The whisk of the mixer made yolks disappear into a rich custard that then coated bouncy noodles. My spirits were buoyed momentarily as the sweet “incense” rose like a prayer, as the casseroles stopped trembling and finally set, transformed by a warm oven into a delicate but steady soufflé. I stacked them in the refrigerator, leaving no room for regular, everyday groceries. It was time to share them.

At one friend’s party, an Italian woman who had never tasted kugel asked the host, “What is this crack casserole?” People hovered over the last piece, and it was eventually divided up. Introducing a tradition to those unfamiliar with Jewish culture felt especially gratifying in this challenging moment for Jews. 

There were leftovers from the second party, and my friend brought them to her own cousin, who has a chronic illness and almost no appetite. But just as I recalled from years ago, the kugel was somehow restorative. It was the one food my friend’s cousin could enjoy and she requested the recipe so her caregiver could bake it the next day.

One kugel was for a Chanukah gathering with my sister’s family. I gave two servings each to my niece and my sister like it was medicine.

There are no comfort foods that can completely heal us all right now, that can bring back lives that have been lost and ease all our pain. A kugel is not magic; it cannot make cohesive what is fractured. But it is not nothing either to fill our homes with the scent of butter and cinnamon, watch brown sugar toppings caramelize and bubble, and share this decadent holiday treat with our loved ones, friends, and even strangers. Mixed together, eggs, soft cheese, butter, sour cream, sugar, salt, cinnamon, vanilla, and springy noodles bond gracefully and gently, becoming something better than each ingredient alone.

Hillary Powell works as a grant manager for Covenant House New Jersey, a nonprofit that serves youth experiencing homelessness. She is also a singer-songwriter. HIllary lives with her husband and two kids in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her website can be found at this link: https://www.hillarypowellmusic.com/. 

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July 20, 2026 · 7:30 am

Immigrants All

by Miriam Bassuk (Seattle, WA)

I come from wandering Jews,

merchants, lawyers, teachers,

grocery store owners.

I come from those who rode steerage

slept above deck in turbulent seas,

walked miles as young teens

to depart from Bremen, Germany

leaving all they knew

speaking Russian, Polish, Yiddish,

carrying only brass candlesticks

and a few coins.

Born from a mother

who labored long,

the only one in her family

to be born in a hospital.

All the others were born at home,

assisted by midwives.

I remember flowers, bloated

peonies on dining room wallpaper,

lilacs and lilies of the valley

gathered in large bouquets

to grace our table. I remember

my mother as a lion,

my champion at school.

When teachers were difficult,

she sang for me.

Sang sweet songs

in a kitchen, her haven,

spoke Yiddish to her father,

a frequent visitor. I remember

hot nights, looking out 

my bedroom window.

Scents of honeysuckle and roses,

haunting train whistle,

far in the distance.

How we might stray far from our roots,

escape the cloistered life

of segregated neighborhoods,

only to return, imprinted

on some cellular level

by those early risk takers.

Miriam Bassuk’s poems have appeared in Snapdragon, Borderless, 3 Elements Review, and The Jewish Writing Project. She was one of the featured poets in WA 129 project sponsored by Tod Marshall, the Washington State poet laureate. As an avid poet, she has been charting the journey of living in these uncertain times.

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July 13, 2026 · 5:30 am

The Proof is in the Pilaf

by Jahan Khan (Melbourne, Australia)

It’s sometime in Autumn, 2023, and I’m at Jeffery’s Bookshop, utterly moved to tears by a cookbook of all things. The shop attendant checks in on me, and I look at her and say, “My family had these recipes, just like these… I just wasn’t expecting to find them here.”  I then turned the book over to look at the hefty price tag of $65.  

“Oh, this is quite expensive,” I say with a sombre tone, moved by discovering one of my mum’s favorite recipes for pilaf, a Central Asian rice dish that is slow cooked in meat broth.  

She quickly responded “Well, yes, but! It looks like there’s a real connection for you here.” 

“Yeah alright… this is really special,” I say in a somewhat affirmative tone.  

The book was the 25th anniversary edition of the cookbook The Book of Jewish Food. The main title itself is quite ordinary, but what makes it stand out from any other Jewish cookbook is its subtitle: An Odyssey from Samarkand and Vilna to the Present Day. The author, Claudia Roden, is a Jew of Middle Eastern background, and what began as a project to document recipes of her own family and community morphed into an ambitious globe-trotting culinary adventure. She didn’t just capture the recipes, but she captured histories, stories, and traditions of lesser-known Jewish communities in the Diaspora, communities that have existed in the unlikeliest corners of the globe, everywhere from Africa to China.   

