Kintsugi

Kintsugi

Photo by Marco Montalti | Shutterstock The Art of Healing Last month, Hannah Dailey came to our home. She was in Phoenix to interview local Holocaust survivors for the National World War 2 Museum in New Orleans.  I looked up from my low chair angled before the packed...
Deliver Us From Evil

Deliver Us From Evil

Shocked, I looked closer,  Yes, they are Stolpersteine, brass bricks,  embedded in the pavement before former homes of Jews who perished in the Holocaust.  Yes, they are desecrated with an old trope,  Juden sind Täter (Jews are Perpetrators). Yes, this is June 2024....
Car Talk

Car Talk

About twenty years ago, I remember driving on narrow, undulating  roads, through verdant countryside. We were  in the Eifel, Germany, it was early afternoon and we were on the way to  Kraftwerk Heimbach, the electric power station built in Jugendstil in 1905. A...
Unravelling the Past

Unravelling the Past

I remember sitting on a low pouffe opposite my English “auntie” in her  arm chair, holding my arms wide as she unraveled on old jumper,  feeding the wool thread in a loop around my outstretched hands  and then slowly rhythmically winding the reclaimed thread into a...
Strong Consolation

Strong Consolation

Narrow gauge track to Chelmno | Photo by Global Story Films Three Journeys to Poland You could say they were Pilgrimages to the edges of my world. Each of the three journey ended at the place of death and the desecration of my parents’ bodies. On May 2, 2010 ten of us...
Two Dresses

Two Dresses

Art by Laura Nathan A Metaphor for Love and Loss This morning  Laura Nathan posted two photographs on Instagram with a meditation on the metaphors she had discovered while reading A Garland for Ashes. I have stitched and torn apart and restitched and torn apart this...
What is a Jerusalem Bagel?

What is a Jerusalem Bagel?

How does it compare with a New York Bagel? I found the answer to my questions on the rooftop at the Global Ambassador Hotel, Camelback Road, here in Phoenix, on a warm and sunny February day.  George and I have celebrated over 50 of my birthdays together and it takes ...
An Ode to Instagram

An Ode to Instagram

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash What am I doing paying tribute to Instagram that troublesome, frustrating social media platform? Sometimes I wonder about the hours I’ve wasted scrolling through cats, dogs, selfies, checking likes. And then I remember opening a...
Poetry’s Power

Poetry’s Power

December fig leaf fallen on winter grass Can a clergyman poet, noted for the purity and effectiveness of his choice of words (britannica.com) who died 390 years ago have anything to say at this dark year’s  ending? Yesterday, I savored a verse from George Herbert’s...
More Than Meets the Eye

More Than Meets the Eye

At the Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center | Photo: by Janie Dailey I love to trace the beginning of things. In the beginning… Genesis 1 In the beginning… John 1 On a micro level, how did George, Micah, Janie and I happen to be at the Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage...