Why does pre-Pesach preparation put me in as bad a mood as a doctor’s appointment? Why does this beautiful holiday give me a headache? more

By the time this goes to print I will have escaped to Brooklyn for the holiday! I guess I’ve become a Purim party pooper since I’ve dropped out of the mishloach manot rat race. more

What would compel this diehard New Yorker to spend a mild February Sunday voluntarily crossing two bridges and driving on the Turnpike to visit New Jersey? My family drove seventy miles from Woodmere to the quaint town of Princeton for a fun escape. more

I used to dream of making Aliyah, but it has become a far away fantasy. During my single days I spent every summer break there and left my first job to work in Tel Aviv. more

Sometime soon, I’m going to get yelled at for invading a stranger’s privacy as I look over his shoulder on the train, inch closer to her beach chair, or spy from under dark glasses in a doctor’s waiting room.I simply want to see the title of the book she’s holding. more

The things I love about coming home after being away are: eating my own home-cooked food, sleeping in our comfortable bed, getting back into a “normal” routine, and, well, that’s about it! more

I’m not much for adventure — call me a chicken, wimp, or scaredy cat, I don’t care! I subscribe to the “better safe than sorry” rule and as a diehard city girl, I find that riding the subway in the city late at night provides enough thrills! But I do mind missing out on family fun, so I sometimes allow myself to be cajoled into venturing out of my comfort zone. I’m not talking about rappelling, bungee jumping, parasailing or scuba diving. For that class of activity I immediately respond with an emphatic NO! more

When I was a child I dreamt that I’d marry into an immigrant family very similar to my own. My children would grow up speaking Spanglish and we’d continue the traditions I grew up with. But other than my extended family I really didn’t know many other Jewish Cubans living in Brooklyn. Little did I imagine I would later go to Israel, meet and then marry a totally different type of Jewish immigrant, one from Africa, who speaks Afrikaans and a bit of Zulu, but no Spanish at all. I continue to cook for my family some of the traditional Cuban dishes of my childhood. Our children’s Spanish, however, comes straight out of the textbooks from three years of forced high school Regents preparatory classes. Their attempts at hablando espanol can make me laugh; compared to them I sound like a real Cuban native! more

The NY Times Sunday magazine recently featured an article about the dangers of yoga, titled “All Bent out of Shape, the Problem with Yoga”. The author goes into gruesome detail of various injuries sustained by both students and instructors in their intensive practice of yoga. After discussing the article at length with friends and teachers, I’ve decided it’s typical of sensationalist journalism, creating a provocative title and inserting some truths amid the extreme examples that prove the author’s point. more

I like Facebook. It should be as simple as that. So why should I feel the need to defend my time spent using that social medium, when I’m only one of 800 million active users today? I have connections with both close and distant friends on Facebook, have reunited with old elementary school chums and made new acquaintances that have turned into friendships. more