Category Archives: history

April 27, 2026 · 7:30 am

A final flower for Shabbat

by Steve Lipman (Forest Hills, NY)

$8.66.

That’s how much a single long-stemmed rose cost me in May at a florist’s shop in the Houston suburb where my mother had lived in a skilled nursing home for a few weeks. She was undergoing rehabilitation to strengthen her for a return to the assisted living facility where she had lived for more than a year.

I bought the flower on a Friday morning in May on the way to visit Mom. I was in Texas for a few weeks while my sister — a Sandwich Generation Baby Boomer who ordinarily took care of Mom’s affairs, while playing an active role in the lives of her adult daughters — was spending a week out of the country with a vacationing daughter.

I was covering for my sister, driving to visit Mom every day, besides Shabbat.

That erev Shabbos I stopped at the florist’s to keep up a long-standing tradition. When earlier visiting my folks in Buffalo (Dad was alive until 2005), and when visiting Mom since she had moved to the Houston area (she settled there the year after Dad died), I always bought her a bouquet for Shabbat. Or for yom tov, if I visited on a chag. Whether she was in her own apartment, or subsequently in assisted living.

She always appreciated the flowers.

Would she this time?

At 104, she was rapidly declining – physically, mentally and emotionally. She recently had been officially diagnosed with the onset of dementia. Though the diagnosis only confirmed the obvious.

Her energy and acuity diminishing, she often spent a day – or most of it – in bed, hardly eating, which further weakened her.

Nevertheless, I brought flowers for Shabbat. That was my mitzvah, my tradition. No one else in the family had done it on a regular basis.

Mom, while not an Orthodox Jew by any means, found the flowers a reminder of the frum home of immigrants from Eastern Europe in which she had grown up.

By the time I spent in Texas recently, it was questionable how much she remembered.

Over the years, each bouquet was different – depending on the weather or time of year, the imminence of any Jewish or secular holiday, my mood or Mom’s mood, my budget or other conditions. Different smells, different colors, different arrangements. One bouquet from a Buffalo-area supermarket one year, for a reason that neither Mom nor I understood, featured an artichoke amidst the blooms; the artichoke did not add to our aesthetic or dietary enjoyment.

Mom would happily display the flowers each time in a vase on the living room table, where she hosted a Shabbat meal for me and some family guests, or somewhere else in the room easily within sight.

At the Texas Friday in May, I had considered not getting Mom any flowers. What’s the point? Would she notice?

In the nursing home, after a recent hospitalization, she was barely conscious, hardly spoke to anyone on the staff or to visitors when she was surprisingly awake, rarely opened her eyes, would mostly mumble a few words. She might not appreciate – or recognize – flowers.

But I decided to get some, to honor Mom and to honor Shabbat.

This might be my last chance, I thought.

I drove to the florist shop on a state highway near my sister’s home.

No full bouquet this time; Mom didn’t have a vase in her room. A single flower, a reminder of Shabbos kodesh, would suffice; a wrapped flower I could leave with Mom.

What sort of flower? I had no preference. Maybe an orchid or a lily. For sure, an actual flower, not an artificial one – as a symbol of life, of hope.

A middle-aged saleswoman behind the counter, sporting a Houston Texans football team T-shirt, invited me to look around. She pointed to groups of flowers on vases scattered around the front of the store and in a refrigerator. The shop was not large, but the variety of flowers was.

“We have more in the back,” she said, directing me to a room where other employees were at work picking and snipping a rainbow’s worth of blooms. I walked into the back room and looked around. A vaseful of tall pink-and-white roses – the pink was clearly introduced by dye via capillaries into the originally white flowers — caught my eye.

That was my choice.

What woman doesn’t like a rose?

“I’ll take one of those.”

One of the workers cut the stem into about a foot’s length, added some greens and baby’s breath, connected them to a small vial of water that kept it all hydrated, covered it with some light green wrapping paper, and handed it to me.

$8.66.

A lot of money for a single flower.

I rarely depend on gematria for writing the divrei Torah that have dominated a significant chunk of my time since my full-time job ended in 2020. But one numerical equivalence seemed appropriate – one gematria of 866 is c’ahavat ha’mishpacha – “as the love of the family.”

My sentiments, exactly.

I laid the flower on the passenger’s seat of Mom’s car, and set off on the 25-minute drive to her nursing home.

In her room, Mom appeared to be asleep.

“Good morning, Mom,” I said loudly. 

She didn’t stir.

I repeated my greeting.

“Huh?”

“Today is Friday, and tonight is Shabbos. I brought you a flower.”

“Good.”

“Open your eyes!”

Mom opened her eyes.

I held the modest Shabbat gift in front of her.

“Oh, beautiful.”

Then she closed her eyes again.

