Jewish Word | Chaver: Friend or Lover?
“What are we, exactly?”
Beshert | Inside Our Gates
Josh and I met in Jerusalem, just outside the Jaffa Gate. He was a tour guide before COVID-19 brought the tourist trade shuddering to a...
Beshert | Crushing on Leonard Nimoy
It was 1970 and “Star Trek” had just ended on TV. Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr. Spock, the hybrid human-alien, had a young fan in...
Beshert | “I Get It.”
I’ve always been super confident in most things but faltered when it came to dating and love. I was looking for ease and perfection. And,...
Beshert | Finding My Own Kind
My Grandma Phyllis always told me to “Stick to your own kind” when it came to dating. But to her disappointment, I’d never dated another...
Beshert | My Two Bundles of Meant-To-Be
I always wanted to be somebody’s mother. Since I was six, I would fantasize about holding my baby, dressing her and loving her. I shared...
Beshert | This Isn’t What I Ordered
"I dreamed of certain outcomes. But it’s the ones I didn’t see coming that feel exactly right—beshert."
Gen Z Meets Dr. Ruth
What does Dr Ruth, a 91-year-old sex therapist who seems to have done it all have to say to a 22-year-old who grew up with little to no sexual taboos?
Beshert | The Song of Our Lives
Then I saw her. Across the crowded room. Dancing alone in a red dress. It wasn’t just her beauty. It was a spirit emanating from her being. I approached her and we talked a bit. I found out her name was Rusti. Enchanting. But she was swarmed by other boys—she was beautiful, talented and smart.
Nevertheless, when I returned to my fraternity house that night, I told my brothers that I would marry her. It was love at first sight.
Beshert | Once Upon a Time in Montevideo…
I met my husband in a hotel lobby in Montevideo, Uruguay on my 27th birthday. We were browsing the lobby stores because the hotel’s only...
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.
Beshert | Really Glad We Didn’t Skip That Party
That we met on February 22, my Grandma Clara’s birthday, my parents’ wedding day and my Bar Mitzvah day on my mom’s and dad’s 22nd anniversary, must be pure coincidence, right? We chose our wedding day, June 10th, randomly; it turned out to be my grandparents’ wedding day nearly 70 years earlier. Another coincidence… unless one accepts that beshert operates in strange and mysterious ways.