Voices

I met them in my car. There were maybe 10,000 or so of them hovering about. Some looked like Walt Disney cartoon angels, others were straight out of store window displays or greeting cards. Some looked like the plaster angels I used to buy in a Mexican market

Pamela lit the Menorah for the first time that Hannukah, a little Menorah that Mrs. Shaffer brought us. And then she continued lighting her candle for the Sabbath every Friday. Without fail, ever...

"Jay," my friend wrote in his e-mail, "I don’t think you should go to shul and ask G-d for forgiveness. This Yom Kippur you should stay home, and G-d should beg you to forgive Him for what He's done to you"

Leon Friedman was a Holocaust survivor who wrestled with his memories, suffered depression, and what some would call "survivor's guilt." I saw him frequently for one problem or another; sometimes I thought he just wanted to talk...

When you are insecure about something, your haircut, tattoo, or choice of clothing, then others perceive your discomfort. But a person who is confident in his manner and stride, and about what he represents, gives off an aura of security that doesn't force others to do a "double take."

She's only seven years old, and the doctors say she has lost her battle with cystic fibrosis, that she will live only a few more weeks. But for some reason, nobody has stopped praying...

That his Shabbat prayer was a gift to last all my years, Grandfather could hardly have known. And in the very last moments before my carriage moved, he gave me still another, utterly precious gift...

As we began to ride we heard the sirens. First one, quickly followed by another, then another, until their wailing filled the streets and pierced the skies. As each ambulance passed, my contractions grew more intense

Dear Daughter: I've waited for this moment since the day you were born some twenty years ago. And yet, I feel thoroughly and utterly unprepared...

Cliff jumping is fraught with danger: One risks breaking bones on the jagged rocks, landing in shallow water or drowning in the mighty waves. Our spiritual jump is also risky...

In one pivotal moment, the star seems to be relating its life story: birth, growth, death, and even afterlife, fuse together in a strange and tragic way

I live in the Bizarro World. Bizarro World is a parallel universe in Superman's world where everything is the opposite. Up is down. Black is white. Right is wrong.

Walking the paths of Auschwitz, I began to doubt humanity and its Creator. I felt suspended in a world I could not comprehend...

Our lives are like the reverse side of a great tapestry. From the back, it all looks random and chaotic: all we can see are the knots, the imperfections, some bumps, smears of color...

Suddenly, I felt a violent blow strike my head. An eighteen foot wooden beam, plunging from the scaffold atop the five story-structure, hit me and sailed into the street as if thrown by a catapult

Three Jews bumping into each other in an international European airport; there had to be some inner meaning behind it all. "Do you want to put on tefillin?" I asked. "No," he answered. He had a story, though...

The year is the same, the days are the same, but the months are different. It is a time quite individual -- created by G-d, especially for me...

We danced and sang in the sukkah, the transformative rain a mikvah-like immersion in G-d's presence and will...

It's got to be one of the toughest marketing problems of all time: selling Orthodox Judaism. You've got all this long black stuff... And then there are the hats

There was Ari, 15, who used to say that "life was too short to waste on anger." Noah, 6, was extra nice to children who had trouble making friends. Adira, 5, was strong-willed and carefree. Natan, 4, had Down syndrome and loved to play guitar and sing...