I’m five years old, and I’m walking down the hill to our neighborhood elementary school, holding tight to my grandfather’s rough and calloused hand. The school is doubling as a polling place, and m…

"If we allow our history to be erased, and cover the parts that are inconvenient to those in power, what was once done in the dark will be done again—this time, in broad daylight."

My negroni sbagliato is a civilized creature of the early evening, when it’s too early for a proper negroni and too late in the day for a spritz, the moment when the Zoom window blinks out and the curtain comes down. The drink arrives in a stemless,…

Rage works differently based on where we’re from, and who we are, and how we’ve experienced anger. I grew up with people who revered the power of words. Life, if you believed their stories, ends up at a crossroads where the right words, delivered in…

I met this guy when I was twenty-six years old, pregnant with my second child and headed towards bedrest. I was put onto Kanye’s music by my little sister; one of her TAs in college was from Chicago, knew the artist, and could even be spotted in the…

PLATES OF UNEATEN FOOD from the dorm kitchen are piling up around me in my room. My boyfriend, who lives down the hall, keeps bringing me new plates on his way to class, and, when he gets back, he takes away some of the old ones. There is something…

We’re in a smoky speakeasy, viewed through a smudged lens. The club is dark, and Harlem Nocturne is shuffling into its final melancholy chord. Little Esther Philips, a 13-year-old musical prodigy conscripted into sirenhood, is waiting in the wings to…

I have always been interested in genealogy, but having children made me more invested than ever in unearthing my family’s stories. I wanted to show my children what “biracial” really meant, piecing together their father’s Scottish and Russian Jewish…

A group of participants in Camp Be’chol Lashon. Courtesy of Be’chol Lashon As we move towards the 54th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized interracial marriage across the United States, I’m consistently…

Jews are called upon to support those who are suffering in real, tangible ways. Those who sat shiva in the time of the pandemic may remember the taste of homemade soup left on their doorstep by an anonymous chesed committee member, or the voices of…

Dr. Denise Davis is a trailblazing physician and educator who has dedicated herself to making the healthcare system more just for all patients. Recently Davis joined Be’chol Lashon’s new executive director, Marcella White Campbell, for an important…

A year ago, Zoom was new, and in-person seders verboten. Now, with vaccinations picking up along with deep pandemic fatigue, American Jews are grappling with whether and how to gather. And after months of racial reckoning, the holiday's historic…

This is how to make collard greens. First, my grandfather drives his truck to the Alemany Farmer’s Market. My grandfather chooses a bunch of taut, bitter leaves, and he puts money in the dirt-caked, stubby-fingered hand of the farmer who planted the…

Founded in Oakland, California, in 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was a radical political organization that stood in defiant contrast to the mainstream civil rights movement. African American Jewish writer David Walker talks with…

Week after week, I light two small candles. I move behind my children and put one hand on each of their heads and I begin my prayer: Y’varech’cha Adonai V’yishmerecha. I ask that they be blessed and kept safe, favored and granted peace. I kiss each…

Bedtime stories, read over and over again — sometimes long past the point of parental endurance — are as powerful as prayer. At night, tucked in tight, children drift away to sleep on the last words of tales of unselfish trees, bears walking to…

I am always in the grip of some obsession. A spotlight beams down on something and it fascinates me, becoming the intense, passionate focus of my attention. I spend weeks with it, forgoing sleep, food, friendship, stifling a snarl when real…

When I was an itty bitty person, my uncle Jewel ran the family business from the (slightly illegal) in-law apartment under our house. The night before I started first grade, I remember going down to the office to see Jewel 1 . The tiny room was lit…

Any discussion of Hamilton, the show currently topping Broadway’s box office, starts with the elevator pitch: a hip-hop musical about the life of our nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury. It’s important to get that description out of the way,…