Endurance

As we began to ride we heard the sirens. First one, quickly followed by another, then another, until their wailing filled the streets and pierced the skies. As each ambulance passed, my contractions grew more intense

We danced and sang in the sukkah, the transformative rain a mikvah-like immersion in G-d's presence and will...

There was Ari, 15, who used to say that "life was too short to waste on anger." Noah, 6, was extra nice to children who had trouble making friends. Adira, 5, was strong-willed and carefree. Natan, 4, had Down syndrome and loved to play guitar and sing...

It's an old voice, but powerful and steady. It is my Zaidy saying the mourner's Kaddish for his father, whose yahrtzeit is Yom Kippur

It is very unlike me to sit down and write something like this, and yet, I feel that I have an obligation to do so. I am a quiet person, who lives a quiet life, and until about a year ago there was nothing newsworthy or interesting about myself or my five children...

There's this wonderful pool of light coming through the window, and beauty in the chaos of white, plastic envelopes awaiting pickup by hundreds of people who, like me, have come to see what was taking place in their innards

In one pivotal moment, the star seems to be relating its life story: birth, growth, death, and even afterlife, fuse together in a strange and tragic way

I guess when something is truly right for you, no matter how impractical or out of the ordinary it may seem, you find yourself doing what you are meant to do...

I still have a bullet lodged in my brain. My speech is slurred and I have difficulty maintaining balance when I walk. But I am determined that, with the help of G-d, these will not stop me from doing what I know I was born to do

The life lived in this lumpy body with its pathological blood. No one, I realized, envied my life or considered it normal. No one, that is, but me. Because, you see, it's my life...

If I can buffer my grief or save it for only those to whom I am "really close", I do. If I can deflect it or distract it by anger or politics, I do. But recently I wrote to a colleague mourning the murder of a friend, only to realize that I was speaking to myself...

How can I, one ant of a human being on a continent near the South Pole, make the smallest indent in the steely surface of hate and indifference? The answer can be drawn from the ancient wisdoms, which note that each person is the spiritual size of the cosmos

She walked out of the room. Halfway down the hallway she stopped and stood motionless as if confronting an invisible wall

She wrote: My brother is dying! Tell me something, please... But I could not answer then. And later, when I could, this is what I wrote to her...

Let go to the weakness, to the unknown, to the sadness, to the future, to the new you that you are getting to know. Let go, and feel the thrill. Let go, and let G-d catch you as you fall

Chaim was born 13 years ago, a healthy child to healthy parents. Then one day, out of the blue, Chaim contracted a "virus" (funny, how when they don't know what it is, they call it a "virus"...)

We land upon foreign, distant shores, pioneers of a self born simply of our soul demanding its expansion.

My hair, thank G-d, is growing back. Hair, beard, eyebrows, eyelashes, the works. My color has returned, or at least transformed from a yellow brown pallor to a more healthy tone. I'm lookin' good. At least that's what everyone says...

We never met. I have only seen your picture. And even that came long after I knew that we were bonded by an ancient bond, that there was a debt that I owed you