“The Goldberg Variations” That’s what Nisa, my amazing sister-in-law said has been helping her through the past, difficult several months. It wasn’t a random comment. Every Passover, over dinner, we go around the table (or the screen) and give each person an opportunity to talk about freedom and/or their narrow place, if they choose. Nisa […]

Did Frances Elizabeth Willard, the long-time president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), ever go to a Seder? If she went, did she follow tradition and drink four glasses of amazingly sweet Kosher wine? Or did she follow WCTU’s dictates and, as many people do, drink four glasses of grape juice instead? I ask

I spent the better portion of today cooking and trying to remember to think about freedom. I was cooking – and trying to think about freedom – because Passover starts tonight and it really is a Passover like no other. While we’re doing something very low key tonight with our daughters, tomorrow we’re hosting a

Since early Tuesday morning when I got an appointment get a vaccine at 6 pm tonight, I’ve known that today was going to be meaningful. , Getting the shot would be meaningful enough, of course. But just to add a meaningful cherry on top, tonight is the night I was going to say Kaddish at

To a man with a post office, every problem looks like a stamp. At least that seems to be the thinking behind today’s #stampoftheday, a 4-cent stamp issued in 1961l. Unlike most stamps, it doesn’t picture a person or a place. Instead prominently features seven of the most famous words in American history: “Give me

In 1968, when I was 11 and my brother was 16, he snuck out of the hotel room where my family was staying in Las Vegas to play blackjack in the casino. My family was touring the southwest and west in a U-Haul truck that had been converted into a camper van, which meant we

“Break on through to the other side,” the Doors’ hit song from 1967, was an important part of the soundtrack of my last semester in college, in the spring of 1980. Today, as I ponder the fact as of Monday I finally will be eligible to be vaccinated, the idea of getting to “the other

I can’t remember the last time I was in a museum. Not that I’m a frequent or regular museum goer but I do periodically go and almost always glad I went. But I’m really not sure what the last time was. Could it really have been the Ansel Adams show at the Museum of Fine

“If only my uncle, the general, was here.” Those were the magic words that allowed my parents to get married in Baltimore on August 1, 1944. And they were the words my mother loved to repeat when she told the story, which she did so frequently that her grandkids could (and would) mouth the words

Six years ago today, I got on an airplane in Boston to head to Los Angeles. Later that day, the National Weather Service officially reported that the winter 2014-2015 was the snowiest year since we started keeping track of such things. We had, at that point received 108.6 inches, breaking a record set in 1994-1995