I put the flower across the top of a small bedside dresser, so Mom could see it if she turned her head.

At least she, and any aides who entered her room – none of them Jewish – would know that Judaism’s holy Day of Rest was making an appearance.

After a while, I took Mom, helped by an aide into her wheelchair, outside for a while for some fresh air. Then it was lunch time. An aide in the dining hall would feed Mom her meal.

I wished Mom a “Good Shabbos!” and kissed the top of her head, took a final long look at her, and headed back to my sister’s house.

It was the last flower I bought for Mom for Shabbat.

Since the first week in August, three months after I brought the flower, Mom has rested in Houston’s National Cemetery, in a plot where Jewish mesora dictates that flowers are not appropriate.

$8.66 was a good investment.

I thought: $8.66 is expensive for one flower. But it’s a cheap price for a memory.

____

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

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April 20, 2026 · 7:30 am

How My Father Shaped My Jewishness

By Herbert Munshine (Great Neck, NY)

My father never called me by what I call

my American name.

I was never Herbert, Herbie, Herb or even,

as a Scottish fellow teacher used to call me

during my time in West Africa for the Peace Corps,

Bertie. To my dad, I was always a very guttural “Chaim.”

I never questioned his choice.

(A Herb by any other name….)

To my teachers, my friends, my sisters,

I was Herb or Herbie but to my dad, I was consistently

Chaim. It was good and even comforting to be addressed

that way by him. In mature retrospection, I realize that

his use of the Hebrew name gave me my Jewish identity.

It’s as if he used the name to remind me of who I am:

a Jewish male, a descendant of a proud people,

a member of a not-so-massive group who love peace,

education, community, ambition;

a never-ending congregation whose members

represent the sacred holiness of life —

even in the face of constant enmity.

All this emanated from a name that has always

carried with it a truly deep meaning in the simple

yet complex translation: “Life!” In my final maturity,

as I reflect, even against my will,

I occasionally stumble onto wisdom

and realize the gentle options which

he offered up to me: Temple Emanuel visits

for major holidays, after-school Hebrew culture classes,

public school Hebrew language classes

(I won the Golden Ayin and was President

of the Hebrew Culture Club), two agonizing visits to

Jewish cemeteries. Even in the presence of death, I —

Chaim (my soul hears echoes of my father’s voice

together with a whisper of assurance from my mother) —

even in the midst of humbly resting Jewish souls

gone from one kind of community to

a much more peaceful one —

I am my father’s Chaim.

I am my lifetime definition

of a Jewish life!

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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April 12, 2026 · 7:30 am

Where the train tracks end

by Janice Alper (San Diego, CA)

I walk in silence along grass covered train tracks
with teenagers, Holocaust survivors, chaperones.
We are a sea of blue. Our jackets boast
MARCH OF THE LIVING. Butterflies flutter
onto wildflowers, birds chirp in sparse trees.
We shade our eyes from bright sunlight, stare
at the expanse of 17,000 stone markers with
names of towns and villages no longer in existence.
Two teens help me on my fruitless quest to find
my great-great grandparents’ birthplace. We rest,
sit on the ground, our backs against the smooth
stones, close our eyes. For a moment we are
joined with those who are gone.

At dusk, young lovers stroll hand in hand,
in the shadow of a new moon, hug,
make love, ignore the ghosts of Treblinka.

Janice Alper writes poems, personal essays, and memoirs. Her work has appeared in the San Diego Poetry Annual, Bristlecone, and California Bards, and other places. She is the author of Sitting on the Stoop: A Girl Grows in Brooklyn, 1944-1957. Janice is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry, from San Diego State University. Follow her at www.janicesjottings1.com

Editor’s Note: “Where the train tracks end” originally appeared on OftheBook (https://ofthebookpress.com) and is reprinted here with permission of the author.

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March 30, 2026 · 7:30 am

Our Brooklyn Seder Table

by Sherri Blum (Wading River, NY)

My parents were both born in Brooklyn. They each came from strong Jewish families, and because my parents took lots of home movies I was able to get a glimpse into their past. On these 8mm tapes I watched scenes from my parents’ wedding, which showcased their one-bedroom apartment, and, in addition, scenes of family Passover Seders. 

All the relatives were dressed up for the occasion. Men in their suits, ties and hats; women in their finest dresses adorned with broaches and pearls. The movies were silent so I had to interpret their facial expressions as I watched people laughing and kids running around. There was plenty of smiling and waving at the camera. I could almost read their lips as they read the Haggadah and sang “Dayenu,” which brought a warm and loving feeling that made me feel connected to those who have passed on.

The seders that I personally remember took place ten years after the time when I watched the older videos. My relatives on my father’s side would gather at my grandparents’ apartment in Brooklyn. This included my father’s two brothers, their wives and kids (my cousins!). The building was built during World War Two. When you walked in the front door of the apartment building, you needed to be “buzzed” in. 

