Family

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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Why’d You Want to Live Here, Anyway?

July 25, 2014

An article a few weeks ago in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz questioned why someone would ever want to make aliyah from a comfortable country like the U.S. Especially these days – with the murders of the Naftali Frenkel, Gil-ad Shear and Eyal Shach still on our minds, the revenge killing of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khaider stinging at our […]

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Embracing the Third Culture

June 13, 2014

Ever since we moved to Israel 20 years ago, I’ve always felt like I don’t quite fit in anywhere. I’ll never be truly Israeli, since I didn’t grow up with all the pop culture references someone born in the country knows intuitively. And I’m not fully American anymore either, since I haven’t resided in the […]

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Cultivating Local Indie Acts at Jacob’s Ladder Music Festival

May 26, 2014

The Jacob’s Ladder music festival, held twice a year at the Nof Ginosar kibbutz along the Sea of Galilee, and which just concluded its spring session this past weekend, has been quietly transforming itself from a groovy environment in which to hear interesting and enjoyable music into a growing platform that cultivates and helps launch local indie […]

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Will the World’s Largest Seder be Canceled this Year?

March 25, 2014

The sanctions and now full strike at Israel’s Foreign Ministry have already wreaked havoc with the country’s diplomacy. First, a planned trip by the Pope to the Holy Land appears to be on the verge of cancellation. Next, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s historic visit to Latin America also looks likely to fall to the editing […]

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Detox: A Sleeping Pill Addict Goes into Voluntary Rehab

January 28, 2014

There’s no easy way to admit this: I’m a drug addict. My particular addition is relatively benign and not in any way illegal – it’s sleeping pills. But I’ve been hooked on them for 13 years now, since the days when helicopters would fly above my house during the Second Intifada on their way to […]

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Toughing It Out: A Colonoscopy in Jerusalem

January 13, 2014

The waiting room in the gastro clinic at Shaarei Tzedek hospital is pleasant enough. Recently refurbished, there’s free WiFi, extra padded seats (a thoughtful touch given the nature of the work done there) and clean walls. The wall-mounted TV hums away, but not too loudly. I was at Shaarei Tzedek as the “designated driver” for […]

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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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Mindfulness Saved the Wedding

November 19, 2013

When my wife and I were invited to an intimate wedding on the beach this week, we thought – that should be lovely. A make shift chuppah set up at sunset with just the endless blue stretching from the sands of Nitzanim as a backdrop; a barbecue and bonfire with a bride, groom, a few guests and […]

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Freeform Seder

March 28, 2013

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

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