Tag: Merissa Nathan Gerson

Somewhere between San Francisco and Berkeley I developed a craving for hummus.  Not hippie grocery hummus, not coffee shop hummus, not deli hummus but hummus, the real deal.  I took… Read more »

Recently at a gas station I saw a kippah on the security camera. It struck me as odd and exciting to see not only a kippah but a woman with… Read more »

“America is wonderful during the week, but painful on Shabbat.”  This is what my friend Malika wrote me after her first Shabbat back in America.  I am a Shabbat nut.… Read more »

The difference between being Jewish in Israel and Jewish in America hinges on the perceiver.  In Israel I was either the least or the most Jewish.  Either I knew too… Read more »

On a break from a Hindu Ashram in the Catskills I stopped into Wal-Mart.  Yes, Wal-Mart in the mountains of New York happens to, in addition to an odd myriad… Read more »

There are rules, somewhere, about how to be a Chasid on an airplane.  In that same rulebook there are most likely also a set of behavioral norms for a woman… Read more »

A ba’al tshuva friend suggested I read William Zinsser’s On Writing Well to help clean up my prose.  I read it like bible roulette.  Make a wish, close your eyes,… Read more »

I was in love with a medicine worker. We sat in the mountains at an outdoor café towards the end of my four-month trip to South Africa. We were sealed… Read more »

In a hot tub in California I met my cousin Ruthie for the first time. I had known her my entire life, but never like I did in our bathing… Read more »