Free offer: I published an eBook, Cook Smart! Learn the Secrets of Your Kitchen Appliances. Today and tomorrow, it will be available for free download. If you don't have a Kindle you can get a free reader for your smartphone or PC. Reader Samantha asks for baby name help: Hi! I'd really appreciate your input! I'm desperately searching for a name for my baby boy, who is due at the end of this month. We would like to honor my husband's grandfather by naming after him. His name was Reuven, so we are looking for another good "R" name. We're not huge fans of Raphael, Raffi, or Reuven. We'd like something Jewish that would fit for a kid growing up in New York City. Ronen is our forerunner, … [Read more...]

In my last post, I wrote about the techniques used by a charedi Jerusalem school to discourage sephardic girls from applying. But subtle discrimination against sephardim (Jews with family origins in Moslem countries) occurs in all sectors. A friend of mine is looking for a junior high school for her daughter.  Another parent urged her to find a more exclusive school than the one in the neighborhood, warning her that "Jerusalem is full of frechot." Many American immigrants miss the subtle slurs against sephardim and unconsciously (or consciously) adapt them. I hadn't heard the term often but suspected that it must be referring to sephardi girls, so I looked it up. Frecha, a common name … [Read more...]

In the 1980's, my father, Ben Zion Wacholder, began writing a memoir of his World War II experience in Poland. Unfortunately we only have two chapters, as the rest was on a computer that got stolen. My niece, Shifra Goldenberg, edited the chapters with help from the family and published them on a new website dedicated to my father. These two chapters contain rich details about Jewish life in the shtetl of Ozerow, and describe how a single family reacted at a critical moment in history. In light of the upcoming deportation of the Jews, the family had to decide whether my father, as the oldest son (his sister had been shot at the beginning of the war), should stay with the family or try … [Read more...]

Last week a Beit Shemesh woman named Natalie Mashiach drove into Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet, an area occupied by extremist haredim. Dressed in a sweater and pants, Mashiach got out of her car to hang signs as part of her job for the national lottery. A group of men poured bleach on her and attacked her car with stones, breaking the windshield. They slashed the tires too. She was not injured, despite a rock being thrown at her head. But Mashiach was certain she was going to die. She describes the attack in the video below (Hebrew). It sounds like these residents intend to send a message to outsiders: Don't go into our neighborhood. Of course the reverse isn't true.  When there is a … [Read more...]

  Here is what's happening in my house and around the net. Winter has started here, as you can see from the photo I took in downtown Petach Tikva. I considered flagging down a passing car just to help me get across the street! You may or may not have noticed, but the blog was down for about 12 hours the other day. It was a learning experience as well as an exercise in patience. Apologies if you were affected. It was depressing but not as much as the fact that my teenage daughter is away on a class trip for a few days. I'm not sure how I will manage when she graduates and leaves home next year. Since becoming an IBCLC (International Board Certified Lactation Consultant), I've … [Read more...]