No one can really tell you how chronic illness will affect your life. It is a bumpy road with unexpected twists and turns. In so many ways, it has mirrored my road towards conversion. My day-to-day life has changed so much. I make blessings on food but it’s hard to hold a siddur (prayerbook) in… Continue reading Friends and Fibromyalgia
Life is often funny. While I’m trying to sell a story about how one of my conversion rabbis, Elie Weinstock, told me I couldn’t set foot in a church again and my acquiescence led to losing a friendship, my head conversion rabbi, Haskel Lookstein, headed to church himself. His reason? None other than Barack Obama,… Continue reading My Rabbi Goes to Church
How Church Came Between My Friendship… When I was converting to Judaism, I asked a rabbi if I could walk into a church again. I wasn’t planning on returning for services but I had my sights on visiting the Sistine Chapel someday. It was also a question that bothered many of my Christian friends, particularly… Continue reading Between Church and Friendship
If I was a real Dominican, I would know someone going to Santo Domingo this week and I would have them drop off the copies of the Twilight saga I purchased for my cousin. (My Jewish friends tell me people do the same thing with sending things to Israel.) But I’m very American and I… Continue reading Catching Up
Hello, it’s me, the self-described worst guest in the world! And I’ve just had a long time friendship end over it. But this isn’t just the story of that loss or how I’ve come to expect the worst. As a recent convert, I’ve blogged before about how I’ve been inappropriate countless times at the Shabbos… Continue reading The Worst Guest in the World
No, it’s not what you think. So what is it? Check out “Why, as a wife, I still want to see other men”, my latest piece in The Jewish Chronicle. I DID NOT PICK THE TITLE!
I used to look forward to Thanksgiving. Well, not growing up. Unfortunately, holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas meant more abuse at home. My mother reveled in the fact that we were not going to be school any time so she dug in and went all out with the bruises. One Thanksgiving beating left me hobbling… Continue reading Happy Thanksgiving!
Things don’t have to be as complicated as “Friends.” Here’s a new piece I’m working on. I hope I’ll find a place to publish it. I think it definitely has an audience in fellow converts, baalei teshuva, and basically those of us who have had more experience in the non-Orthodox, not Jewish world. I had… Continue reading Girl Meets Boy for Unhappily Ever After
Someone gave me the heads up about ButYouDontLookSick.com recently and I wanted to link a good post I found there “The Pain of Disease and the Triumph of Togetherness”: An excerpt: “There’s a pain that can be worse than any physical disease. It’s the loneliness you feel when you see your friends go out and… Continue reading Loss & The Three Weeks
From Rav Binny Freedman of Isralight on Parshas Balak: “The concept of being ‘chosen’ as a people does not mean we are better than anyone else. What it means is that we, (like any other nation) have our own special gifts and therefore our own special purpose. And this different (and not better) relationship with… Continue reading Am I more special than you?
Memoirs of a Jewminicana 