Contemporary Stories

His parents had been painfully trying to reach him the entire time he was in Shanghai... For months upon months, they had not been able to make contact with him. Had he made the right decision to depart from them? What ever happened to them? Would he ever see them again?

Even though Basia was occupied with supporting her family, three times a week she would make the long trip to visit her husband.

Prior to the next Shabbat, the commanding officer, Victor, announced that ten percent of the soldiers could go home for Shabbat, a twenty-four hour leave. Unfortunately, the truck that came to take us back to civilization arrived twenty-five minutes before Shabbat began.

They commanded Father to dress and come with them. Father came to my small bed, bent down and gave me a kiss, long and painful. Tears – big ones, hot ones, blazing ones – rolled off his cheek and onto my forehead.

As the crowd dispersed from around the child, the Soviet official suddenly awoke from his drunkenness, pointed, and asked, "Who is that holy man?"

As the hours passed, the students became frustrated and some planned on closing the doors early. They began assessing the cause of the failure.

Just before the siege, Yaakov met his sister, Ita Sosonkin at the outskirts of Leningrad. With tears in their eyes, they promised each other that whoever stays alive will take care of the other's children.

As he was running his hands up the side of the coats, he suddenly realized that his pockets were still filled with wads of money from that day's dealings.

"Listen to me, Mrs. Rosenberg," her heavy face was flushed with excitement. "Let me take her. Why should she die, the innocent babe? I will care for her as if she was my own. I never had children, you know. Give her to me..."

Yisroel stood in the doorway, cheeks and nose bright red from the cold, snow crusting his thick brown bangs. "My mother is still not here, and I'm frozen. Can I wait inside?"

Do you know where Kano is? Look it up on the map of Nigeria in West Africa

"It's just not the same anymore without him..." She bows her head. I nod in agreement, but inside I'm singing

I glanced at my watch nervously. Usually, I avoid flying Friday afternoons for fear I won't arrive in time, but this time, I figured I'd be safe. I figured wrong...

My best friend was a girl of my age named Jeanette. One morning when I came to play, I saw her family being forced at gunpoint into a truck. I ran home and told my mother. "Don't worry," she said, "Jeanette will be back soon..."

Here was genuine culture, a living tradition, a way of preparing for Tisha B’Av that I had never experienced before. It was an awakening, a discovery of origins. This is where hotdogs come from

The death of a thousand cuts would have been preferable. I briefly considered crawling, until I realized that everyone would be able to see me anyway.

In those days there was only one car service in Crown Heights and it was run by Chassidim, a class of people for whom time means nothing

At the conclusion of the seder meal, the cup of Elijah was filled and my six year old son, candle in hand, was sent to open the front door, an old fashioned, ponderous wooden structure that was secured with a heavy iron latch...

"Why," pondered the sad little accountant, "couldn't I get into a government refund loop, instead of a Shmurah Matzah loop? Just my mazel," he said to himself, "everyone else gets money when there is a mistake, I get Matzah."

"We were dealt a blow today," my wife said softly. "But I don't want to be angry at G‑d. I want to give praise to G‑d for giving you to me and me to you. As we enter the next chapter of our lives and we will not let bitterness or melancholy darken it."