This Normal Life — All about "normal" life in Israel

Seth Rogen’s sour pickle

August 30, 2020

What did Seth Rogen really say about Israel on Marc Maron’s podcast? Was it as bad as people say? I listened to the whole hour and a half. Plus a review of An American Pickle.

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Kaddish in 103,000 words

August 16, 2020

When my father died, I wondered if there was something personally meaningful I could do that could serve as an alternative to Kaddish. This is the story of the book that resulted.

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Coronavirus and the five stages of grief

August 2, 2020

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross defined 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Where does Covid-19 mask denial fit in?

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To cope with the ping pong of good news followed by harrowing aftermath, I’ve started thinking of this time as our “coronavirus gap year.” How Emily Perl Kingsley’s essay “Welcome to Holland” applies to the current pandemi

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“We are both” – The blunder of binary thinking

July 5, 2020

Our brains may be hardwired towards a “binary bias” – this or that, happy or despondent. But DNA need not define our destiny. We can be both.

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Cancer is not magic

June 20, 2020

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I so much wanted to believe in magic. Not for a cure but that the cancer would transform me magically into someone new.

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