From the Editor // November/December 2015

During the Rwanda genocide, I thought about taking in a Tutsi family or adopting an orphan. But I had a baby and a job, I was writing a book and was absorbed by family problems, so I never did. A couple of months ago, when I heard NPR senior host Robert Siegel interviewing a Syrian refugee on All Things Considered, I immediately felt the same way. My husband and I are empty nesters in a home full of rooms that are mostly used for storing clothes, books, musical instruments, household items—all the consumer paraphernalia that Americans accumulate. We have a small house, but why couldn’t we, I wondered, share some of it—and some of our extra stuff—with a family from Syria that needs a safe space and time to find its way in a new...

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Putin’s Jews

Mina Yuditskaya Berliner, a retired teacher of German, could be forgiven for feeling surprised when one of her former students invited her for tea after almost half a century. Berliner, now 94, hadn’t seen him since she made aliyah to Israel from the USSR in 1973. But in 2005, the former student came to Israel to visit—an official visit, no less, the first ever made by a Soviet or Russian leader.

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