● Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity By Andrew Solomon Scribner, 976 pages, $37.50 In his ambitious new study of the relationships between exceptional or unusually challenging children and their parents, Andrew Solomon confesses, informs and enlightens with the same capacious sweep that distinguished his last work, “The Noonday Demon:…
Growing up as a single child to a Russian Jewish immigrant family, I have always felt the pressure to succeed. In a Russian Jewish home, success is often defined as perfection. Though I don’t know much about life in Russia, I can imagine that people were more invested in becoming “perfect” rather than taking a…
It’s no small feat to capture generations of hardship in the span of a single theater production. But somehow, the theater collective The Lost and Found Project has managed to do just that, in their experimental play ”Doroga” (or “Road,” in Russian). In the words of the creators, ”Doroga” is “an interactive play that explores…
For some American children, the world loses its natural order when they find out that Santa Claus isn’t real or when the tooth fairy is revealed to be their very own large, mustachioed father creeping toward their bed with a dollar bill in his hand, while quietly trying to avoid stepping on Barbie. While I’ve…
The word “Israel” has been interpreted to mean “a struggle with God,” but 60 years of Israel as a Jewish nation has shown a country in perpetual struggle. As well as wars with its neighbors, Israel has grappled with its history and identity, and the implications of each for the other. Though not explicitly addressed,…
“Parenthood is the ultimate on-the-job learning experience,” my father commented a few months ago. “You simply can’t learn to be a parent without doing it.” I believe that. Having recently experienced baby boot camp, I have learned a ton. Now, as the mother of an infant, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on some…
Shimon Peres apparently thought when he convened his Israeli Presidential Conference this week in Jerusalem that he could bring together several hundred cutting-edge thinkers and doers in the fields of technology, economics, international relations and Jewish thought to interact, share, clash and perhaps create something new, with a few thousand bright people sitting on the…
Speaking to this week’s grandiosely named “Conference on the Future of the Jewish People,” convened by the equally grandiosely (and tongue-twistingly) named Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared that he identifies as a Jew first, and an Israeli second. Y-Net reports: “If I was asked today, which I am sometimes,…
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