Holocaust
In My Characters’ Shoes
One September afternoon I took the train from Berlin to Warsaw, as my characters had done. I wanted to see ...
A Dog at the Seder
As a child, the great Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas noticed that dogs appear in Torah at a crucial moment. On ...
Wrestling with the Ethics of the Sochi Olympics
The more I read and learn about what has been happening in Russia, the more I am afraid for its ...
Jews and Tattoos: Navigating a new landscape
Once a month at our family Shabbat service we ask families to submit questions in advance in what, in lieu ...
The Poetry of Jewish Black Identity
I became Bar Mitzvah on April 20th, 2002, the 130th anniversary of Hitler’s birth. My dad’s side of the family ...
On Coming Together Over Brokenness
November 9, 2013, marks the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass.” It is the night many point ...
A Moment of Kindness
Whenever I tell anyone that mother was in a German labor camp during World War II, they assume she was ...
Cutting Material from My Novel
One of the hardest things to get used to in writing a novel is cutting material to speed up the ...
The French During the Holocaust and the Complications of History
For the past eight summers, I’ve taught creative writing at the Paris American Academy, a small school in a neighborhood ...
When Goodness Transcends Boundaries
The 70th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising has created renewed interest in the actions of Polish gentiles who assisted ...