Of interest to me personally was the story of the Jews of India. The three Jewish communities of India each have their origin story, some even tracing their lineage back to biblical narratives. These stories, at times mythological in nature, were passed down like treasured inheritance. A more straightforward (and grounded) explanation, in terms of how Jews even made it to India and the multiple migrations in the centuries that followed, is quite simple: the Silk Road.

The Silk Road provided a connection to the world beyond and allowed the exchange of goods, knowledge, and innovations. Importantly, it gave people and communities an opportunity to carve out new homes and start over. For the Jewish people, this was the road they hoped would lead them to finding new homes and identities in a world that didn’t want them, or at best, tolerated their existence conditionally.  

Among them were the Jews living in Persia (i.e. Babylon) where significant Jewish expression, writing, and religious tradition emerged. The Jewish-Persian connection runs deep, from foundational biblical narratives to contemporary cultural norms and practices. Today this once rich legacy barely survives as a marginalized and persecuted minority in places like Tehran, but in the ancient world the Jews there were once a formidable presence. 

Long before the recent persecutions in Tehran, the experience of Jews walking on eggshells can be found in biblical accounts, most notably in the novella-style and almost theatrical story of Queen Esther. As attitudes towards Jews fluctuated like pharmaceutical stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, so too did the urgency of migrations out of Persia. These occurred several times during the 16-17th century, when Persian Jews travelled along the Silk Road and entered Northern India via Kashmir. The first time I heard any of this was as a child from my maternal grandfather. According to him and the traditions passed down to him from his forbearers, this was the community where we came from.  

My late maternal grandfather was the first source of my Jewish education. He knew everything from the people to the customs, and how it all traced to the present day, and he was quite dedicated to keeping these stories alive and would repeat them often with pride. Since his passing, his children distanced themselves from their connection to ancient Israel via Babylon, and this is largely due to political tensions and deep antisemitism which escalates to this day. It took me a long time to find the motivation, and I dare say courage, to write any of it down.  

Even though my family distanced themselves from the stories, the habits handed down from ancient times persist. Shortly after I was born, my mother had me circumcised at 16 days young (the Jewish custom is 8 days) where most other families in that region would wait until the boy was around 10 years of age. Then there was the food. Many of our recipes avoided mixing meat and dairy and even cautioned against shellfish. These could be coincidences, but to me it always felt like remnants of the people we once were, where customs had been passed down not as religious dogma but simply as family norms in a multi-generational game of Chinese Whispers.  

In my mother’s household it felt like it was pilaf all day, every day. As a child, my sisters and I would absolutely loathe this dish. Decades later as an adult I can appreciate it more, but it’s still not a meal I would go out of my way to eat. Still, the nostalgia is there, and the sheer frequency and tendency with which we consumed it in our household was unlike any other family, and so to find it featured so prominently in Claudia Roden’s book as a staple of Indian/Persian Jewish diet really brought the many fragmented pieces of my identity together. (In the same cookbook I discovered a hideous lentil rice dish that was often prepared in my home to remedy an upset stomach, and Roden’s book mentioned the exact same thing.) 

***

On August 17, 2024, I attended an event at Glen Eira Town Hall (Melbourne, Victoria) called Of Ghosts and Golems, an opening night gala to launch Melbourne Jewish Book Week. It was Marina Benjamin’s story (explored in her memoir The Last Days in Babylon) that moved me in a way I wasn’t prepared for.  

Marina Benjamin talked about her Iraqi Jewish family, and how it was difficult for her to connect with her Iraqi heritage for most of her life. There were certain mannerisms and behaviors in her family that troubled her during her childhood in London, and which made her feel less normal among her European Jewish peers. Speaking now with a deeper appreciation of her roots and context, she was able to come to terms with what it all meant even if it didn’t fully extinguish the hurt her inner child continues to carry.  

She spoke about her family’s tendency to downplay achievements and importance, which hit close to home for me, too. My family was much the same way with me, to the point where even to this day I carry this lingering wound of feeling invisible in most settings; to be my own harshest critic, and to downplay or outright hide my achievements. I still struggle to advocate for myself. It’s a deeply rooted conditioning from childhood, but as it turns out for both me and Marina, it was a deeply rooted custom going back generations… centuries even.  

Marina explained in her talk that these behaviors came from a superstition about the evil eye. For Jews living in the diaspora, especially those who were at the mercy of the fluctuating tolerances to their existence, the obsession with this evil eye was more about survival. To not be seen and heard meant they wouldn’t draw attention as a marginalized and persecuted minority. 

