Rhona Lewis

These picture-perfect scenes are the stuff of my childhood, yet I know they’re not mine.

The jerrycans have been under the table since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 . . .

“I couldn’t believe I had breast cancer! I felt perfectly healthy. Physically, I took good care of myself. Spiritually, I felt I had some merits too: I had adopted four children, had changed my entire life when I became religious, and had moved countries,...

Jewish eating isn’t simply a gastronomical pleasure—it’s also a spiritual experience. That was why I was standing at the edge of Lake Naivasha, about to dip my mother’s new dishes into its murky depths, one hundred meters away from a group of four hippos....

Perhaps one of Jacqui’s biggest challenges was waking up to the fact that her artistic talents are gifts from G‑d and not a direct result of her own singlehanded endeavors...

The daffodils that were planted in the hard-packed dirt at the base of the palm tree, those that are trampled on year after year, continue to break through the hard soil and proudly sprout their yellow blooms . . .

I would recall the bare beauty of the tree, and wonder again why G‑d had left the tree upside-down. What could an inverted tree possibly contribute to the world?

Light is referred to as peace, because it gives us the ability to distinguish between different things, and thus to perceive the uniqueness of every person...

“Yesterday I went into The Red Shed and looked for the photography stall. I asked the owner, Anne, if she remembered a family with lots of children coming in and she said ‘yes’ immediately,” my mother-in-law paused . . .

I longed to join those hunched figures crying at the wall, because even though I wasn’t exactly sure what to cry about, I knew that I wanted to be part of a longing for something great. I knew that one day I too would cry for the Temple and whatever it re...