What matters?

“What matters?” Zoe likes to ask, her arms held up in the universal child-asking-a-question gesture. She thinks it means “what’s the difference?”  To me, she sounds just like Yenta in Fiddler on the Roof whenever she says it, most often after I correct her pronunciation of a word. ( “Shrimp, shrump,” she shrugs. “What matters?”) [...]

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Best way to use up chametz

Or at least the most efficient, since I could have easily eaten the entire batch in one sitting. My standard refrain about living in a small New England city is “everything is great, except for the bagels.” Now I can say “everything is great. And have you tried my bagels?” The recipe came from Dan [...]

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Do what you love, love what you do

I spent my first year of graduate school in Jerusalem. Because this was some twenty years ago, communication with friends and family in the States was primarily by mail, which often took two or three weeks to arrive at its destination. So when my father died unexpectedly that year, I received a letter from him [...]

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And we can eat matzah why…..?

Did you ever wonder why, if we aren’t allowed to eat products made with wheat on Passover, that matzoh is totally kosher (so to speak?) I must admit that this question puzzled me until my mid-20′s, when I spent a year in yeshiva learning the laws of Passover. For those of you who don’t have [...]

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Well, I’m glad I’m sending the right message

Here’s what one reviewer on Goodreads had to say about my book, A Mezuzah on the Door. “This book helped me to realize that you should disregard your values, traditions and beliefs simply because you are in an environment where those same values and traditions are not embraced.”

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What rhymes with Nineveh?

I know it’s not near Yom Kippur, but my brilliant, creative (and single just long enough to start dating again) brother just posted this to Youtube. It’s a song about Nineveh, the town that saved itself by doing to teshuvah, much to Jonah’s great consternation.

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I’ll have your spam. I love it.

These are the kinds of comments that spammers send my (and every other blogger’s) way to try to get their links on our sites. The first time I got one, I actually fell for it and approved the comment. I guess flattery will get you everywhere with a new blogger, no matter how and utterly [...]

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I wish I had a better answer

Yesterday my girls and I were sitting in “family service” at our shul (ok, more accurately, Ella and I were sitting in family service while Zoe made endless what-is-the-opposite-of-beelines to the water fountain.) Even though I insist my children come to this service when it takes place each month, I don’t think any of us [...]

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A recipe review of questionable value

A little over a month ago I asked for challah recipes for my bread machine. I’ve been working my way through the many kind contributions, and wanted to report back. This report will inspire in you little or no confidence in my ability to make bread machine challah. The first recipe I tried came from [...]

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When I wasn’t looking…..

Homeshuling turned one! My first post was on March 1, 2009, and featured my great-grandmother’s hamnetashen recipe. I started the blog because I had been fantasizing for a while about writing a Jewish parenting book, and thought that starting a blog would help me formulate some ideas. (The not-so noble impetus for this fantasy was [...]

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