Hearing her expound all her trauma in its rich historical context, I thought to myself “Oh… so that’s why it was like that at home.” It felt like a moment of closure, a moment of validation, and the beginning of a long-overdue healing journey.  

I feel now like my Jewish story is still unfolding and yet, whenever I least expect it, I find new clues and evidence for all the fuzzy fragments. It is in these moments that the fog lifts a little and the compartmentalized memories become a tangible part of my Jewish identity. Advances in both historical research and DNA testing no doubt verified the journey of my ancestors, but it is my personal connection that feels more real than any cold piece of scientific fact. These were the stories that shaped my ancestors and the person I am today, driving my continued sense of wonder as I explore the world and the depths of my identity. True treasure is knowing who you are.

Jahan is a lecturer and writer. He has also been a video game critic for over 20 years. He loves to engage with the Melbourne Jewish community through cultural education and learning. You can learn more about Jahan by visiting his author website: https://virtuacritic.bearblog.dev 

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July 6, 2026 · 7:30 am

613 Bursting Seeds

by Lillian Farzan-Kashani (Santa Monica, CA)

Here I am

Watering the memories

Of reunions & separations

Love and grief

And surely all in between

While some have been able to exhale

Following October 8th

I fear it’s a facade

Tension lives here, still.

Some hostages freed, but horror flashes through me yet

On this walk, momentarily

I’m soothed by the sight of a pomegranate

Bursting with life above me

A living reminder of sacred potential. Multitudes of good.

And dare I say, of Peace

Soon, again, bewildered

I pass through olive branches

What an ironic symbol to bear

Knowing our neighbors are being terrorized

Amidst their ancient tradition of harvest

How is this OK?

How convenient for the self righteous ones on the hilltops to forget

Perhaps the most important out of the 613 seeds

We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. 

Far from it. They destroy themselves while tormenting others.

Time to overthrow.

Enough of the corrupt. The systemic injustice

Making a fool out of us.

Invest in the people on the ground

Return to tending to one another

Can you recall that far back?

My soul knows it’s true

We weren’t meant to live like this

Instead, we can invest in the land together

Holy, some say fruitful

An abundance, if we treat her right

In harmony

We can share the bounty, collectively contributing

We can come to rely on one another

Share the olives, the pomegranates

My mother had casually mentioned

Children are the fruit of love

And so we ought to protect

Even the smallest of seedlings

A whole universe therein

Writer by day and therapist by night–depending on the time zone–Lillian Farzan-Kashani is a bit of a digital nomad and much of her work as a poet is rooted in being a daughter of Iranian Jewish immigrants. Relatively new to all of this, her recent and forthcoming work can be found in Songs of the Earth by the LA Public Library (2024), Verse Virtual (July and November 2025), and Silver Birch Press (July and August 2025). Read more about her professional and creative pursuits at https://www.lillianfarzan.com/

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June 29, 2026 · 7:30 am

It’s Been My Experience

by Herbert Munshine (Great Neck, NY)


It’s been my experience 

that various congregations 

often feel they are the true Jews

and look down upon other divisions

of Judaism as not being holy enough. 

I find this disappointing, given 

the abundance of non-Jews

throughout history — Romans, 

Egyptians, Russians, and so many 

Europeans (from the Inquisition to 

the Holocaust) who have unjustifiably 

hated Jews of any and of all

denominations.

What I am saying is that

we have had enough enemies 

without attacking each other’s version

of our faith and the practices 

we share in our altered ways.

Why can’t we respect and cherish

each other’s version of Judaism 

instead of tearing it down

and learn to live with the varieties 

of Judaism, not just one?

Isn’t G-d’s synagogue large enough 

for all of us?

Herbert Munshine grew up in the Bronx and graduated from C.C.N.Y. with both a B.S. in Education and a Master’s Degree in English. You can find his baseball poetry on Baseball Bard where he has had more than 100 poems published, and where he was recently inducted into that site’s Hall of Fame. He lives with his wife in Great Neck, NY.

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June 22, 2026 · 7:30 am

The Pantheon of Brides and Grooms

by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)

On the marble and wood credenza I inherited

from my mother and Melray’s mid-century

modern furniture I’ve arranged an altar

of the wedding portraits of my ancestors: 

two sets of grandparents, one set 

of paternal grandparents. There are 

no existing photographs of the other grandparents—

either because they believed photography

would steal their souls or their images

drowned in vulnerable cardboard boxes

placed too close to the basement boiler.

One framed photo is of me, walking down

the aisle with my son at his wedding.

There is no wedding portrait of me.

