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When [Isaac Luria] was sick, he blessed each companion with a suitable blessing for him, in accordance with the spark of his soul. R. Ḥayim Vital was not there with them at the time of the blessing…
When the Lord enlarged the border of the Jewish people, and they increased and grew exceedingly mighty, and the land was filled with knowledge of the Lord [see Exodus 1:7; Isaiah 11:9] by the…
I, David, son of King Solomon of blessed memory, from the Khibur Desert, arrived at the gate of the State of Rome on the fifteenth day of the month of First Adar in the year 5584 [1524]. A…
A scion from Portugal by the name of Solomon Molkho sprouted forth from the trunk of Israel [see Isaiah 11:1] and spent his youth among the scribes of the king—where they had been scattered since the…
The tale of the Generation of the Land is a sad tale. Reflecting about the source of the depression that the situation in Israel instills in me, I can only ascribe it to expressions of ethnocentric…
Bread
Very early in the morning we went to pick up fresh bread at Doña Blanquita’s. However, before arriving at her house that resembled the generosity of her hands and clay ovens, we had to cross a…
Even after the mourning period was over, when the flat was finally empty and my father and I locked the door and were alone together, we hardly talked to one another. Except about the most essential…
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…
Ruschuk, on the lower Danube, where I came into the world, was a marvelous city for a child, and if I say that Ruschuk is in Bulgaria, then I am giving an inadequate picture of it. For…
Stanislaw often told me how much he liked my company, and sometimes he wondered about my Jewishness: “Look at yourself! You cannot be Jewish!” he would exclaim. And yet whenever he spoke to me about…