Most Jewish girls grew up fascinated by the aromas, tastes, and secrets of their grandmother’s cooking. When Renee’s cousin asks her to collaborate on a family recipe book, a hunt begins for the culinary secrets they wish to pass on to their next generation. But when Renee asks her grandma to sha...

This story tells of one woman’s hilarious and poignant journey through various “kinds” of Judaism. Raised in a Jewish area of Mexico City but relocated to a nearby suburb, Erika finds her new home has “no Jews, no temple, and no challah.” Her parents enroll their daughters in the only private sch...

The daughter of a South Korean mother and a Jewish father grows up as one of the few school-aged Jews in Tacoma, Washington. On Shabbat, her family substitutes rice for unlocatable challah and kimchi, a Korean cabbage, for the bitter herbs on their Seder plate. Being the daughter of a mixed marri...

A Jewish-American academic writing a book on the Nuremberg trials wins a Fulbright Fellowship and, much to the dismay of her family, decides to spend a year researching and teaching in Heidelberg. Once in Germany, given the topic of her research, she does not broadcast her religion. But on a week...

A female rabbinical student working as a chaplain is called to support a Jewish family whose father has just died. When she enters the hospital room, she is greeted by a sea of long skirts and bearded Jewish men who certainly weren’t expecting a young woman to be with them during this time. Reluc...

Screenwriter and playwright Arlene Sarner is the type who holds grudges, especially against her ex-husband, who embroils her in a five-year custody battle over her two sons. Her husband wins the boys’ affections with his limousines, rock-star friends, and relaxed attitude about homework. Arlene i...

A happily married wife, mother, and grandmother receives a surprise Facebook message from her first love, a boy who mercilessly dumped her in high school in Mexico because she was “a Jew, and she killed God’s only son.” Devastated, she spent the next several years wishing every bad thing in the u...

The power of unconditional love is illuminated when a daughter decides to adopt a new strategy for dealing with her abrasive mother: She will respond only with love. Their subsequent conversations reveal much about the past, and why expressions of love have been so few and far between. The new st...

Dr. Ron Wolfson, a Jewish Educator, recalls what happens when, as a post–bar mitzvah Hebrew school dropout, he trades the pleasures of hanging out with friends for attending Shabbat dinner with his family. His worried parents call the police when he fails to appear at six o’clock sharp, then exch...

On the way to their weekend home in Connecticut, a Manhattan couple pull into a rest stop and observe a distressed woman sitting in her car, gripping the steering wheel and unable to move. The husband impulsively takes action and an emotional and intense scene plays out in front of his wife, wait...