Stepmothers, from sinister stereotype to contemporary counter-narratives. Campus anti-Semitism in North Carolina. Is boredom in shul a vital career booster? Summer fiction to keep you suitably distracted. Gender, power and holding the door.
Table of contents Get the issue
When she was first diagnosed with ovarian cancer, my mother was 50. The cancer was advanced. Stage IV. The doctors gave her two years. “You can’t tell me how long... Read more »
When my mother would call me, she’d tell me about the things that filled her days: watching the sun rise over Montreal, carefully watering her African violets. Liquid had to... Read more »
David Cohen loves Allison Feldman. Please pray for Ruth Geller who drank the wine for Elijah in front of the children. Russell Weiss loves a goy named Israel. Judith Leit... Read more »
Tenement on Hester Street,Scarcely food enough to eat. Scraps of coal her only heat. “We fear God,” the old men said. “And keep a cover on our head.” Moil and... Read more »
We are tired of defending the land. In thick black stockings or cut-off jeans, we walk for miles past smoke clouding pockets of sky, letting Old City dust enter our... Read more »
“Tsimtsum—contraction—ushers in the cosmic drama…for it is God’s withdrawal that first creates space.”—Gershom G. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism Every mile of the drive from West 22nd Street... Read more »
How do you find your bearings in such an illogical place, Rae wonders. Lookalike white stucco houses with terracotta roofs follow one another on grid-like streets until a wall stops... Read more »
After the Flamingo lost $300,000 in its first two weeks, Meyer Lansky forced Ben to close and retool. Mr. Lansky sent some of his men from the El Cortez to... Read more »
I’ve been coming to shul on the high holidays my whole life. I think back to my earliest days in synagogue, when I was really little, and I remember exactly... Read more »
One September day in 1941, Esther Braun, a tiny 19-year-old with a shock of curly black hair, daughter of Jewish immigrants, got off a train in Chapel Hill. This was... Read more »
What's it like for this thirtysomething Jew raising stepdaughters? Silver tells the girls her own stories, then learns some truths from other stepmothers coming out from under the sinister stereotype.
