Contemporary Stories

"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?"

"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...

The doctor picked up the sample. He placed a drop on a slide, then slipped it under the eyepiece of the microscope. One glance showed him that it was full of bacteria--he did not bother to analyze it further

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.

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

"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."

The soldier stared at the boy, fighting back tears. "Over these four terrible years, this is the first live Jewish child I have seen..."

"Go find someone else to bother," he shot back at me. "I want nothing to do with you!" My head was spinning; I was hurt inside, yet knew I had done nothing disrespectful. Obviously, what I represent—being a religious Jew, wearing a beard and a kippah on my head— upset him so.

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...

I first heard of Sammy Rosenbaum in 1965, when a Mrs. Rawicz from Rabka came into my office in Vienna to testify at a War Crimes trial

We were all looking away; we had not known that he was severely afflicted with Parkinson's disease. Then we heard this big bang on the table: "Gentlemen, look at me, and look at me right now. Who can tell me what the lesson of the Holocaust is?"

At first, I was awed by his courage. But the next day I realized, to my horror, that this man was 'renting out' the siddur to people in exchange for bread...

Fresh snow covers the ground, thinking I’m too young to know. On the other side of the pit four Russians dressed like railroad or construction workers look me up and down. I try not to look back.

His one hand held a wooden cane, the other somehow was suddenly on my shoulder. "Can you davven?" he whispered

I suppose every twenty-year-old should have an eighty-eight-year-old friend