Ever notice how many of us Jews are afraid to receive compliments or get too positive? When you want to jump for joy or celebrate some good news, do you find yourself reluctant or do you actually stop yourself? It may be the kine hara principle working on you. A kine hara is Yiddish for…
Forward reader Herb Hoffman writes: “I was raised in Brooklyn with the knowledge that spitting three times (or at least making a ritualized spitting movement or sound, which I’ve always rendered as ‘ptu, ptu, ptu’) is an effective way of warding off a kinehore — or ‘canary’ in my native Yinglish. My mother especially used…
Nothing was working out that year. My husband had just switched careers at the height of the recession, and we were flat broke. Though my first novel had been published and well received, everything I wrote since then had turned to dust. One of my children had come down with a rare illness — manageable,…
I am 30 — the age when, among other things, you begin to stop hearing from your friends for about three months. Then finally, at the end of 12 weeks, you get a Sunday afternoon call announcing what you knew already: She is pregnant, and at the end of her first trimester. I’ve experienced this…
When my uncle died at 60 from a stroke last year, my aunt, who is not particularly religious, threw herself into reading about the Jewish rituals around death. Among the many edicts were instructions not to go to movies or parties, during the 30 days after a loved one’s death. And my aunt quickly found…
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