Dressed in my fanciest dress and patent leather Mary Janes, I arrived with my parents and my two older brothers at my grandparents’ Brooklyn apartment and felt transported back to the 1930’s as I entered what felt like a large ballroom. I was immediately struck by the sight of the black-and-white Art Deco tiled floor, the cement walls, and the high ceilings. 

The best part of walking into the lobby was the old elevator. There was an older African-American gentleman, small in stature with a kind face and a gentle voice named Bill, who would open the elevator door and allow us to pile in. The elevator door had a small, diamond-shaped window. If I stood on my tippy toes, I could see the elevator climbing past each floor. It was the start of an exciting evening for me. The thought of seeing all my cousins, the laughter, the matzoh balls, my uncles singing off key—it was all about to begin!

Dinner was always delicious and thankfully predictable. You’d find my grandmother dressed in a housecoat with an older Russian woman who she’d pay for the night to help clean. The woman never spoke to us. She stayed by the sink and continuously washed dishes, silverware, and pots and pans. We tried talking to her, but I don’t think she spoke much English. She would nod and smile. 

The apartment was small, but a perfect size for my grandparents. The kitchen came complete with a white enamel Hoosier cabinet and a very small round table with four small wooden chairs. The living room was right off the kitchen. My grandmother had her couches covered in plastic. There was a black piano that took up a good part of the room. Oddly enough, neither one of them played.

For Passover, the living room was set up with multiple folding tables lined up next to one another. The tables were adorned with my grandmother’s vintage white tablecloths, which were mildly stained with grape juice and wine from past Seders. Of course, the kid’s table came complete with wine glasses filled with Welch’s grape juice. We weren’t old enough for the Manischewitz just yet. But, boy, we felt so grown up with our “real” glasses. The table was set with matching place settings using my grandmother’s white and gold china. Unfortunately, there were not enough matching wine glasses, but that was ok. We made do.

Upon entering the apartment, you’d find a delicious platter of chopped liver and crackers to help tide you over until the start of the Seder. Stacked next to the platter was a pile of Haggadot for everyone to take for the readings. In addition, my grandmother’s matzah cover was proudly displayed, and, after the day was over, would be carefully and reverently stored until next year.

The kitchen was very small and full of the smells of the Passover dinner, and, like a clown car at the circus, people would pile in one-by-one to take their turn sampling Grandmother’s famous matzo balls, which sat in a large stock pot filled with broth and an endless supply of matzo balls, while she stood off in a small corner of the kitchen, lovingly and proudly watching her family enjoy all the hard work she’d put in. She had cooked for weeks before the holiday and froze whatever she could to save time.

The Mah Nishtanah served as a way to engage all of us, both adults and kids. Although it was my father and my uncles who would do the singing, the tradition of asking the questions was given to the kids who were old enough to read. To this day, I remember the pride I felt when my brother would answer the question “Why is this night different than all other nights?” And although I was very young at the time, I can still feel the weight of the answer.  I knew there was something very special in being a young Jewish girl and being a part of a group of people who endured hardships and triumphs. It was a humbling experience.

During dinner, I felt so grown up “sipping my wine,” but the traditions during the Seder were a lot of fun, too, because they only happened once a year. The small china plates, which had two pieces of gefilte fish, would be passed around and, of course, there were the two traditional bottles of Gold’s horseradish. (I would always choose the red one.) From a kid’s perspective, the first part of the Seder may have taken a while but doing it each year instilled the lesson of patience. 

Towards the end of the seder meal, my grandfather would play a game with us kids called “find the matzoh.” If you won, you’d get a $5.00 bill. I knew where it was every year because he would hide it in the same place. The piano bench! I’m not sure if that was him forgetting or if I was his favorite and he wanted me to win. 

After eating my share of chocolate matzoh and macaroons, it was time for the kids to have fun! As younger children, after dinner, we would congregate outside of the apartment in the hallway and run up and down the stairs. 

Thanks to the holiday, I got to see my cousins every year without fail. Ordinarily, I would see my cousins at a family party, but it was only a few times a year at most, so seeing them was very exciting. 

It’s so funny looking back, how an old hallway and a bunch of kids provided memories that I would forever remember with so much fondness.

Sherri Blum lives in Wading River, NY and enjoys writing, antiquing, baking and animal rescue volunteering.

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March 27, 2026 · 7:30 am

My turn to host the seder

by Catherine Durkin Robinson (Chicago, IL)

I had one chance to get this right. 

