Beshert | Bestie In My Building

Fast forward six months later. I now lovingly call my neighbor my friend. She is exactly what I was searching for in my little neighborhood. We’ve named each other Lucy and Ethel. We laugh, we talk, we share. We drink coffee and write. We watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Best of all, she lives right below me. And has all along.

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Beshert | Bonded by the Bard

“Was that your friend Bill Shakespeare?” my youngest son, Alex, then six, asks after my husband, Steve, hangs up the phone. 

If that seems like a crazy question from a child, it was par for the course in my household, because it was words that wooed me, words that won me, and words that keep us – the entire family – in thrall. 

From the very beginning, in fact. 

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What Should the Anti-Semitism Czar Do?

For two years, America did not have a point person dealing with global anti-Semitism, and much has changed in that time: In Eastern Europe, attempts to blur historical facts regarding the Holocaust have increased, especially in Poland, while Hungary experienced a government-backed anti-Semitic smear campaign against George Soros. Anti-Semitic incidents in Western Europe remain on the rise, and in the UK, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party was widely denounced for failing to deal with anti-Semitism in its leadership and ranks. But the biggest shift in anti-Semitic trends did not happen in distant countries overseas. It occurred in the U.S., where white nationalist anti-Semitism reared its head, leading murderous attacks on synagogues, hateful Nazi marches and countless incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism. In addition, attacks on Jews in the New York area, many of them by African Americans, also saw an alarming surge.

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