Barbara Finkelstein
By Barbara Finkelstein
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Yiddish World An Orthodox Jewish Peer Counselor Reflects On A Lifetime Of Mental Illness And Addictions
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. I began meeting with “Yehoshua” three years ago to talk about his experience with lifelong mental illness. He was an ideal informant. No subject was off-limits — not family, marriage, work, religion, sexuality or addiction. As a peer counselor for the past eight years with a Bronx-based…
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Culture He Translated One Of The Greatest Modern Yiddish Writers — And Didn’t Know
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Harold Rabinowitz likes to say that when he pulled into the driveway at the Beacon Inn in Brookline, Massachusetts, his life became like “something from the movies.” It was winter 1979. Rabinowitz, or Heshie, as he calls himself, was a pulpit rabbi in nearby Malden and a…
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News Muslim Creates First Indonesian-Hebrew Dictionary To Pursue His Dreams Of Peace
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. If Sapri Sale is like anyone you know, it’s probably Uncle Albert, the gravity-defying character in “Mary Poppins” who loves to laugh long and loud and clear. In his effervescent way, Sale, an Indonesian-born Muslem, announces that the first printing of his Indonesian-Hebrew/Hebrew-Indonesian dictionary — a project…
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News An Abused Son Of Holocaust Survivors Finds A Cutting-Edge Treatment For PTSD
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Myron Kaliski knew he was taking a risk when he announced on Facebook that he inherited emotional suffering from his abusive Holocaust survivor father. “My father never really left the camps … and in a sense, neither have I,” Kaliski wrote. “When I didn’t do things to…
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Yiddish World Can We Save Our Lives By Not Going To Shul?
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In the course of my Baby Boomer life, my social reality has had two names. One, post-Holocaust. Two, post-9/11. But after participating in an “active shooter drill” in shul on a Shabbat earlier this month, I can now talk about my life as “post-Pittsburgh” too. Hating Jews…
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Yiddish World Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting is Not State-Sponsored Terrorism
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. A good friend of mine insists on drawing a straight line between Robert Bowers, the alleged killer of eleven Jews at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, and President Donald Trump’s “hateful” rhetoric on the campaign trail. My friend didn’t buy my argument that Barack Obama was president…
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Life Saying Goodbye To The Torah Scribe Of Washington Heights
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. One day in the early 1990s, a red-bearded scribe walked into my small corner of the world. Rabbi Yosef Lasdun was a slender man in his thirties, dressed head to toe in the black garb of Jewish men from Washington Heights. He had traveled from his apartment…
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Life She Can Make Challah Into Almost Anything
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. If you need to build an ark, the Torah will tell you how. If you need to construct an ephod, the Torah will tell you how to do that, too. But if you want to bake challah, you have to look beyond the Five Books of Moses,…
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