I was in my 30s, a relatively new mom, and had been lobbying – for years – to host my own Passover seder. We usually went to my mother-in-law’s house for the holiday. And she wasn’t interested in giving that up. Looking back, I don’t blame her. Historically, Passover had always been her day to shine. My mother-in-law’s brisket was legendary. Her matzo ball soup cured whatever ailed us. Her chopped liver and gefilte fish were…edible. 

For some reason, I thought it might be my turn. I don’t remember why she finally agreed. Nothing in our history together indicated that this was a good idea. 

I was a convert who liked to tell her, a woman who was Jewish before I was born, why she should have a Kosher home. We didn’t think about food in the same way. Early on, after we were first married, my husband and I lived several states away. I came home to visit, and my mother-in-law gave me about twenty blintzes. She made ricotta cheese blintzes for my Irish Catholic family, explained which ones they were in a pile of similarly-looking crepes, and which ones were potato blintzes, my husband’s favorites, to bring back to him. 

I didn’t pay attention and goofed it all up. After I got back home, I realized I had left the potato blintzes with my family and took back the cheese ones. 

My non-Jewish friends didn’t understand, but blintzes are a big deal, and my mother-in-law was angry about it. The poor woman didn’t ask for much, and I can appreciate that now as my own children routinely mistake my latkes for knishes.

But at that point, I wasn’t domestically inclined and couldn’t cook. Passover further complicated matters because I couldn’t use any of my tried and true ingredients – like pasta or bread. I was also a vegetarian and raising my twin sons as vegetarians. 

I had no business in this game.

But my husband and mother-in-law had put their faith in me. So I rolled up my sleeves and promised that Passover 2006 would be one for the record books. 

Mistake #1: I found recipes online under “Vegan Jews Unite.” In my defense, they looked good. We were living in a more rural area of Florida at the time, so I had to travel about twenty miles to find grocers who knew what “kosher for Passover” was, but I did it. I found every ingredient, including Matzo Meal, which my mother-in-law swore was a myth.

Mistake #2: I rented a big table and lots of chairs from the same local church that “borrowed” my synagogue’s parking lot on Christmas. It had little crucifixes on every seat cushion. I shrugged and said to my husband, “Interfaith cooperation at its finest.” 

Mistake #3: I didn’t send out a specific time on the invitation, so my husband’s family showed up three hours early. There went my idea of a peaceful meal preparation. 

Mistake #4: I told everyone they didn’t need to bring anything but a smile. So no one brought any extra Xanax. Rookie error.

Mistake #5: Several of my Irish relatives were still boycotting me because the year before, when a relative came down with shingles, and they needed my house for Christmas Eve dinner, I made all of them use paper bowls for the oyster soup because “shellfish is unclean.” The few family members who would attend Passover arrived to find that I’d thrown out all the beer and whiskey and replaced them with something called “cherry-flavored Kosher Wine.” They stopped speaking to me for years after that.

Mistake #6: Our friend Jon arrived hungry. He had been looking forward to a traditional Passover meal for weeks, fantasizing about brisket and homemade matzo ball soup. Then he got to our place and walked into the kitchen. No brisket. 

“But look,” I said, excitedly. “A gigantic salad!” 

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing as he perused the buffet while my mother-in-law sat at the bar, shaking her head, sipping cherry wine. 

“What is vegetarian Passover lasagna?” he asked. “All I see are pieces of spinach and matzo dipped in oat milk.”

“Don’t forget the almond cheese and tofu loaf,” my mother-in-law muttered.

Jon didn’t believe I was Jewish. He demanded to see my conversion paperwork and, to this day, requires an apology every Yom Kippur. 

Mistake #7: I forgot to tell my stepdad that, although the seder began at 5 pm, we didn’t really start eating until quarter to eight. That blood sugar drop almost killed him. He was like a kinder, gentler Archie Bunker, so imagine his face, sitting down with a fork and knife, seeing the rest of us sitting down with Haggadahs. 

Mistake #8: I heard my husband’s cousin mutter, “Once a shiksa always a shiksa,” after I placed an avocado pit on the Seder plate instead of a shank bone. 

Mistake #9: After announcing my matzo ball soup would be a vegetarian, salt-free event, I was unceremoniously kicked out of several wills. 

Mistake #10: I forgot where I hid the afikomen. My children still have trust issues. 

Mistake #11: I served Passover dessert “sweetened” with carob. But by that time, most everyone had gone home, vowing to lose our phone number. 

Eventually, everyone forgave me. It’s true that time heals. So does living in a city with plenty of people who’ve heard of good, kosher for Passover wine, soup, dessert, and brisket. And by people, I mean caterers. 

Catherine Durkin Robinson is an end-of-life doula and educator, living in Chicago. You can find her on Substack. 

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March 9, 2026 · 7:30 am

Yiddish Lesson

by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)

Mamashaynele always came with a smile

and a pinch of my cheek, an adoration

of my young self for just being alive.

