Letters

Awakening to Mercy

by Susan Freeman

Maybe there's a reason why the  traditional siddur has us begin each day with a pause for prayer before we leap out of bed and gulp down our power breakfasts. Tape our own voice and move through this guided meditation on awakening--gratefully--to each new day.

Guarding the Garden

Who says Adam and Eve (and Lilith) don’t need Deborah Tannen? Enjoy this excerpt from a new, screwball musical comedy (music and lyrics by Margot Stein Azen), one of the most intelligent Jewish renderings of eco-feminism that we’ve yet seen.

Why I Love/Hate the German Language

by Yona Zeldis Mcdonough

As a Vassar undergrad, the author’s negative feelings for all things German collide with her professors’ love of Heine, Goethe and Kaffee mit Schlagsahne. Then by chance she discovers the work of Gertrud Kolmar (whose poetry appears here), a brilliant, forgotten German-Jewish muse murdered at Auchwitz.

The Cult of Miriam

by Susan Schnur

Gaiac healer, goddess, ecstatic rock n' roll mama? 

Beauty is the Mother of Death

by Susan Schnur edited by Jack Riemer and Nathaniel Stampfer

Sometimes we think that all we can leave to our inheritors is our jewelry, cash, and bubbe's linens. There's more, as you'll see from these touching examples of a neglected Jewish tradition: telling those you love what it is you really want them to know about you.

• Jennie Stein Berman
• Shulamit Rabinovitch
• Harold
• Nitzah Marsha Jospe
• Holocaust Wills

Turning 40: A Ritual Talmudically

by Rivkah Walton

Thirty five friends help a woman cross that dangerous threshold into midlife. Candles, sandals and Talmudic rumination.

Street of Whores

by Ruth Knafo Setton

A young Moroccan editor confronts her identity after her father’s death with insights derived from watching Tel Aviv’s prostitutes.