Members of the Scribe
Why Kids Love Scary Stories
My parents are getting ready to move, to abandon the house I’ve lived in since I was born, and we ...
Organized Crime and Kosher Food Certification
The Toronto Star recently reported that several firebombings of kosher restaurants in Quebec may not be the work of anti-Semites ...
Younger Than That Now
Memorial Day, 2007. I’ve drifted away from a Santa Monica beach party to gaze out at the Pacific Ocean, plus my ...
When You’re A Jet You Stay A Jet
“Ashkenazi.” “Sephardic.” As a kid, wandering around the kiddish reception at our shul collecting cellophane ruffle-topped toothpicks in a plastic ...
Nice Jewish Girls Finish Whole
I think of Claudia Silver, the eponymous heroine of my debut novel, Claudia Silver to the Rescue , as one ...
Crossing Delancey: Royal Young on Lee Brozgold
My father’s artwork was always how I made sense of the world around me. The sometimes scary, ghetto Lower East ...
From Shtetl to Star: A Jewish Tradition of Changing Names
I changed my name from Hazak Brozgold to Royal Young when I was 20 years old. I was a drunk ...
Famous Roots: An Interview With My Babbi and Zayde
My maternal grandmother fought to escape her Lower East Side. My Babbi was born in 1932 and raised on Pitt ...
My Family’s Reaction to Fame Shark
“I sound like a cheap, mean kyke,” my father raged. “I sound like an idiot, a complete non-entity,” my mother ...
Living in Hebrew, Thinking in Aramaic, Writing in English
“Many artists are ‘underground’,” a writing instructor of mine once remarked, “but no one is more underground than writers.” To ...
On Writing a Novel About The Act of Writing a Novel
I’m sitting on the back porch of my temporary lodgings in Atlanta, while two spiders go at it, the smaller ...
I Was Born a Rambling Man
When someone asks me where I’m from, I never hesitate to say that I’m from New York City. Then, a ...