This is not a poem. This is a cry. Gd!I am praying to You.Will I live, or will I die?I am thankful for what was, what is.Gd, If I have to die, Please do it with as little pain as possible.Gd!I am praying for my family.Please let them have as little pain as possibleIn their…
Category: me
On the Road to my Favorite Place in Pain
Tomorrow, I am going to Israel. I have been there in times of joy. I have been there in times of pain when even the taxi drivers thanked visitors not deterred by the suicide bombings. This time it is different. The pain is never easy, but this time, the pain is unbearable. Every account, every…
Another (not so new anymore) Adventure or Вот новый поворот.
Summer is coming to an end even though to me it feels like it somehow evaporated without actually being here. It was a strange summer, indeed, weatherlike. Cold and rainy for the most part, then turning to extreme heat for a little while, and now the days start kind of cold already, lots of rain,…
What’s in the Age? Never Late to Learn!
It looks like these tragic days everyone is thinking about time and age. Time that we live, hopefully in peace, and age that our children learn about war. Time that flies away, and age that deepensthe scars. To me, the concept of one’s age is a changing one depending on my mood, experience,and overall outlook…
Thoughts about Purim this Year – The Origins of Love and Hate
When we talk about the villain of the Purim story, Haman, we most often go to the origins of his ancestor, Amalek, noting how he (his nation) waged war on those of the children of Israel that were week and lingering at the end of the procession on their way out of Egypt: וַיָּבֹ֖א עֲמָלֵ֑ק…
Rosh haShana Yearning for PEACE
This erev Rosh haShana as every year I find myself in the kitchen listening to Selichot at the Kotel making my babushka’s Lekach (honey cake) thinking about her life hoping to become one day as good a cook as she was.My grandmother’s life was not easy at all. She had to run from pogroms from…
Everything is for the Best – הכל לטובה
So all the stress, all the packing, all the store hopping for my next kitchen has been in vain. Not every time things work out as you think they should. Sometimes, the Universe (Gd?) thinks otherwise and then it pushes you to look at the situation from all kinds of perspectives. So, today my perspectives…
Thinking of You
According to the Jewish calendar, today is my father’s fifth yortzeit. Fittingly, the Parshah that we are going to read tomorrow is Acharei Mot – אַֽחֲרֵ֣י מ֔וֹת – After the Death. It is really strange to live by the two ways to count time. All of us have two birthdays, two ways to commemorate many…
Gratitude
“Life is too ironic to fully understand. It takes sadness to know what happiness is. Noise to appreciate silence & absence to value presence.” Abhysheq Shukla Most of my life I’ve been battling with feelings of sadness, depression, and uselessness despite things that some note as great achievements. I’ve had better and worse days, and…
Thoughts of the Day
What a strange day! 31 of December. A day that does not really have any significance for me anymore, and yet, I keep going back in my years to that day in the snowy, cold, and crisp native city of mine, where my sister, z’l and I would be waiting for the night that promised…
New Endeavors
Summer is coming to an end. This means that we have been living in this strange world limbo for half a year. Some of us got sick, and recovered. Some lost their loved ones, some lost their jobs, and all of us lost our ways of life that each once of us deemed sacred in…
More Bread Adventures
Recently, I had my first video experience. I am not a video person, and although I have taught some cooking, and I have taught many classes on Zoom, I have never done food preparation live. Now, of course, when everything and everyone is on Zoom, it was only a matter of time for me to…
Noshing Across the Nation 