Let me feel your keppy always came with a kiss

on the forehead, sometimes followed

with You’re hot and the shake-down of thermometer.

Geh shlofen always came with a wave

of the hand toward the stairs, a directive

to clear the room for adult conversation.

We shlepped to the avenue to the five-and-ten,

noshed on bagels hot from Watson’s factory,

shmecked the scallion shmear and nova lox.

We ate a bissel homemade lokshen on Passover,

eggy strips enjoying their chicken soup bath

with constant companions, matzo balls and farfel.

What a punim always came with a shake of the head,

a face only a mother could love, such a shande.

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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March 2, 2026 · 7:30 am

A Blue Bag in a Red Country

By Mara Koven-Gelman (Buffalo, NY)

The year was 1983. 

I was a Boston University junior studying abroad at a London college.  March break was approaching and I joined my friends for a one-week Russian government Intourist trip to Leningrad and Moscow for $200 (black bread and vodka included.)  This was before the opening of Russia with Perestroika (restructuring) and Glasnost (transparency.) All religion was still banned in former USSR. Refuseniks (Jews and others) were not allowed to practice their religion and denied emigration.

I was always connected with the plight of my Jewish people. As a 10-year-old I wrote to U.S. President Richard Nixon and implored him to “let my people go.” He never replied.

With a pang of “maybe I should visit some refuseniks,” I used my Jewish network, and met up with Rabbi Felder, a religious Jew in North London. He had a long grey beard, black hat, and gave me banned books (by Golda Meir, Abba Eban and prayer books), Passover matzah, and Star of David necklaces. Rabbi Felder trained me on what to expect at border control.

“Once they see all the Jewish items, they will stop you instantly,” he warned. “A guard at a booth will look at a mirror positioned behind your head. It will unnerve you, but disregard it,” he counseled.  

Rabbi Felder gave me refuseniks’ names and phone numbers to find and deliver the goods. “Keep the contacts hidden on your body,” he advised. I wrote them down in a thin blue vinyl address book. “Good luck, may God protect you.”

As our plane landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, I saw large Soviet cement buildings and cranes dot the grey March skyline. Several college students smoothly went through customs before me. At my turn a guard asked me truncated questions while looking at a thin horizontal mirror behind my head as expected. He was menacing, wearing a grey felt coat tightly belted at the waist and a black leather collar, similar to the Wizard of Oz’s flying monkeys. 

I struggled to picked up my large blue duffel bag and put it on an x-ray machine. A man in a black suit with greasy black hair took me aside.

He picked through my belongings knowing which items to pile on a steel grey table. With a box cutter, he sliced open the sealed matzah boxes and asked why I needed it. 

“Why are you carrying all these Jewish books? Why do you need so many of the same book? Who are you going to visit while you are here?”

I had been trained. 

“I am Jewish and will be celebrating the Jewish holiday of Passover,” I said with confidence. 

Pointing to my American co-travelers, I said, “These are my friends, and we celebrate together. We each need the Haggadah book to follow the ceremony.”

He asked me to step aside, where two women with dark grey handkerchiefs started to pat my body. It was humiliating. My confidence waned and I started to cry. They kept saying, “Nyet, Nyet,” no doubt feeling sorry me. 

“Do not meet with anyone. I will allow you to gather your things and enter our country. Remember you are a guest,” said the investigator.

I nodded, feeling scared and grateful that they didn’t find the blue address book that I’d hidden in the inner pocket of my jean culotte pants. 

My only friend on the trip was Julie. “Good thing you asked everyone to wear a Jewish star, Mara. I’d hate to see what that guy would have done if he found those.”  I looked sheepishly at the other students. 

“Sorry,” I said.  “I didn’t realize they would be so thorough and intimidating.” The college students didn’t seem to mind. It was part of an adventure. For me, though, it was an act of defiance.

We stayed in the centrally located Metropol Hotel. Only tourists were allowed in the hotels. Rabbi Felder had warned me that all of its rooms were bugged. Sure enough, an older woman sitting at a table greeted Julie and I as we emerged from the elevator. She gave us a brass room key on a wooden ball. Regardless of the time of day or night, someone was there to dole out the key and receive it when we left. I felt like a stranger’s hands went through my clothes when I wasn’t there. 

Heeding Rabbi Felder’s warning, I called Regina, (a Jewish refusenik) from a phone booth in the street. She invited me for a Passover Seder, and gave directions via metro subway. My tourist trip had a free night, so I left with my blue duffle bag full of Jewish books and items. 

The nearby Moscow Ploshchad Revolyutsii metro station was beautiful with its twinkling colorful mosaics and gilded bronze statues. I thought I was in a combination of a Turkish mosque and Versailles Palace.  

