On Pesach, she would host 30 guests. Her siblings, children, friends without family nearby. The dining room table was extended to its maximum length, extra card tables snaking into the hallway and stopping at the edge of the living room where the floral sofa sat enshrined in plastic. Sunday before the first seder, her husband’s […]
Passover was on March 30 the first year I ever celebrated it. I remember it was a stormy spring in Los Angeles. Rainwater roared through the city aqueducts. I had never witnessed so much rain in Southern California before. Everything seemed to be moving in slow-motion, and everything seemed so vibrant and clear — grief […]
For those of us making seders, the list-making has been going on for quite a while now. For those of us who change dishes and pots and every damn thing in the kitchen — we are nauseous thinking of the drudgery of the next few days. For those of us who make the prep into […]
WASHINGTON — Being in the crowded, confined space of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was uncomfortable for Kevin Smokyday. It wasn’t because of the photos and videos that he saw in the museum’s permanent exhibit, but the place that it brought him back to. Originally from Kinistin First Nation in central Saskatchewan, Smokyday is a […]
The Nightingale Trio, an all-woman vocal group in Minnesota that sings Eastern European songs, is giving all proceeds from their cover of a beloved Ukrainian lullaby to the Ukrainian American Community Center in Minneapolis. “We’re all heartbroken and incensed by Russia’s mindless invasion into the beautiful country and sovereign nation of Ukraine, and we demand […]
TC Jewfolk is pleased to share some news about former columnist (now guest columnist) Jenna Zark. Jenna was one of the earliest writers at TC Jewfolk, sharing stories about Jewish holidays from the viewpoint of a newly single mom. When the pandemic started, Jenna decided to develop her columns into a book that received a […]
The first quarter of 2022 that just ended brought with it many unfortunate international developments. As I was born in Ukraine and still have close family there, I was worried about the situation in the area. While the whole world is watching Ukraine, another place where the security situation was recently escalating was Israel, giving […]
Eleven people were murdered in Israel by terrorists marking it as the deadliest time period within Israel since 2006.
In the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an Israeli friend contacted Jenna Mitelman and asked her to help two Ukrainian refugees. A single mother and her nine-year-old boy needed housing. Where could they go? “Within two hours she had offers in Switzerland, in Germany, and in Spain,” Mitelman said — and a travel […]
The story starts long ago. When I was growing up, my father was Jewish and my mother was Catholic. They attended services at a local synagogue before I was born up until the Rabbi’s sermon about how intermarriage was the greatest threat to Jewish survival. That was the last time my parents stepped foot in […]