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If I had to pick one defining moment in my Iranian life, it would be 5:00 a.m. one Friday in the fall of 1968. I was fifteen. Normally I woke to the sounds of a peddler selling green almonds and fava…
Self-Portrait with Candles is a rare example of a work with a Jewish theme by Lily Delissa Joseph. Here she has painted herself holding two Sabbath candles. Her head is covered, as is traditional for…
My mother and I are out walking. I ask if she remembers the women in that building in the Bronx. “Of course,” she replies. I tell her I’ve always thought sexual rage was what made them so crazy.…
That was how she watched over the samovar all night long, so that it would boil properly. Occasionally, Grandfather stayed over for several nights at the home of one of the gentry. Then, she would…
My parents had been married for five years when I was born, the second child after my sister, and, as far back as I can remember, I never heard them quarreling. It is possible that they…
The sunset lit up the sky, splashing the drab tenements with gold, bringing memories of Sabbath candles and the smell of gefüllte fish. When I had lived on Hester Street, I would…
Apples. That’s what New Yorkers of the 1930s remember. Apples of the Hesperides, neatly stalled on corner after corner, sold on the last trembling line of decency by men who were unwilling to beg…
As I was crossing Alexanderplatz on the first of April, I noticed a crowd of people gathering near the U-Bahn station at the other end of the square. The loudspeakers blared across the open space,…
My father lived to be ninety-eight, and until the end of his life he never failed to introduce my sister and me with a grand gesture as his “two disappointments.” We were, very simply put, an…