Jewish Culture
The Gift of Generations: A Mother’s Song
Mom. Mommy. Ima. Madre. Mother. No matter how many ways I say it, the concept still catches me by surprise ...
The Beginnings of A Bintel Brief
In January 1906, a woman wrote a letter to a Yiddish daily newspaper called the Forward , to complain that her watch ...
Children’s Passover Books
Passover is a time for storytelling. One of the main purposes of the holiday is to allow one generation to ...
Publishing the Unpublishable
It took me more than three years to finish Shlepping the Exile . I had a job as a researcher ...
Ars Longa, Vita Brevis
In this week’s Torah portion, God explains that God has called not only Betzalel and Oholiav to execute their craft ...
Normal English and the Novel
Plot was the last thing on my mind when I sat down to make a novel out of the stories ...
The Jewish Hall of Fame
I once heard Sarah Silverman tell a joke about the pride Jews inevitably take in the accomplishments of other Jews. To paraphrase, ...
Obscene Recommendations
Some of the literary works I deal with in Unclean Lips are relatively well-known—Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep (1935) and Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), for ...
Is “Schmuck” a Dirty Word?
One of the points I make in my book is that what’s dirty in Yiddish isn’t always dirty in English, and vice ...
Lithuania’s Past and Present
In my last blog post, I recounted the background of Yiddish linguist Dovid Katz, who has been reporting on troubling manifestations of ...
Ladino Pregnant Pop
“Ensuenyo Te Vi” Three words that normally don’t go together: Ladino, Pop, Pregnant. But in my world they make a ...
Is that baby DELICIOUS or what!?
When my siblings and I were little, my mom used to grab our chubby arms and pretend to munch on ...