First Person

KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — As I stood as one of the few Americans among the masses of protesters at Kiev’s Independence Square, the frigid cold reminded me that this was my fourth year trying to survive a harsh Ukrainian winter. The crowd seemed be warming up thanks to the… Read more »

Major League Baseball's official historian, John Thorn, pictured holding a royal decree knighting his great-grandfather, says the past enhances the present in sports as well as family matters. (Hillel Kuttler).

CATSKILL, N.Y. (JTA) – The past escorts John Thorn home from the moment he greets a visitor at a 139-year-old railroad station, crosses the Rip Van Winkle Bridge and arrives at his residence, a county historical landmark. Clad in a facsimile jacket of the defunct Negro Leagues’ Kansas City… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – Last spring, I found myself averting my eyes when my 4-year-old mentioned something about the Easter bunny in front of my dad. We were at my parents’ home in Michigan for Passover and my son said, “When I get back to Brooklyn, the Easter bunny… Read more »

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA) – Wearing a black jacket and hat with a white shirt buttoned up to the neck, the bearded man sings of poverty and hunger, homelessness and being alone, a family lost. Yet through the pain,… Read more »

Neshama Carlebach onstage at the Union for Reform Judaism's biennial in San Diego, Dec. 14 2013. (URJ)

(JTA) — I grew up Jewish. Simply Jewish. My late father, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, raised us in an observant Orthodox household. Our lives were filled with beautiful ritual and we celebrated the wonder of a familial spiritual connection. That said, we also danced along the fine line of progressive… Read more »

Young people sit a cafe table set up amid the snow on Jerusalem's Jaffa Road on Dec. 15, 2013. (Hadas Parush/Flash 90)

Only about 20 minutes outside of the city did it begin to appear — patches of white on the rough hills abutting the road, sprinklings of flakes on the pines. By the time our bus reached Mevasseret Tzion, near Jerusalem, the snow was blanketing the ground, building up in… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Natan Zaidenweber thought the mohel was kidding. His wife, Linda Raab, thought it was some kind of religious formality and didn’t give it a second thought. But the mohel, Cantor Philip Sherman, was serious. Though most fathers demur when he invites them to perform the bris… Read more »

Liad Shoham

TEL AVIV (JTA) – “You and I, we need to have a little talk about sex,” my editor said in a deep voice. I was in the midst of writing my first thriller about a geeky lawyer suspected of murder, and I was waiting for my editor’s verdict about… Read more »

Daniel Perez

The Hillel Foun­­dation, that ubiquitous symbol of Jewish life on college campuses in America and across the globe, turns 90 this year. I know this because it came up in a recent exchange I had with the University of Arizona Hillel Foundation’s executive director, Michelle Blumenberg. I’m an alumnus,… Read more »

Alden Solovy

JERUSALEM (JTA) — On a Friday afternoon, six months after my wife Ami, of blessed memory, died of a catastrophic brain injury, I received a call from a local hospital. “Your mother has fallen down and hit her head,” the voice said. “The condition is serious. You’d better get… Read more »

Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub proprietor who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, was born Jacob Rubenstein in 1911. (Central Press/Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) — We were sharing a pastrami sandwich and pickles at the Los Angeles landmark Canter’s Deli. I was 24. She was nearly 50 years older, with a piercing voice as loud as her flaming red wig. Her name was Eva Rubenstein Grant, and she was a… Read more »

HARTFORD, Conn. (JTA) — My wife stared at me as if I were from another planet. “What do you mean you don’t know if you can come to my cousin’s wedding?” she demanded indignantly. She hadn’t seen her relatives in years and was looking forward to a weekend getaway… Read more »

Ellen Freeman

This summer, 150 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Jews from around the world gathered in Winnipeg, this year’s host city for the 21st World Congress of GLBT Jews, held July 5 to 7. Attendees represented more than 15 countries, including the United States, Canada, England, France, Israel, Argentina and… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — If the Pilgrims are lighting menorahs and the Maccabees are chasing turkeys, it must be Thanksgivukkah, as some have come to call the confluence of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah that will happen this year on Nov. 28. It’s a rare event, one that won’t occur again… Read more »

Neshama Carlebach and Josh Nelson performing at the United Synagogue centennial in Baltimore. (Mike Diamond Photography)

BALTIMORE (JTA) — It will be years before it’s clear whether or not this week’s conference of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism was a success. To be sure, the centennial gathering in Baltimore by nearly all accounts was a far more dynamic and well-attended biennial than those of… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (Jewish Journal) — I started building my sukkah in December. To those of you who are sukkah DIYers, you know how ridiculous this sounds. A sukkah is the ritual hut that Jews build each year on the holiday of Sukkot, which begins this year on the evening… Read more »

Isaac Lobel

NEW YORK (JTA) — For my Bar Mitzvah, my parents got me a laptop. For what I searched for on it, they got me a shrink. CyberSitter informed my computer-savvy parents that their son was searching gay porn. On the ride to my first therapy session, I stuck my… Read more »

Miriam “Mimi” Furst, age 4, with her father, Irving Boruchow

Crack! Boom! The sound of big fat pebbles pounding the roof and rattling windows. Maybe it’s the Nazis coming to get us! That afternoon my brother Stan and I saw a war movie at a theatre near our home in the Bronx, N.Y. We watched as mighty John Wayne,… Read more »

As a child of Holocaust survivors, I have always managed to avoid visiting Germany. Part of my parents’ legacy was never to visit the country, with its dark past — not even to own any products in our home that were made in Germany. Despite my reluctance to visit… Read more »

Wendy Wiener

Like any longstand­­ing havurah, or Jewish friendship group, my neighborhood has celebrated the cycle of Jewish holidays together for 20 years. We laugh, bake, eat and recount tales of past holiday celebrations. There’s no worrying about whether the house is clean or how many people are coming, when the… Read more »