What you choose to do right now will be up to you. I start by being unapologetically Jewish, and take that with me as I lie down and as I rise up, I speak of it on my way. If you’ve never done this, you could perhaps look at your mezuzah, kiss it, and decide if you are ready to…
This post serves as an update to my blog post from 10/08/23 : Brutal Attack in Israel: No Coverage in the SF Chronicle in which I described the shock that there was no coverage of this important situation– and my letter to the Chronicle: “I am not writing about something that appeared in your printed Sunday paper this morning. I’m…
This morning as I sat down to read The Sunday San Francisco Chronicle, I fully expected to see a news story about the surprise attack on Israel and the continuing fall-out. I was shocked to see that there was NO COVERAGE in print whatsoever. I wrote a letter to the editor about it. I publish it here, because I have…
As a Jew in America, and a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, I am angered when others define my race as white. In fact, many Jews are not white— and yet some people, especially in the US as opposed to Europe, think it’s ok to define “our race” as white because many have white skin, and therefore benefit from white…
Since the beginning of my life– long before I turned to metal art for expression, I knew that we were lucky to be alive. And, I felt tasked with carrying on Jewish traditions in the face of anti-semitism. Growing up Jewish in Los Angeles, every year at our annual Passover seder, our Holocaust Surviving grandmother and grandfather would raise a…
I became an artist because of the deep injustices in the systems of the world towards those who are deemed “other..” In fact my first mezuzot were a testament to the suffering of my grandparents during the Holocaust. Before the incident with George Floyd, but in the recent rise of racist and anti-Semitic attacks in the U.S. my father and…
The 10th grade at the San Francisco Waldorf High School has an amazing 3-4 week course on Tanakh during the year long “Explorations in Early Literature” track course. In the track course, they learn the Ramayana, Egyptian Book of the Dead, Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia, the New Testament and more. For Tanakh, students read passages, do pictorial representations of scenes, learn…
The art work I create would not have come to be without the intense struggle for survival my maternal grandparents endured– all in the name of being Jewish. It seems that the survivors of the Holocaust atrocities all have similar themes– Fascism, starvation, dehumanization– but also hope. Our family’s story is no different. Here’s a video of my grandmother…
Thanks to the Jewish Student Satellite Initiative , I will answer this question! Tomorrow’s conversation will be with a teen group formed to create Jewish education experiences that are tangible and integrated with science and art. I will share the story of the Barbed Wire Mezuzah, which was selected to travel into space with the first Israeli Astronaut, Ilan Ramon. I…
The act of being called upon to read from the Torah in front of a congregation is called an aliyah: an ascent or instance of rising. When one receives the honor of being called upon to read from the Torah, the Rabbi, Cantor or spiritual leader uses this art to hold the place of the next reading. For years I…
Every year before the Passover Seder, my Holocaust survivor grandmother would say, “Once we were slaves. Now we are free. Every day I live is a victory over Nazi brutality.” As a child this holiday meant so much to me. Today, we continue to honor her and all those who are not free not just by celebrating Passover, but by…