My Grandmother’s Original Recipe for Hazelnut Torte Which Happens to Be Kosher for Passover
Every Passover, I bake my German grandmother's signature Hazelnut Torte. In my family, it wouldn't be Passover without it. I included the recipe in Jumping Over Shadows because it is such an amazing amalgam of my heritage and my adopted Jewish tradition. And yet, it occurred to me this morning, as I opened the little spiral-bound notebook of recipes [...]
6 Years of Morning Pages: Why I’ve Stuck with Them and Recommend Them to Everyone
Writing Morning Pages is still the practice I most recommend to anyone who wants to bring writing into their life, and to anyone who wants to live a more deliberate life. April 8 was my 6-year Morning Pages anniversary! I just recommended Morning Pages again, this time to a friend of my husband who was visiting us this week, and [...]
What Happened When Hitler Visited My Grandparents’ Hometown
Hitler himself visited Reichenberg on Friday, December 2, 1938. His visit was geared to rally the populace for the supplementary elections to the Reichstag, to be held the following Sunday, December 4, when the Sudetendeutschen would vote on who would represent this newly acquired territory in Berlin. Read on... Thus begins a chapter I ended up cutting from Jumping Over [...]
How I Got into the Purim Custom of Giving Mishloach Manot
Purim is coming up — this year it begins on the evening of March 20 — and I’ve been busy planning what to put in my Mishloach Manot, the small gifts of food Jews exchange on Purim. I wasn’t always into this custom, but let’s just say I’ve really come around. Read on in my new article on Kveller: Why Jews [...]
On Keeping More Than One Notebook
A writer should always keep a notebook. And I do! But what if you keep more than one? What if one notebook simply isn't enough to sort your thoughts, ideas, projects? Simple: then you keep multiple concurrent notebooks. The Purse Notebook It used to be that I had only one notebook, which I always carried in my purse. It was [...]
The Story Behind the Story: How to Finally Get an Essay Published
Parc Montsouris, Paris, September 2017 I have a new essay published in Bella Grace Issue 19, which hits newsstands today! I can't even begin to tell you how thrilled I am that this essay "A Day on a Bench in Paris" finally got published. For years I have been trying to find a home for this essay. Literally, years! [...]