Mela Mietkiewicz, the mother-in-law of the author // Courtesy of Dorothy Lipovenko At the top of a staircase, a pious Jewish family in pre-war Europe gazes out from a series of framed photos. A boy of bar-mitzvah age stands with two older sisters, faces too young to be so serious. Seated between their parents is…
Humanity’s oldest dream turns out to be Roz Chast’s worst nightmare. “Imagine some horrible dystopian future, some 50 years from now, where people just stop dying,” she says, sitting in her living room in quaint, rural Connecticut, surrounded by pastel-colored walls, books and colorful knickknacks. “They’re 98, they’re 102, they’re 107, they’re 112” — the…
One of my clearest memories from childhood is peeking around the doorway from the kitchen to the den as my mother ironed and watched “Days of Our Lives.” A couple lay in bed, the woman in a negligee, the man bare-chested, a patch covering one eye. I was a little scared — what if he…
For Mother’s Day, the Forward challenged you, our readers, to write six-word memoirs encapsulating your mothers — and then we picked 12 winners who penned sweet and silly salutes. In the process of sifting through your six-word submissions, we learned something important: mommy issues abound in the Jewish world. While most of the memoirs were…
Mother’s Day, 1983. I’m sitting in our cramped apartment kitchen in Philadelphia with my husband and two older friends who were, I guess, substituting for our own parents that day. The crazy traffic along the Northeast corridor on that Sunday in May often meant that we skipped visiting my mother in New York and my…
A Jewish mother gives her son two ties on the first night of Hanukkah. The following morning, when he comes down for breakfast, he is wearing one of them. The mom says, “What’s the matter — you didn’t like the other one?” — Sheldon Kimmelman in “Old Jews Telling Jokes” Even while guffawing at old…
Motherhood is easy. Okay, it isn’t really, but doesn’t it feel so good to hear that it might be? That it could be? That, maybe, it should be? Those words, together, motherhood and easy — just writing them allows me to breath deeper. It gets me thinking that, maybe, things really are all right. Like…
Have you called your mom lately? Give her a ring and then get in the kitchen with these Mother’s Day brunch ideas. Smoked salmon breakfast latkes, anyone? [Nosher/MyJewishLearning] Have the kids try their hand at challah, soft pretzels or maple meringue doughnuts with these family-friendly baking projects. [Food52] Does your mom like a good pint…
