Honey cake is to Ashkenazi Jews at Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) what fruit cake is to Christians at Christmas. Mention these cakes, and one is sure to see wrinkled noses and some serious eye rolling. Fruit cake is often the butt of comedians’ jokes. “The worst gift is […]
Culture
17 posts
Down-y oh-shun, Hun (trans: down the ocean, honey) is an often-heard phrase in Bawl-tee-more (trans: Baltimore). Down-y oh-shun is my happy place. My dad loved the beach. He spent many summers in a rental house at the Jersey Shore. Grandma shared the house with her sisters, nieces and nephews. The […]
During the latest Hamas – Israeli War May 10 – 21, 4,360 rockets and drones were launched from Gaza on Israeli towns. The target was not military, but the civilian population. Their goal was to kill as many Jews as possible. Hamas’ aim is to eliminate Israel and replace it with a […]
Return to normal – is it true?Is it possible for me or you?Is it possible for the world or us?After the settling of the dust. The past is gone, not coming backThe only thing that’s writ in black Nothing can be truly the sameSo now we need a different name. We’ll get used to the […]
The purpose of this vignette is to give a humorous example of what I believe is a not so uncommon phenomenon: old habits don’t die, pun intended. My mother died in the summer of 1990. I was born in 1947 and grew up in the Flatbush section of the borough […]
April 7, 2021 is this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is always the 27th of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar. It doesn’t synch to the Gregorian calendar, a solar one. The Islamic and Hebrew calendars are lunar based. Like the Chinese calendar, the Hebrew one adds an extra month for […]
Background Four generations of Jewish women settled in the upper Midwest, on the prairie and in the small towns of North and South Dakota, northern Iowa, Minnesota and northern Wisconsin. Their stories are told in a fascinating book entitled “And Prarie Dogs Weren’t Kosher” by Linda Mack Schloff. Published in […]
That was in Cambodia, a basis for a movie But we are sowing our own fields, our own streetsWith violence and murder. It’s here in our backyardsThe tragedy, the sorrowWe are bombing our buildings. We are killing in our schools, our churchesOur homes are not havensOur students are not safe. Blood […]
I was touched to write this poem because of the prevalence of “anti” in the news. When this was covered on my local TV station about the incidents against Asian Americans, an Oriental woman made the comment, “Why are they hurting us? They like our food.” The four stanzas below […]