Author Archives 
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Right to Be Jewish on Your Own Terms
Some liberal Jews fear leading traditional Jews ‘astray’ by wearing a kippah during traditionally non-permitted activities. I have one question. Why should liberal Jews limit themselves to fit the comfort zone of someone else’s Jewish movement?
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Back on the Pig
For thousands of years, Judaism’s dietary laws kept us from sharing meals with hostile parties who wanted us to assimilate. But what’s the point of avoiding bacon cheeseburgers in 2012?
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Carmen Elena Doyle, z”l, 1929-1996
As we live our days, these are the ways we remember. This Shabbat, I remember my mother.
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Eight Nights to Renew Your Inner Jewish Child
Happy Chanukah to all my readers! The festival of lights is a good time to remember our Jewish holidays are for everyone. So even if you’re over 12, light that chanukiyah with pride. All eight nights.
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You Take the Good, You Take the Bad
A Jew who’s always happy is like an Illinois Governor who’s always law-abiding. The concept is faulty on the face of it. Simcha and tsouris go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other. In life, or on the blogosphere.
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You Got Your Bar Mitzah Ceremony in My Shabbat Morning Service!
When the b’nai mitzvah crowds elbow regular synagogue members out of the sanctuary, whose Shabbos is it, anyway?
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The December Dilemma Is a Choice
I thought a lot about the Jewish ‘December Dilemma’ before putting up my holiday tree this year. I kept coming back to one question. What, exactly, are we afraid of in the first place?
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Fifteen Christmases and an Eitz Moed
Last December, on a Jewish journey and with my possessions in storage, I celebrated my first tree-free holiday season. This year, officially Jewish and back in my own apartment, I’m finally faced with the December Dilemma. Jews don’t put up Christmas trees, and there’s no such thing as a Chanukah bush. And then I got an idea.
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First You Do (the High Holy Days), and Then You Hear
The High Holy Days that marked the beginning of 5772 also marked the end of my first observed Jewish year. I expected the Days of Awe to be fulfilling. But what was missing turned out to be the best part of all.
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Counting to Ten
Ten years after 9/11, to the older but wiser, blogging Jewish Chicagoan that I’ve become, about the only thing that still resonates for me is the sense of loss. It’s still there. It always will be, but life goes on. And so do we, God willing.
