anniversaries we'd just as soon forget

It was our anniversary last week, always complicated by our choice to get married on Kristalnacht. But it was after the holidays, and a long weekend, and we’d hoped it would make travel easier for out of town guests. Still, people complained. This, I should have guessed. Weddings are about a community, not just a couple, and they will make their opinions known.

Some anniversaries are more private, though. In a featured post in The Times of Israel I mark a different anniversary, one that belongs only to us. One that we’d be happy to forget.

It was my anniversary last week. You post a wedding picture, and a sappy — or in my case, snarky — little caption, and people wish you well. If you’re a celebrity and you’ve been married as long as I have, 22 years, you deserve actual applause, apparently. I almost never get an ovation for still being married. Such are the pitfalls of famelessness. 

But another anniversary was biting at my heels as I prepared for Shabbat. 

see more

apologizing is easy, forgiveness is hard

Up till now I haven’t written anything about the incident highlighted in this essay in the Forward. But nearly a year has passed, and the upcoming holidays have been a powerful motivator in thinking about forgiveness. There will continue to be detectives and DAs and upcoming court dates in our future, and we can’t control it even one bit. But this, forgiveness, this is entirely in my power.

Here’s what I’ve learned this year. Apologizing is easy. Forgiveness is harder.

Nearly a year ago, our family home was broken into by a man with a knife. We’ve spent many months grappling with how, and if, our lives should change as a result. With the days of repentance approaching, my thoughts turn towards forgiveness.

But how can I forgive when I never got an apology? While I deeply desire offering forgiveness to my assailant, how can I do that when the one word I need to hear from him has yet to be forthcoming? How to get past this grave sin committed against me and my family when the sinner wont say the words?

I decided I had to say them for him.

see more

someone else's memories

The back and forth about the Covington young men in the MAGA hats left me tongue tied - for a moment. I couldn’t really understand how anyone could see that video differently than I do. Then Ron started to tell a story at kids, and I got some perspective.

Recently I overheard my husband telling a story to a group of friends. He recounted specific details, painted a vivid picture. You could really feel his involvement. He was successfully building up to the punchline. There was only one problem. 

“Honey,” I reminded him, “that’s my story. You weren’t even there.” 

see more

Seinfeld, Soros and the Nazis

After many years of gallows humor, I’ve decided to rethink the way I use the term Nazi. Now that there are so many ACTUAL Nazis out there, the gallows humor just doesn't seem so funny anymore.

Let’s all just agree to blame Jerry Seinfeld. His infamous ‘Soup Nazi’ episode killed two birds with one stone. It was a green light to Jews to laugh publicly, out loud, about something that had until then been largely insider gallows humor. Not the Mel Brooks Producers humor, which was about making fun of Nazis themselves. Humiliating actual Nazis should always be encouraged, in my opinion. But that we could play with the term, debase it, such that it referred to the most trivial of things. I used to refer to my husband as the Dishwasher Nazi, when he insisted that there was a proper way to load, and the family needed to learn the rules. So, I freely admit I’m part of the problem.

see more