A Parent in Israel

Mystery Maladies and Quality of Life: Is 75 Enough?

July 7, 2015

It’s common to divide people into two opposing types. There are optimists and pessimists, extroverts and introverts, people who love cilantro and those who think it tastes like dirty dishwater. Add to this, people who run to the doctor at the first sign of something wrong and others who wait, trusting that the body will […]

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Pick and Choose-daism

June 21, 2015

Jacob’s Ladder is my favorite weekend of the year. The spring version of the semi-annual music festival, which was held last month, presents an eclectic mix of country, folk, bluegrass and, lately, local indie rock bands over three days at Kibbutz Nof Ginosar north of Tiberius. Over the past several years, I’ve noticed an increasing […]

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In praise of datlashim

June 7, 2015

Datlashim are some of my favorite people. I admit I’m partial. All three of my kids are datlashim. That said, datlashim may represent the very future of Judaism or, stated with less hyperbole, may help an increasingly fractured Jewish community find common ground between religious and secular. Datlash is an acronym that stands for dati […]

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How to Make This Year’s Seder Not Like Any Other Night

April 7, 2015

The run up to tonight’s Seder included a remarkable – and decidedly disturbing – discovery in the Blum house: no one in our family really likes Pesach. Actually, it was worse. Some of us really hate Pesach. The preparation, the cleaning, even the Seder itself doesn’t rank highly on our list of peak Jewish experiences. How […]

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Resilience in the Face of Uncertainty

November 30, 2014

When we made aliyah 20 years ago, did we come expecting that there would be war in our future? On a certain level, I suppose we knew that we were moving to a dangerous neighborhood and that conflict was probable. But we repressed that kind of thinking. You had to – why would we willingly […]

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Ireland, Identity and Avoiding Anti-Semitism

September 24, 2014

“If anyone asks where we’re from, say America, not Israel.” Those were the instructions I gave to my wife and children for how to minimize friction while traveling outside of Israel after a summer where protests bordering on (and sometimes overtly embracing) anti-Semitism raged across Europe. Our vacation – ten days in Ireland, hiking, drinking […]

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Hair No More

November 26, 2013

The queue (well, more of an amorphous, fast talking crowd) was already 30 girls long when my daughter Merav arrived at the Malcha shopping mall in Jerusalem. The girls – teenagers and young adults mostly – were from all kinds of different backgrounds, from completely secular to haredi. But they all had one thing in […]

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Jerusalem Youth Chorus Records with Israeli Pop Superstar David Broza

January 31, 2013

I’m not sure what who was more excited – our 15-year-old-son Aviv who was about to meet one of Israel’s biggest pop stars, or his parents, given that Aviv had actually never heard of said star. But we had – my wife Jody’s mom even has a picture of her with David Broza from a concert he […]

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Election Day “Live Blog”

January 22, 2013

(I decided to “live blog” election day from the Blum family perspective. The first part appeared on the Israelity website only. Here’s part two.) I don’t know if it was the fresh air or the physical exertion of our two-hour  hike earlier in the day (see the previous post), but we did it. We all made up our […]

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Breaking “Distance”

December 31, 2012

Our daughter Merav completed an advanced communications course in the army last week that will allow her to move up in her IDF position. The one-month long program was held at a “closed” base (that’s one where you sleep there, do guard duty, and can’t leave unless given special permission) and was similar in style […]

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