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…
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.
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…
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?
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…
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, …