Netflix’ Operation Varsity Blues is ranked #3 in America this week. And like most of you I assume, I watched the story of privilege, greed, and deception unfold with a heavy heart, a dropped jaw, and a dash of nausea. As a veteran educator who is also the mother of a college student, I couldn’t …
Continue reading “Call ‘Em Like You Siyum: How the Orthodox Jews Get Learning Right”
If last week’s siege of the U.S. Capitol building underscored anything, it’s that America, like us all, exists in fluidity, spiral, and cycle. America speaks her own ambiguities and complexities. And we are to listen. We are to listen to her urging. We are to be about the questions while too many are merely about the answers. …
Continue reading “Paradigm Shift: With a Twist of Liminality”
My husband and I just had an argument while putting air in the tires of our bike. Yes, that happened. Our daughter explained we have been around each other non-stop for too long. She may be right… or maybe my husband was simply in the wrong. Either way, our family — like yours, I’m assuming …
Continue reading “One Epic Game of Mancala: Teaching in the Age of COVID-19”
Full disclosure — my school received a D+ for Diversity on the California Niche high school rankings. Our entire student body is Jewish. While at first I chuckled at that score, I do actually take issue with it. Even at a modern Orthodox all girls day school, diversity exists beyond just being Ashkenazi or Sephardic, …
Continue reading “Hold Me Closer, Tiny Stanza: Why Poetry is Essential for Anti-Racism”
One of the most talented people I know just posted a video of himself singing a classic song from my childhood — “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” A standard in my own father’s repertoire (second only to “On Top of Old Smokey” if I’m being honest), these sudden lyrics caused me a …
Continue reading “The Ostrich in the Mirror: And Other Epiphanies from the Quarantine”
This Christmas Eve I found myself bereft of those famous tidings of comfort and joy and instead found myself fit to be tied. I was waiting in line at the Walgreens Photo Counter on the corner of Pico and Robertson. To make matters worse, I was picking up three Brockhampton posters I had ordered for …
Continue reading “We are All Just Waiting: In Line at Walgreens”
Full disclosure: I’ve always had food issues. As a toddler I was often caught gnawing on a stick of butter or hiding green beans in the recesses of my high chair; as a child in Hong Kong, I refused to eat the fragrant Cantonese dishes and opted only for sticky rice. My sophisticated palate however, …
This summer my very SoCal teenage daughter had quite the “what do I wear?” dilemma — only it wasn’t the typical which-shorts-go-best-with-my-halter-top. She was hired to babysit for several my orthodox Jewish colleagues, and she didn’t own any appropriately modest clothing. (Side note: I cannot say I did not enjoy, even perhaps relish, her conundrum.) …
My father’s favorite refrain during my childhood was “Action and reaction!” Typically this wisdom would come after my brothers broke another household fixture while wrestling each other from room to room, or my screaming in the rear-facing seat of the family station wagon because someone took my Hubba Bubba chewing gum. “Caaaandice,” his voice unfolding …
In one of his final interviews, Pulitzer Prize winning dramatist Sam Shepard explained that the “most authentic endings are the ones which are already revolving towards another beginning.” While he was discussing one of the most unpredictable of fields — the theater, I apply it to another rather unpredictable profession. The one I chose twenty-one …
Continue reading “Towards Another Beginning: “Because One Did Survive the Wreck””
