Known or unknown sperm donors? Discuss. Checking out the Israeli army for a daughter. Getting to know Linda McCartney. Leaving Lubavitch and happy on horseback in Mongolia. Jewish women in real estate crack that steel ceiling.
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Liana Finck’s graphic novel is A Bintel Brief. She writes and draws a monthly column for The Forward and her cartoons appear irregularly in The New Yorker. Her graphic blog — “Excuse Me” — appears regularly at Lilith.org/blog.
“Do you know Aimee Rothstein is dying?” My heart flutters as if tickled. Or maybe it is only the lamb nuzzling my palm as it searches for food. “What?” “Cancer,” Penny says. “Bone cancer, they’re thinking. How old do you figure she is, anyway? I’m guessing she’s around our age.” Aimee Rothstein dying. The news... Read more »
In the dining room of my family’s home, my fiancée’s fingers interwoven with mine, my mother across from us was ablaze with wild ideas as she announced, “You both should use Ilana’s college boyfriend as a sperm donor! He has a great hair color and I always loved his mother!” She had our best interests... Read more »
Objective: to be determined (skills in order of acquisition) 1961: age five • Can tell time with my stomach. • Can wake before Mama, Daddy, Amy, or Debbie, pad into the kitchen, and take a jar of Hellman’s and package of bologna out of the icebox, then lift them above my head and set them... Read more »
I come from a family that has owned New York City real estate for three generations. Not a lot: we have shares in two Manhattan office buildings that were built in the early 20th century. (We also used to own one-quarter of the iconic Flatiron Building, which we sold in the 1990s.) We also own... Read more »
Linda McCartney, unlike Yoko, was white and blonde. Like Yoko, she was hard to put in a box. She is closely identified with the 1960s, during which she took classic photos of rock stars like the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Janis Joplin, and Bob Dylan, and her talent as a photographer was showcased... Read more »
One day, a week after my second chemo treatment for my fourth bout with cancer, I was feeling all right and decided to take the T to Newbury Street in Boston to see an exhibit of paintings by the renowned artist Samuel Bak, who survived the Holocaust. I was bald and wore a black turban.... Read more »
When my daughter Yael was 17, I checked out her army just as I had checked out nursery schools, junior highs and high schools. Like all secular Jewish Israeli girls, at 18 she would be drafted into the Israel Defense Forces for 22 months. To check out conditions in the IDF, I pretended I was... Read more »