Somehow I found the rundown apartment building. I climbed the dark staircase with its wooden stairs indented from decades of previous climbers. 

The brisket, gefilte fish and cabbage were the smells of my grandparents’ and mom’s Passover kitchen. My family had come from this country 80 years earlier. The air was familiar and warming. It was Passover, and I was home. 

I emptied the blue duffle with the forbidden items. Regina pointed to a corner table and whispered a non-exuberant “Spasiba,” Russian for “thank you.” It was time for the Seder, not for gratitude.

A 25-year-old man, Simon, who was a couple of years older than me, led the Seder with the Haggadot I had brought. We sang the Four Questions. I understood the Hebrew, not the Russian, although he translated the readings into English for me. The entire Seder was experienced in very dim light for fear of police surveillance.

Someone asked what we were served for breakfast at the hotel. 

 “Black bread, cheese, and herring, ” I said.

 “There is no cheese in Moskva this week,” was the answer.  Tourists were treated better than the citizens.

Simon walked me back to the Metro after the Seder. He openly carried the “banned books” that I had brought, with Gold Meir’s My Life on top. The books were obvious to anyone walking by. I mentioned it.

“What else can they do to me?” Simon responded. 

He was an underground Hebrew teacher — teaching any refusenik Jewish customs and Hebrew — and was trained by people who visited clandestinely from the US and Israel.

It was at that moment that I decided my career and future. If it was so difficult for Jews in Russia to practice, and even more difficult for them to leave, then I would dedicate my life to building Jewish life in the U.S. and in my home country, Canada.

It was a light-switch moment. I also knew that I would become involved in the “Let My People Go” advocacy initiatives back in Boston.  Not yet 21, I was full of passion and, clearly, naive.

I returned on the Metro to my hotel, attended the remaining heavily guided tours of Moscow’s Red Square, Kremlin (outside), iconic St. Basil’s Cathedral, and a performance at the Bolshoi Theatre. We took an overnight train to Leningrad (its name returned to “St. Petersburg” in 1991.) I peeked out the drafty train windows. The bright moon lit the thatched roofs and towns which looked like they were straight out of a scene in Fiddler on the Roof. 

Leningrad was filled with more sites—the Hermitage Museum, Lenin’s Tomb, and naval ships. We also waited in line for an hour for ice cream. Two guards jumped the line, screaming between gritted teeth at a shop girl, who broke down in tears. This was not a friendly place. 

Thankfully, the trip was over and I eagerly left with my group. Touching down at Heathrow Airport, I felt free again. Yes, I had witnessed beautiful buildings and art, but my experience visiting refuseniks overshadowed the esthetics. 

Now I knew why my family had left in the late 1800’s. I also knew what I had to do in the last decades of the 1900s and into the next century. 

Author’s Note: It is now 42 years later. I have had a long career in Jewish communal work in Canada and in the U.S. I have advocated to release refuseniks (emigration waves started in 1986), amplified the stories of Holocaust survivors, conducted community surveys, and built bridges with people of other faiths and cultures in the name of social justice and civil society. 

Now is a complicated time to be Jewish and to be concerned about a shared society. I am looking forward to a time when all people can work collaboratively together. Until then, I’ll write my memories of a time when reading a book in the open was a crime and feel grateful that I can still read a book openly here. 

—

Mara is a writer, writing facilitator, and long-time Jewish communal professional who has worked in Toronto, Boston, and Buffalo. Most recently, she was a Jewish Community Relations Council Director and Holocaust Resource Center executive director putting her smack in the middle of interesting conversations and events.  She has published in the Globe & Mail, Buffalo News, Baltimore Jewish Times, and The Jewish Advocate, and has edited an anthology, Mourning has Broken: A Collection of Creative Writing about Grief and Healing. She lives in Buffalo, NY with her family.

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February 16, 2026 · 7:30 am

Diaspora

by Sxdni Small (Oconomowoc, Wisconsin)

My grandparents spoke Yiddish born of shtetls and teeming East side apartments,

Hebrew, Russian and English flowed too, from lips stretched thin on weary faces.

Voices of marketplace and shul, an ancient people in a new land,

ancestors who formed a treasure trove of tongues built from centuries of memory.

Herring in cream sauce and dense rye bread in a muggy Chicago apartment,

chocolate babka, deep and rich as whispered Yiddish lullabies,

sweet or savory kugel, a timeless dilemma.

Tzimmes, gefilte fish, plump kreplach, honey cake

calling for homage paid to the shrine of Ashkenazi gastronomy.

Windswept souls of Diaspora keen us home,

those who are still more than shadow.

I remember them, as they cannot.

Because they were, I rise.

