27 Aug
Beshert, Latest

Beshert | A Mensch with an Edge

We met through a friend on July 4th, 1996. My friend Sheryl asked me to fireworks; her friend Cliff was saving spaces at Gasworks Park, a hilly green space abutting Seattle’s Lake Union that featured old-fashioned gasworks. Saving spaces there on July 4th is a commitment and a half. The show doesn’t start until 10:15 pm.; to snag a premium spot, Seattleites line up at eight in the morning.  Sheryl said, “You and Cliff might really get along.”  At that point in my life, I pined over whichever guy in the corner of whichever party had long hair, a joint between his lips, and “I will ruin your life,” written all over him. I couldn’t have recognized beshert if it crawled out of Lake Union and bit me on the tusch—especially with the kind of mensch who would...

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27 Jul
Israel, Latest

Jerusalem: A City Divided by Sound

It's just before 8 a.m. on a Shabbat morning in Jerusalem. At this early hour, the dry summer heat hasn't settled down on the city yet, and the air is still fresh with the scent of jasmine. The Jerusalem stones are still soft-looking. I'm sitting in my garden, enjoying the calm, beginning to read the paper, drinking a cup of coffee. There's never much traffic on my street in a leafy neighborhood in the southern part of the city, and almost none on a Saturday morning. And then a sharp crack sound. And another, and another until the din is ominously loud. The neighborhood suddenly wakes up. "Where is that noise coming from?" asks a middle-aged woman, plodding into the street in her fuzzy Lion King slippers and tying the belt of her silk bathrobe tighter. "Is that...

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