Good Shabbos. Have you ever had the experience of sitting down to take a final exam and the professor has given you a choice to write about one of the two topics you know like the back of your hand? And, as you write that essay, fingers flying across the page, you can’t help but… Continue reading Mutti’s 90th birthday kiddush

I am 3 or 4 years old. My arch enemy sits in front of me. I have mustered all my strength to fight, not to give in. I am steel. I am solid, implacable will. To outsiders, I am an unrepentant, unapologetic, uncooperative child. To me, the insider, I am a person holding on to… Continue reading Chapter Two – The Battle

  It is difficult for me, as I reflect on my journey, to tease apart the ramifications that my parents’ divorce had on me versus the wartime experiences of my mother.  The trauma of living though Nazi Germany, adjusting alone to life in America, and eventually marrying a Methodist raised Harvard scholar, was all wrapped… Continue reading The Glove, continued

A black leather glove in my peripheral vision triggered terror in me. A panic rose in my body as the ominous, sinister gloved hand moved towards me. These descriptive words came much later. At that moment, it was only a scream and a sob, followed by another scream, another sob. Within seconds, my mother’s voice… Continue reading The Glove

It is possible to drown in the grief, to let the wolves gnarl on its bones, to lie down, to succumb, allowing the peace of love’s chamber to engulf you. Wretched grief arising from love; Love eternal, endless, all-embracing wants no separation, no end. Yet grief’s darkness overcomes us; grief for those taken too soon,… Continue reading Yom Ha’Atzmaut

In moments of my deepest pain, she recedes, like a flag disappearing on the shoreline while my raft is borne out to sea alone, adrift, tossed among the waves.   My body curls into fetal position, tears are my blanket, the water, my solace and my fear.   Yet within me stirs my dragon. She… Continue reading She Recedes

I don’t remember when I learned about the rooms, but I always knew of their existence. It sounds contradictory, but I lived it. If you are an honest person, you know that we can live inside contradictions quite easily. The problem begins when we become aware of them. We had rooms of music, literature, and art, a room… Continue reading Survival’s Shadow: Prologue