Archive for May, 2010

His name is Volf. A Chasid in his mid-thirties with a long black beard and wide unkempt payess, a pair of dark eyes set deeply beneath heavy eyebrows, a large forehead with wrinkled lines pointing to the heavens. His shoelaces…

If you are on Main St. in Flushing on a school day at 5 o’clock, you will see us. Running across the crowded Main street as fast as we can, our mid-calf pleated skirts flapping around our knee…

It was a large place with many stones and it never looked good. It looked worse in the dark. The stones were large and there were many smaller stones piled on top of them and when you looked at…

The rabbinical head of a Jerusalem Yeshiva was so incensed at hearing of a student engaged in criminal behavior, that he took out a gun and shot the student twice. So claims an indictment issued against…

I come

to my daughter’s place

invitation in my purse

among my to-do lists, my half-read book,

my nibbled-on snack, my nearly-gone drink.

A Jewish tradition

A superstition

inviting the dead to their loved ones’ weddings.

My daughter…

“I totaled my truck last week,” he said. “These two Mexicans and a black guy, they came around that gas station down on 11th,” he said, motioning vaguely behind him, “and turned into me and hit me almost head-on.”…

Diary of an unpious editor

– I’m not looking to publish on blogs, he says.

– It’s not a blog, I say, it’s an online journal.

– Whatever, he says. It’s not the kind of thing I’m looking for.…

The phone calls started when I was thirteen. My mother said no, no and no. By the time I was seventeen it was calls every night, my mother carrying the cordless into her bedroom, to whisper and scribble notes.…