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Sxdni Small grew up in a Jewish household where books and community organizing were household staples.  Sxdni is a member of the Wisconsin Writer’s Association.  For several years they helped proof and wrote articles for their synagogue newsletter.  Their pieces have also appeared in Milwaukee’s Jewish Chronicle. You can read their short story, “The Friendship Trip,” in the March, 2025 issue of Creative Wisconsin Magazine.

In their free time, Sxdni is also a devoted dog training geek and enjoys a soothing cup of honeybush tea while reading about what makes authors tick.  This is their first published poem.

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January 26, 2026 · 7:30 am

Kotel

by Jonathan Memmert (New York, NY)

Piled stone remnant. 

Time stilled in your stance, 

presence before me as I presence before you.

It doesn’t matter how many times

how many came before,

how many will come after.

Tallis shrouded

facing the western wall

I yield to the eastern expanse.

Voiced prayers aliyah in song—

melody, kavanah, harmony.

Chant daven to touch ehad unity.

A rolled paper wish inserted in a crevasse abyss,

left in place for rachamim to see.

Jonathan Memmert is a poet who resides in New York City. He has an MFA in creative writing from The City College of New York. His poetry has been published in various poetry journals and anthologies. He is currently at work on his first poetry collection. If you’d like to read more of Jonathan’s work, visit: https://ritualwell.org/ritual/shomer-tfilah-for-klal-yisrael/

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December 29, 2025 · 7:30 am

A pair of candlesticks: A voyage across time and generations

by Steve Lipman (Forest Hills, NY)

Sometime in May, 1903, Zorach and Goldie Finkelstein, residents of Sapotskin, a heavily Jewish village in the northeast corner of Poland (now in northwest Belarus) climbed on a horse-drawn wagon, carrying their meager possessions in a few simple canvas and cardboard suitcases, and headed to the German port city of Bremen. There they boarded the SS Pennsylvania, a 13,333-gross ton passenger vessel.

Part of a wave of Jewish immigration from the Russia Empire’s one-time Pale of Settlement, the young couple left their homeland and their families, undoubtedly making the voyage to the United States in steerage, along with men and women and children from many ethnic groups.

Goldie was probably pregnant with the couple’s first child, a son, who would be named Max when he was born in Buffalo the following February.

In addition to the suitcases, which were packed with the expected clothes, and a rushnyk, a red-and-white linen table divider she had sewn five years earlier, Goldie, then in her early twenties, packed some of her most precious belongings in a parenee (the word, which was passed down in family lore, is of uncertain origin; in Polish the objects were known as a pierzyny), a large white comforter stuffed with goose feathers, which stayed in the Finkelsteins’ family for several decades.

Inside the paranee was a pair of candlesticks.

If the Finkelsteins, Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jews who had been married five years earlier, followed the traditional practice of shtetlach in that part of the Jewish world, they most likely had received the candlesticks as a wedding gift five years before from their friends in Sapotskin.

The Finkelsteins’ style of candlesticks was typical of those owned by Orthodox Jews in their era and that part of Eastern Europe. Manufactured by the prestigious, Warsaw-based Jozef Fraget metal smith firm (founded in 1824), of hollow, galvanic sliver-plated brass (Jews were forbidden from owning silver in many parts of the empire), each stood 14 inches tall, with a detachable candle-cap that fit into a circular depression atop the candlesticks to catch paraffin droppings, and three artistic legs on the 5-inch-diameter base to give the candlesticks balance.

The candlesticks’ serial number – because of their value and popularity, the series of products was numbered – was 3340. Inside a small oval on the base of Goldie’s candlesticks: the words “FRAGET N PLAQUE,” which mean that the silver core was electroplated with a layer of pure silver.

Candlesticks like that were as common in many Jewish homes of that generation, especially those with immigrant roots, as the ubiquitous Singer sewing machine. And, in some Orthodox homes in the Greater New York area, artwork by the prolific, and eccentric, Morris Katz.

Goldie had no idea she fit a particular demographic; she simply kept the candlesticks to fulfill a Jewish woman’s mitzvah. One that her mother, and grandmother, and countless generations of women in her family had done before her with their own candlesticks. 

As she had in Sapotskin, Goldie used the candlesticks to usher in the Sabbath and important Jewish holidays in the modest home that she and her husband bought on the Jewish East Side of Buffalo (relatives had already settled there), and later, after Zorach (who took on the name Samuel in the United States) died, in the second-floor apartment of my parents’ two-story home in the city’s increasingly Jewish North Park neighborhood. Like other Jewish women, Goldie would cover her eyes with her hands as she recited the Hebrew blessing over the candles.

Sometimes her grandchildren – including me – would watch her make the brocha.

Goldie, a widow then for 20 years, died in 1968.

