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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.…
There are two things I ought to make clear. First, almost as soon as she starts telling me about her career (as we wade through the sleet from the bus stop to the market), my grandmother declares that…
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…
Is your excessive talk beneficial to you? [ . . . ] And do you consider it proper that you peruse the [weekly Pentateuchal] portion twice in Hebrew and…
Without warning, on the 20th of April, 1749, at the end of the Passover Festival, Sunday, at about 17 hours [noon], I was kidnapped and taken away by force thanks to a false denunciation made against…
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…
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…