Beth Kissileff is co-editor of Bound in the Bond of Life: Pittsburgh Writers Reflect on the Tree of Life Tragedy and author of the novel Questioning Return. She is at work on a book about Jewish wisdom on healing from trauma and grief and lives in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh with her family.
Beth Kissileff
By Beth Kissileff
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Opinion Losing a Dad, Gaining a Voice
When I found myself having a long and enjoyable phone conversation with one of my daughter’s peers and former classmates, it was with a sense of genuine surprise and delight. But it was bittersweet as well. I was speaking with Sami Rahamim of St Louis Park, Minn., who was in my daughter’s class at Heilicher…
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Opinion What Is Rabbi’s Role at Convention?
When Rabbi Everett Gendler was released from jail in Albany, Ga., in 1962 he and the 11 other rabbis jailed with him for “public prayer without a license” each found a Western Union telegram waiting. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, sent to them a message with a verse from…
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Life Online Sympathy Is an Easy Way Out
If you want to show someone you care, you need to show up. Virtual empathy does not replace your presence; it is merely the easy way out of trying to be kind to a fellow human. Writing a few words on a website or tracking the progress of an ill person are certainly thoughtful gestures….
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The Schmooze National Book Awards Look to Past and Future
“Take the time to be brief.” That’s the advice Edith Pearlman, one of five finalists for the National Book Award in fiction, wants to give to young writers. Pearlman’s book, “Binocular Vision,” did not win, perhaps because a collection of short stories has not won since Andrea Barrett’s collection, “Ship Fever,” was victorious in 1996….
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Life Torah Study Devalued When We Bribe Our Kids
Why do we need to tell our kids that they can’t do important things for their own sake, but only to get some kind of reward? The notion of manicures for middle school girls in a Jewish school disturbs me on a variety of levels. Since Elana Sztokman wrote so well about why they are…
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The Schmooze Talking to Aharon Appelfeld in Pennsylvania
“I’m not looking at Aharon…” “He’s looking at you.” It’s not often that professors of literature have a chance to speak about a writer’s work in front of him. This interchange between Iris Milner, of Tel Aviv University, and Yigal Schwartz of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, took place at the International Conference on…
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The Schmooze Pittsburgh Hasidic Seminary Offers Arts Education to Women
“The teachers here get to know you, instead of getting to know what they can change about you,” said Rochel Goldsmith, a fine arts and writing student at the Tzohar Seminary for Chasidus and the Arts, a one-year Lubavitch seminary for post high school girls opened this fall in Pittsburgh, Pa. Her peer, Rivka Eilfort,…
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The Schmooze What Jews Can Learn From Christian Writer Reynolds Price
Durham, N.C. is not an easy place to be a non-conformist. It is the home of Duke University, notorious for its male lacrosse team’s behaving badly and its “Cameron Crazies,” obsessed basketball fans. Even in January 2011, when the Durham public schools need to make up a snow day, school is scheduled for Saturday, Jewish…
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