My child deserved a mother that could be fully present, not crippled with pain or constantly taking a potent drug.
Sarah Erdreich’s family never talked about a mentally ill child who was sent away to the infamous Willowbrook facility. She vowed to make him part of the family again.
The Jewish community in Selma, Ala., has seen a steady decline, mirroring a general downturn across the Deep South. One family returned to see how the local temple is holding up.
When my husband and I were dating and first began talking about having children, he said that he wanted three kids.
Many of us grew up hooked on soap operas. How many of us knew we were also watching a genre whose very existence could be credited to a Jewish woman?
Finding a synagogue that’s the right fit can be emotionally challenging. But Sarah Erdeich is comforted that it doesn’t take a congregation to celebrate being Jewish.
Several years ago I saw the documentary film “The Last Abortion Clinic,” about the Jackson Women’s Health Organization (JWHO) in Jackson, Mississippi. As the title indicates, JWHO is the last clinic in the state that provides abortions; it serves women from all over Mississippi, many of whom are low-income and have trouble paying for their medical care, to say nothing of arranging the transportation to make long journeys to the clinic. For someone like me, who grew up in a Midwest college town and had lived in Boston and New York, it was like watching a film set in a foreign land.