David Raphael
Note: I wrote this essay in 2010 and it was published in The Forward
Two years ago, at age 79, my mother became an olah hadashah, a new immigrant to Israel. We moved her to live in the small apartment above my sister Ruth’s home...
Relationships with our adult children — the parents of our grandchildren — are often close, trusting, and warm. Yet these relationships can, at times, be difficult to manage. Sometimes a wrong word or a misread facial expression can lead to harsh words and anger. And...
It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Your grandchild is becoming B-Mitzvah. You envision them standing on the bimah, or perhaps encircled by family in a home celebration, chanting and singing and sharing the wisdom they have found in the Torah portion.
At this milestone occasion, you may want...
“Grandpa, will you get your ice cream in a dish or in a cone?” my then-seven-year-old granddaughter, Amina, asked. We were walking to the ice cream parlor in the little town in Connecticut where her mother was the rabbi of the local temple.
I was taking...
Despite its tremendous joys, being a Jewish grandparent isn’t easy. Our kids are too religious or not religious enough. In other words, they don’t do it our way. This also applies to their thoughts about Israel: they may love it more than we do or...
We use technologies like cookies to remember your preferences. Consenting to these technologies will provide you with a better browsing experience. JGN never shares information about your use of our website.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.