Even in my mother’s dining room,

a gallery of wedding portraits 

of my sisters and their grooms,

mine was removed after the divorce,

subject to basement floods thereafter.

This curation at the altar reminds me

of where I came from, a reminder

of Yahrzeit candles to light

according to the dates I’ve registered

with HebCal, a reminder I’m alone

and yet not alone.

Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies (HGS) from Gratz College, where she teaches in the HGS graduate programs. The author of two poetry chapbooks and three novels in verse, her work has appeared in Jewish Literary Journal, Tiferet, Minyan, Jewishfiction.net, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She serves as Director, Mercer County (NJ) Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Education Center.

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June 15, 2026 · 7:30 am

Goodbye Again, Aunt Lens

by Elliot Zashin (Merrillville, IN)

In my 50s, I was still receiving birthday cards from my Aunt Lens, one of my father’s sisters. Like clockwork, I knew the card would arrive on time, and although I thought there might be some age when she would decide I was too old for birthday cards, that day never came. I realize now that in some way I was still the little boy she used to babysit or the preadolescent stamp collector who came to visit at her home and talk about stamps with my uncle, who was an expert amateur philatelist. So for her, I’d never be too old to get a birthday card.

I usually saw Aunt Lens (her self-adopted nickname for Lena) once a year in the summer, when I was in NYC to study at the Jewish Theological Seminary. My Uncle Bernard, who lived near Aunt Lens, picked her up and brought her to his home, giving me an opportunity to chat with both Aunt Lens and her sister, my Aunt Mollie. We always went to the same local Chinese restaurant and ordered the same dishes, leaving with the same doggie bags. We weren’t keeping kosher, but it was still a ritual observance.

Aunt Lens was always pleased to see me; never having had any children of her own, she had a special fondness for the daughters and sons of her five siblings. Aunt Lens was a short woman, a little on the plump side, but always neatly attired and coiffed. She had an alert manner but generally didn’t have a lot to say during these visits. In her later years, her life was probably rather routine and even monotonous, so she may not have felt inclined to expand on her daily doings. Twice widowed after being married to demanding husbands, she never had a chance to fulfill her own capabilities, which, I’d heard from my mother, were considerable. My father’s family was very traditional, very patriarchal, and whatever her youthful ambitions might have been, Aunt Lens had loyally fulfilled her role in the family.

Even as her health became more delicate, she never complained in my presence. I knew that my father’s sisters were very close, and throughout their adult years, they called each other every day. This was part of who they were and perhaps gave them a chance to vent a bit. The family didn’t believe in airing its problems openly. When Uncle Bernard called to say Aunt Lens had died, I felt that I should attend the funeral, but despite some pangs of conscience I let the inconvenience of making a quick trip to NYC be my excuse for staying home. The next summer when I visited with him and Aunt Mollie, he described the funeral:

Because Aunt Lens hadn’t been a member of a synagogue for many years, Uncle Bernard had recruited Rabbi Ploni (not his real name, but the term the Talmudists used to describe an anonymous rabbi) to conduct the burial service. He was one of the itinerant rabbis who could be found through the cemetery on short notice. Shortly before the graveside ceremony, my grieving relatives briefed him about who Aunt Lens was and why they loved her. Unbeknownst to them, Rabbi Ploni was juggling a number of services at the same time. Funerals didn’t necessarily occur evenly over the weeks and months, but these gigs were how Rabbi Ploni made his living; he couldn’t afford to pass one up just because scheduling was tight.

The little group of my two aunts, one uncle, and several nieces gathered near the open grave and waited for Rabbi Ploni to arrive. The usual graveside ceremony for a Jewish burial is a rather simple matter: a psalm or two, el mole rachamim, kaddish, and of course the eulogy. Jews are rather matter of fact about death and burial. We don’t make an elaborate ritual of returning “dust to dust.” My relatives weren’t expecting any surprises; they’d been through this before with other members of the family, and Rabbi Ploni seemed to know the drill. But soon after he began his eulogy, my relatives became confused; before long it dawned on them that he wasn’t speaking of Aunt Lens but of some other woman, expatiating on her many virtues. My uncle, as the only male and the arranger of the funeral, had to interrupt and get Rabbi Ploni back on track. The rabbi was very embarrassed and apologetic but managed, after some shuffling, to find the correct remarks, complete the eulogy, and bring the ceremony to a close.

