Thoughts on being Jewish

I didn't write this - received as a forward from a friend and it was too good to pass up. Lilly Friedman doesn't remember the last name of the woman who designed and sewed the wedding gown she wore when she walked down the aisle over 60 years ago. But the grandmother of seven does recall that when she first told her fiancé Ludwig that she had always dreamed of being married in a white gown, he realized he had his work cut out for him. For the tall, lanky 21-year-old who had survived hunger,... Sign in to see full entry.

So, an Irish Catholic, a Japanese American,an Iranian Muslim, a Protestant, a Black and a Jew walk into a bar. Sounds like the start of a joke, right? But this was my UMass dorm floor reunion, arranged by moi, that took place in a FEW bars this past Sunday up in Boston, and these were the people who made my Freshman year so enjoyable. From the looks of it, we still have that effect on each other. Several others, including a Lesbian and a gay guy, couldn't make it, but we missed them and they... Sign in to see full entry.

Last night, I went to a lecture called "Israel's Most Misunderstood Community" given by world-renowned ultra-orthodox writer and speaker, Hanoch Teller. Teller, who has written over 20 books, thousands of essays and short stories, teaches around the globe and leads tours of Israel's Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem, spoke about the origins of Binai Brok - a town settled in the 1920's by persecuted Hassids in Poland. Teller's style is funny, warm, upbeat and contemporary. And I'm not surprised,... Sign in to see full entry.

Last month, my husband’s father, Gerald Cohen, died in Murfreesboro, TN. In a nursing home and 88 years old, Gerald took his last breath as Jeff and Jeff’s sister, Elaine, held his hand. The rest of the family flew down for the funeral in Nashville on Sunday. On Monday, we were all scheduled to fly back to Stamford where we planned to sit Shiva that week. But it seems Gerald, a Weather Channel aficionado who, when hale and hearty would call whenever extreme weather came within 1,000 miles of us,... Sign in to see full entry.

I just came back from a fascinating lecture given by University of Connecticut Physics Professor, Ronald Mallett, whose book, Time Traveler, is being made into a movie by Spike Lee. Mallett, who is African American, was thrown into poverty when his father died at the age of 33, leaving four small children for his mother to raise. Mallett was so distraught over his father's death, he was highly influenced by HG Wells book, Time Machine. Mallett wanted to go back into time to save his father's... Sign in to see full entry.