By rights, her candlesticks should have passed to my Aunt Hennie, the Finkelsteins’ oldest daughter, then a married resident of Rochester, an hour away, who –a kosher-keeping member of a Modern Orthodox synagogue — was more likely than my mother, Helene, married to a secular German-born Jew, to properly use them.

But Mom got the candlesticks. She had kids – three of us, while Aunt Hennie had none – and it was decided that it made more sense for a daughter who had a family, who had children to whom she could one day pass the treasured objects, to receive the candlesticks.

Mom, while by no means strictly Orthodox, grew more traditional as she grew older. She kept the pair in a prominent place of pride atop a light-brown wooden cabinet in the living room of the Lipmans’ home in North Park, then, after we moved, in the northern suburb of Tonawanda. She would, without fail, light the candles each Friday night and erev yom tov. Sometimes I and my two sisters would gather around Mom.

Dad, disinterested in things of a religious nature, would rarely join in.

As the candles burned, shrinking to differing heights, we would bet which one would go out first.

Mom, who had attended an after-school cheder decades earlier in Buffalo, had not mastered Hebrew. So she recited the l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat from memory, confidently – and incorrectly. She would say the last few words the same way each time, slurring several together into a unique rendition of lashon hakodesh; we restrained the urge to correct her, or to snicker. We understood what she was saying; I’m sure God did too.

After the blessing, Mom would say her own, personal supplications, softly, under her breath. A private conversation with the Creator. “Dear God,” she would begin, followed by “thank you” for kindnesses He had performed for her family or people in her circle of friends; or, “please take care of” ailing or deceased friends or relatives. Or other, similar words of praise or request. In other words, she would review whatever was on her mind.

Like Tevye, but with a Buffalo accent.

Then, “Good Shabbos.” And hugs.

Mom liked telling the following story about the spiritual value of the candlesticks in our family: Several decades ago she and one of her daughters had an appointment at Roswell Park Cancer Hospital, Buffalo’s famed medical center – a check-up that brought no bad news. They were walking on the cancer center’s stairs. “It was a beautiful day,” Mom remembered. Out of the blue, her daughter turned to her and said, “When you are gone, I want your candlesticks.”

Mom always told the story with a laugh. She was not offended. She was still a relatively young woman then. She understood the strong attraction of her daughter – who probably had mortality on her mind because of their presence at a cancer hospital –for the family heirlooms.

Mom said yes to her daughter’s request. In the meantime, the candlesticks remained in the Lipman home, and Mom continued using them.

In 2005 Dad died. The next year the candlesticks, carefully packed in a carry-on suitcase, went with Mom to the Houston suburb where one of my sisters had moved several decades before. There, Mom lived in an apartment, overlooking a small man-made lake, a mile from my married sister’s house.

Again, the candlesticks rested atop the wooden cabinet that had made the move with Mom to Texas.

Again, she lit the candles every week.

Again, the candlesticks shone. Mom, using some smelly pink polish, would shine them religiously, vigorously, employing a soft cloth or gloves specifically designed for that buffing purpose; or, as was more often the case, she would put one of her kids or her visiting grandchildren to work (people without sufficient elbow grease need not apply), making sure the pair gleamed so much you could almost see your reflection in them. It was not a fun assignment, but a labor of love. We all took a turn with the polishing cloth.

God forbid they should show a sign of tarnish.

A pair like that sell for $300-$500 nowadays, maybe more at auction, but to us, for sentimental reasons, they are priceless. 

The candlesticks were two of Mom’s most-prized possessions. She would make sure to hide them out of sight if a repairman was coming to her apartment or if she planned to be away for a few days. They were a symbol of her pride in being Jewish, in carrying on the tradition she had learned from her mother. They were not sleek or fashionable, which was fine with Mom. They were antiques, defiantly old-fashioned, remnants of a previous generation. They were a tactile reminder of Mom’s roots, of her long-gone relatives who brought their pride in Yiddishkeit from the shtetl environment that was a world removed from the big cities of the United States.

She would make sure that she was well stocked in candles, keeping a 72-count box at home, buying them at a Buffalo-area supermarket or sending one of her kids on a replenishment expedition when her supply was running low.

Mom was concerned about the candlesticks’ future. She made clear that, when the time came, the candlesticks would pass to a member of the family who a) was likely to use them regularly, and b) was not married then to someone who was not Jewish.

By her last few years, Mom, who died a few months ago on 12 Av, became increasingly feeble and forgetful. She no longer was in shape to light Shabbos candles; I would frequently provide her with small, battery-powered tea candles for her apartment or for the hospital rooms where she often – too often – found herself.

As Mom aged, and did not feel confident having lit candles in the apartment where she lived alone, she gave the candlesticks to the then-out-of-town daughter who had requested them decades earlier. Who uses them every week.

Goldie’s lichtern have a new home, 5,100 miles from their original home in the Old Country.

______

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

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