Life Lessons

Moments later, oxygen masks dropped from the overhead compartment, and the pilot announced that all in-flight personnel must return to their seats and put on their masks. They raced past us shouting "Put your masks on! Now!"

And that is when I lost it. I felt my anger contracting my soul in order to make more room in my body to hold it...

I feel my engagement ring catch on the soft fabric. Right away a cold, clammy feeling of unease settles in my stomach. There should have been a solitaire diamond sparkling there; instead the claws of the ring close over a horrendous gap of nothingness...

Whatever mood I find myself in, there is one aspect of this ritual that remains consistent: There is always a glaring life lesson reflected back to me from those crisp, cool waters. When I am receptive enough to allow that lesson to penetrate, then those are the mornings when a good swim changes my whole life...

For my son, there was one teacher who stands out. He was a new teacher, fresh out of rabbinical school and trying his hand at education...

With each long stretch of uninhabited, barren land we passed, interrupted only by an occasional primitive Bedouin village or a lone, wandering donkey or sheep, I was feeling that in every sense of the phrase, I had gone too far...

At first I couldn't imagine how I could take in a child at that moment, but I couldn't say no to a Jewish child who needed a home...

Every time the phone rang for the past two weeks, my whole body tensed. But not any more. The call has already come early this morning...

It wasn't that I was sad about going to America for Passover; I was worried about my grandmother. Since my earliest memories Grandma had always been one of the strongest people that I knew...

As I realized that all along I have had the wrong definition for accomplishment, the darkness began to fade...

I knew then that even if by some miracle I could talk my way out of not having a Gentile document, I could never explain the latkes and doughnuts in my bundle...

In the comfort of the bus, G‑d sent me my own miracle- and made me realize that everyday brings its own causes for celebration...

Please believe me when I tell you that, to me, your daughter is an angel. She is on my shoulders; she is like a butterfly in my garden. She is the most beautiful person I have never known, and I carry her within me. Every day...

I would always see her behavior as unkind, insensitive and truly narcissistic, and she would even admit to this and say that she can't change. So, round and round we'd go...

Sometimes, all I really want is for the other to recognize that I was wronged. And more often than not, a simple apology will make everything alright...

My greatest fear for years had been to be dependant on someone and not be able to look after myself. My fear became my reality...

He released his wife's hand, tapped my wrist as though to say, look, and pulled back his jacket sleeve just enough to show me that tattooed on his veiny, wrinkled skin were the numbers almost every living Jew recognizes...

He made of each Chasid a "rebbe," made each Chasid feel that responsibility and love for every Jew, made each Jew sense her or his own greatness and holiness.

That night the girls pleaded to sleep on the couch-bed in the living room in order to stand vigil lest an eagle swoop down from the sky and try to eat the poor pigeon. They would protect her. So, I felt I had no choice but to allow the stakeout. Plus, I saw something that they didn't see. The pigeon was dying...

As I gaze out into the front yard I notice the new, tiny buds peeking out from the soil below. Why didn't I notice them before? I hear a wisp of a voice within me: This is a wake-up call. Don't go back to sleep...

I bought the paints, the brushes, a book, some canvases, and the table easel, went home and cleared off the dining room table and set everything up. There it sat for about two weeks. I walked by it. I peered at it. I arranged it. I examined it...

I hope that starting this column will be an action that screams, "I will not forget what I did. I will not forget the lessons I learned. And I will not forget the miracle I experienced…"

I think there are certain times of the day, certain events you experience, that lead you back to a place in your memory where you realize just how deep, important and penetrating to the soul your experiences have been...

I've been a committed student of a Middle Eastern Dance class that meets every Wednesday night, and even though my mind was begging to differ, I knew my body would thank me later. But all I could see was a postpartum pooch shimmying in a baggy tee-shirt...

I'm onto a new perspective. What is life without a few wrinkles? And I need to stop listening to those commercials about washing that gray away...

I am one of those super-responsible Type A personalities, the kind whose first words as a baby were “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” I have been doing a pretty good job since then, right up until the moment I broke my leg..

I naively believed the builder's claims that the job would be completed in under a fortnight. Two months later, they were still going strong...

Only moments before the lights went out, I had been pondering how I could get everyone out of their hibernation in order to spend a little time together...

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to get upset with your family and how difficult it is to display the same anger for a stranger? How your home looks impeccable when you know that visitors are coming, and if not, it would look like a disaster?

As I sank into the driver’s seat on my commute home, I began my daily personal prayer to G‑d, and opened, rather ungratefully, with my list of grievances about how I had survived yet another stressful day . . .

Postcard upon postcard asking to please send a little sugar, a little butter, some warm socks. It gets cold at night. Frania wants a doll, please don't send a doll. There is no room in the ghetto for a doll...

I knew my election was quite an honor, and that my parents were very proud. I was simply scared. But I didn't tell anyone, of course. That would reveal far too much insecurity...

How would life be if we simply explained its occurrences in a positive way?

I tell myself that Marnie loves being a victim, maybe even suffers from some kind of martyr complex. It’s as if she’s trying to reinvent a famous heroine burnt by the stake...

I am always running. I am always moving. There is simply so much to do and so little time to do it. And it is easy to rationalize, to explain, to excuse because I am busy doing good things, positive things, which is why I can never slow down. But as much as you have to do, you have to keep the speed limit...

Every Yom Kippur I thought of Aunt Arlene, but I did nothing. I decided to stay angry...

I've always felt slightly self-conscious as the only family on the block whose father was a Rabbi and made less than $500,000 a year...

You sent the captions, pictures, and mementos with your trust of an album’s completion. And there your pictures sat. For years...

Rose felt like a leaf caught between heavy gusts of wind with no anchoring force to answer her question: To keep her job, or keep the Shabbat?

What’s the difference between opting out and giving up? Why do I think it was okay for me to abandon the ski slope at forty-five while I find it terribly sad that my bachelor brother-in-law may, at the same age, decide it’s time to stop searching for a wife?

“Me, too,” I lied. “It’s . . . indecipherable.” I had seen that word the day before in a copy of Time magazine lying around the house, and decided that it sounded as glamorous as any other.

It’s an old voice, but powerful and steady. It is my zaidy (grandfather) saying the mourner’s kaddish for his father, whose yahrtzeit is on Yom Kippur.

My grandmother Sima and her brother Meir were young adults at the time of Hitler’s rise to power...

The lives of our mothers before us don’t just serve as a reference point, but more specifically, they serve as blueprints. When we live with the values that defined them, we allow them to continue to live through us...

I look at these pictures again and again. Some are already discolored, some withered with age. The victims are mainly in their early 20's.

The technician smeared some of the gooey gel and started moving the probe around my stomach. I waited for the usual comments of "Oh, look! There's a hand and there's a leg and there's another hand!" But the technician was silent...

He kept it folded into a square, tight, so it could fit in his wallet. "My princess wrote it," Daddy says as he pulls a customer by the elbow...

Near the park, we were forced to detour via a parallel street. At the next traffic light, the Rebbetzin said to me: “I heard a woman screaming. Can you go back and see what that was about?”

Roots are deeply embedded in our family and friends, particularly those who have known us most of our lives. They provide nourishment. They anchor us...