As I mentioned, my father’s family didn’t believe in making a fuss publicly; my grandparents and my aunts and uncles believed in decorum, not chutzpah. Even if it meant swallowing some gall, you did it because it wasn’t right to make a scene and embarrass others or yourself. So my relatives stumbled away from the graveside after saying kaddish and dropping clods of earth on the coffin, mumbling to each other and feeling very humiliated. Even though only members of the immediate family were there and they hadn’t been embarrassed in front of friends and acquaintances—what a shanda. My oldest cousin was furious and demanded that my uncle not give Rabbi Ploni the usual honorarium, but Uncle Bernard didn’t think this proper, despite his own feeling that the rabbi had screwed up badly. After all, this was how the rabbi made his living; you couldn’t deny a man his living.

Hearing my uncle’s story, I felt rather guilty that I hadn’t attended; as the most knowledgeable Jew in my extended family, perhaps I might have done something to stop Rabbi Ploni before he got so far off or at least done something to assuage my relatives’ discomfort and salvage the memory they would have of this event. At the same time, however, I was amused because this tale of the misbegotten eulogy had the wry comic quality of a Sholom Aleichem or Y.L. Peretz story, particularly with its ironic edge: Aunt Lens, a loyal and dedicated daughter to her parents, a wife who catered to her two husbands, a loving sister to her siblings, and a fond aunt to all her nieces and nephews, hadn’t complained that her life had been unfulfilling; she’d done all that was asked of her and more. And yet, as she departed this world, she couldn’t even get a proper eulogy. Why not? Because Rabbi Ploni, an honorable man struggling to make a living helping Jews in mourning, had taken on too much that day and gotten his note cards mixed up in the press of a busy afternoon. Life can play such tricks on us.

Some months later, Uncle Bernard called to tell me it would soon be time for the unveiling at Aunt Lens’s grave. My uncle could now smile a little at the memory of the funeral, but he still wasn’t about to hire another rabbi; one humiliation was enough. Thus he wanted to know what the appropriate prayers and rituals were. My first response was to say that I’d call my own rabbi and get back to him, but then I realized I had a chance to do tshuvah. “Uncle Bernard, don’t trouble yourself. I’ll come to NY and officiate—even for a funeral you don’t really need a rabbi, and certainly not for this kind of ceremony.”

And so my relatives had a second chance to say goodbye to Aunt Lens. As we gathered at the gravesite, I explained the significance of the unveiling ceremony: that Jews returned almost a year later to the scene of the funeral in order to close the formal mourning period as a community. I read a few of the customary unveiling psalms. Instead of a formal eulogy, I spoke of my memories of Aunt Lens and related a couple of humorous anecdotes about babysitting me that she’d enjoyed telling and retelling over the years.

Then I invited my relatives to share their memories—mostly the happy ones—and they responded in kind, almost eagerly. Each had a story or reflection: what a loyal sister she’d been, the daily telephone conversations, her cheerful tone (even when life might not have been), her unusual sense of style and keen eye for detail, her missed career as an interior decorator because of her dedication to being the bookkeeper for the family business. From the younger generation came memories of the birthday cards she never failed to send, her pride in their accomplishments, and her presence at all the family simchas.

Once we’d exhausted, for the time being, the memories that would live on, we said kaddish and grew quiet. As we walked away from the newly placed headstone, I saw smiles on my family’s tear-streaked faces. Aunt Lens had finally gotten her eulogy, and now her memory could be a blessing for us all.

Elliot Zashin was a Hillel director for 13 years at 2 different campuses, after being an academic (political science) for almost 13 years (without tenure). While working for Hillel, he took an MA at the Jewish Theological Seminary during summer breaks.  (That is where he learned about the title Rabbi Ploni, and much else.)  He comes by his sense of Jewishness through his father, who was a self-taught Bible interpreter, leading sessions at the Jewish Home for the Aged in Tucson after he retired from a business in NYC, and who wrote a lot about current events, political issues, and essays usually imbued with Mosaic ethics.

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June 8, 2026 · 7:30 am

A Convenient God?

By Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

In times of trouble and surprise

people are apt to exclaim,

“Oh, God,” or “OMG”

to the heavens,

as if God is at their

personal beck and call.

I, being an agnostic Jew,

would like to believe, and

have often used the same expressions.

In a recent and regular cardiology

visit, I was told to immediately

get to the emergency room.

“Good thing you came in today.”

the doctor said. “You could have died

within weeks.”

““Oh my God!” I said, reflexively.

“Thank God,” I added, and was soon

implanted with a brand new pacemaker.

Now and for the immediate future

I can believe in God and (surgery)

and sing a psalm of gratitude

and hope to dwell in the house 

of the Lord forever and ever.

Mel Glenn, the author of twelve books for young adults, is working on a poetry book about the pandemic tentatively titled Pandemic, Poetry, and People. He has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years. You can find his most recent poems in the YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss. If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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