Seeds of Hope

Little did I know when I wrote last time about refugees that less than two weeks later we would be facing a new and unprecedented refugee situation…

Refugees

The front page of the New York Times again features refugees. Children looking out the window of a van, with big frightened eyes, with no curiosity, only pain. How many more times do we need to see these pictures, how many times have we seen the same eyes looking at us, as if saying “do not avert your eyes, you were us, you could again be us.” …

Geodesic Dome

The concept of a geodesic dome and its contribution to 20th-century architecture was attributed to Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983)…

Musically Speaking

Karola Siegel was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1928, an only child to middle-class Orthodox Jewish parents.  She describes her childhood as happy with a lot of friends both from the Jewish school and from the gentile neighbors…

New Year and Novigod (Новый Год)

While most Israelis now recognize the Russian Novigod holiday, over 70% still do not see it as part of Israeli culture. The large number of people who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union now constitute roughly 20% of the population.

The Magic Flute

Books and music are both my and my husband’s passions. Even when we were courting, the store fronts that attracted us were those of bookstores and record shops. Neither of us had much money to spend, but the temptation overtook us when a bookstore was open, and it was seldom that we walked out without purchasing at least one or two volumes…

Octogenarian

The unbelievable happened: I became an octogenarian.  Yesterday felt the same as every other day, and today did not feel any different.  However, I observed that people look at me with a certain reverence that was not there yesterday.  Do I really deserve that reverence?

Festivals of Light

The sun sets early this time of year, and it is getting darker already at five in the afternoon.  Yesterday I got up before six in the morning to witness a spectacular sky of orange, pink, and purple stripes as the sun was painting the clouds…

Halloween – Trick or Treat

I have often wondered what exactly Halloween is. The first time I encountered it was when I came to Canada and settled on a street full of families with children. Where I grew up, I never saw or heard of this holiday, and when I asked my husband, who was born and bred in Canada, he responded that he really did not know what it was all about, …

Fall

We are in mid-October already and the days are still fairly warm this year. The wind and the rain have blown some of the leaves, and they fall, fall to the ground, even cover the grass already in some places. I guess that is why it is called fall here…