Allison Kaplan Sommer is a journalist at Haaretz, host of Haaretz Weekend podcast and co-host of The Promised Podcast.
Allison Kaplan Sommer
By Allison Kaplan Sommer
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Life Forgiving Anna Quindlen
I’m surely not the only girl with literary tendencies to have come of age in the 1980s assiduously following Anna Quindlen’s journalism career — reading her columns in The New York Times and pretty much wanting to be her when I grew up. Back in the Stone Age, before the Internet, before blogs and their…
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Life Kitty Genovese on a Tel Aviv Beach?
When I first came to Israel as an American college student in the 1980s, I was frequently drawn into long discussions comparing Americans and Israelis. Back in the old days, before cable television and the Internet, many Israelis were exceptionally defensive about being viewed as a member of a primitive Third-World culture, and eager to…
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Opinion Hitching a Ride on the ‘Flytilla’
Having retired from the Passover-cleaning and Seder-making business, my in-laws have, in recent years, chosen to spend the holiday at a hotel abroad, every year at a different destination. My husband and I packed up our three kids this year and joined them for 10 days of matzoh-eating and sightseeing in Provence. Since the holiday…
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Life In Israel, Jewish and Feminist Selves Do Battle
This is the ninth entry in an ongoing series exploring Jewish feminism. The first time I entered an Orthodox synagogue and saw a mehitza, or divider separating men and women in prayer, I was a little girl visiting my grandparents in Queens. Their home wasn’t religiously observant in the slightest, but my grandfather had grown…
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Life Why There’s No Escape From Passover Cleaning
Passover has always been my least favorite holiday. Those who know me well, or have simply been reading my columns and blog posts over the years, will understand why: I hate to clean. My deep dislike of cleaning and housework knows no particular season. To me, it is the ultimate Sisyphysian waste of time, especially…
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Recipes Passover Recipes From Israel’s ‘Biblical Chef’
Allison Kaplan Sommer took a foraging walk with Israeli Chef Moshe Basson. Check out what she learned here and read on for Passover recommendations and recipes from the chef. Maror When most of us think of bitter herbs on the seder table, we think of bottled beet colored or white horseradish bought at the grocery…
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News Top Chef Forages for Ingredients and More
Chef Moshe Basson cuts a striking yet down-to-earth figure with his long, thin salt-and-pepper braid and chiseled face. I find him on a lush hillside near the entrance to Jerusalem, stripping olives from a tree. Plunking the olives into an old plastic grape juice bottle, he explains that in March, the tail end of olive…
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Life IVF Babies Denied U.S. Citizenship
For American-Israeli women like me, having a baby means a trip to the U.S. Embassy. Once you are home from the hospital, and once your newborn?s Israeli birth certificate is granted and health care benefits are in order, you head to the embassy to apply for U.S. citizenship on behalf of your infant. With the…
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