July 27, 2020 by admin

Jewish Grandparents •

To explore and support the sometimes under-recognized role of grandparents in the complex dynamics of today’s “new Jewish family,” Lee M. Hendler and David Raphael in 2017 co-founded the Jewish Grandparents Network. They seek to develop materials and partnerships that will advance the blessings that grandparents represent. Recent video conversations have featured experts, also grandparents themselves, such as Jane Isay, author of Unconditional Love, Hedda Sharapan, consultant to Fred Rogers Productions, and Marshall Duke a psychologist who has researched the role of family narratives in promoting emotional stability in children. jewishgrandparentsnetwork.org

Continue Reading

The Lilith Blog

October 15, 2018 by Yona Zeldis McDonough

The Depth of Grandparents’ Love

Lilith’s Fiction Editor Yona Zeldis McDonough spoke to memoirist and novelist Kathryn Harrison about her latest foray into family history, On Sunset.

“Blending family history and mythology, anecdotes and photographs, this book is not simply one woman’s open love letter to two magnificently eccentric grandparents; it is also a testament to the enduring power of memory,” writes Kirkus.

YZM: You have written extensively—and well as memorably and beautifully—about your family, including your grandparents, in other essays. Why did you decide to focus exclusively on them now? 

KH: I don’t so much decide to write a book as arrive at it. In the case of On Sunset, it’s only now, in my late fifties, with three adult children, that I am beginning to understand what it means to take on the care of a child—a newborn—at 71 and 62—the magnitude of my grandparents’ love. I never felt myself a burden shouldered for my irresponsible teenage mother. 

Continue Reading