first
It is 2:00 p.m. and Yom Kippur is quickly approaching, never an easy day, physically or emotionally. But each year, just days before, I wait in anticipation for this small thing that has become as much a part of my ritual as many other small things that I focus on as the holiday approaches. I […]
They are almost like characters in a book, these relatives that I have heard so much about but never had the opportunity to meet. The baker, the grocer, and the tanner. Yisroel (Isser) Gutman, my maternal grandfather, the one who I know the most about, owned a tannery in Mogielnica. Is it coincidence or […]
When the boys were little, they used to drag chairs into their bedroom, grab sheets from the linen closet, flashlights from the drawers, and spend hours building forts. They loved creating something out of nothing and the only limitations were the size of their room and the breadth of their imagination. Each time they did […]
It was in the early 1980s when Norm and I decided to build our first Sukkah. Neither of us had grown up with one, and so we had no family traditions to help guide us. We had to create our own, discover our own way, and find traditions that we were comfortable with. One year […]
Bamitbach 