The Zone of Interest and Perpetrator Fiction
By Leah Eichler, As a teenager, my mom used to treat me to a manicure if I promised to stop biting my nails. I bit them as soon as I could fit a sliver of nail under my teeth. I bit them even with the polish meant to taste like gasoline. I bit them until […]
The 49ers and Divine Intervention
By Bruce Farrell Rosen, My mom, who passed away from cancer in 1999, was a gifted psychic. She never wanted notoriety or fame, she just wanted to read cups to support our family after my dad left the home in our teenage years. But because she was so gifted, so talented, she developed quite a […]
How to Triumph with Only One Shoe
By N.L. Jorgensen, I’m a piano geek. Book nerd. Medieval music freak. I never dreamed I’d spend a week in Eugene, Oregon, at the Olympic track and field trials. But here I am. It’s Monday, June, 21, 2021, and in a few days, my daughter will compete in the 10,000 meters. Right now, I’m absorbed […]
JFK: Remembering the Man not the Assassination
(The author, shown above, in the months after JFK’s assassination.) By Bruce Farrell Rosen, The recently passed date of November 22 marked the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. For many of us of a certain age, the memory of hearing that news is etched into our brains like grooves in […]
Boo!
By Janie Gabbett, In the cool, expansive health club I joined this year, the recumbent bikes have TV screens to distract you from the tedium of pedalling. Flipping channels, I come upon Bonanza on an oldies TV station. OK, for those of you not quite as old as I am, Bonanza was a Western series […]
What’s a Manuel Ferreira? Book Excerpt from The Prison Lady
Phyllis Taylor is the author of The Prison Lady, a memoir of her journey alongside prisoners. The following is an excerpt from her book. By 45, Manny, a great-looking Portuguese career criminal, had spent two dimes (ten year sentences) in the Kingston Pen. He was fond of boasting that he knew the most infamous […]
I Wish my Doll had Been Made of Metal: The Heartbreak of the Lahaina Inferno (Essay)
By Bruce Farrell Rosen, One of my favorite places in all the world was Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii. I first travelled there in the summer of 1975 with a friend who had come over to vacation with me following the conclusion of our respective college years. I had been a student at the University of California, […]
The Synagogue at the End of the World (Memoir)
(Note to reader: the following is taken from a work in progress, a blended memoir about contemporary Jewish identity and the legacy of the Holocaust. I hope you’ll join me on this ride.) By Leah Eichler, The synagogue at the end of the world is not what you would expect. Imagine a large, single room […]
Simon Wiesenthal, meet Henry Morgentaler (Column)
By Leah Eichler, I can’t recall exactly what inspired me, in the late 1990s, to send that fax (a fax!) to Simon Weisenthal’s office in Vienna and request an interview. Weisenthal was already 90 and not very active in the day-to-day operations of the Documentation Centre of the Association of Jewish Victims of the Nazi […]
Shell Game
By Jacob Austin, The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas is hosting a traveling exhibit called Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art. One of the items on display is a conch shell trumpet. It sits alone, under halogen bulb, in a sterile glass box. The plaque and the voice on the audio […]