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Mustard’s Last Stand: Seeding a New Memoir
Like many writers, I enjoy crafting articles. It’s fun to explore different topics and, after all this time, I still get a kick out of seeing my byline in different outlets. But publishing has changed...
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Dual Citizenship: Pandemic Hair, DeJoy’s P.O. & Other Extremely Valid Reasons...
It’s been a while since I started working on my application for dual citizenship with Austria. So long that I forgot I had already filled out the preliminary forms and emailed them to the Austrian...
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A Tale of Three Siblings: Helena Neugasser, Siegmund Kornmehl, and Mina Allina
Though I am not as good as I’d like to be at keeping up with this blog—and not as good as Google would like me to be, according to my rankings–many people have nevertheless managed to find my posts...
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A Typo & A Tragedy: Tracing My Aunt Edith
As my CV will tell you, I am an editor as well as a writer. Correcting spelling and grammatical errors is second nature; I’m one of those people who proofreads restaurant menus (though not, you’ll be...
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Ich Bin Austrian: Some News and Some Musings
It was a long and circuitous route studded with emotional landmines, but today I can announce my arrival at the destination: My application for Austrian citizenship was approved. I was apprised of this...
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Eating Los Angeles (and Brooklyn and Vienna)
I am recently back from a quick restaurant-packed trip to Los Angeles, where I went to apply for my Austrian passport. I gravitated towards food I craved because I can’t get it in Tucson — before my...
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“I’ll Have What She’s Having”: A Museum Visit & Some Deli Musings
It had been a long time since I’d seen my friend, Margo—several decades, in fact. Growing up on the same block in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, we had been inseparable in childhood. Moves from the...
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A Father’s Gift: My Glamorous Middle Name
Among Ashkenazi Jews, it’s traditional to honor the dead by naming children after them, but considered bad luck to do so if there’s a chance that the relative so honored might still be alive. This made...
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Antisemitism in the Digital Age: An Unfinished Memoir
How could this be happening again, in 2023? This quote from a story by Yair Rosenberg, whose excellent “Deep Shtetl” column appears in the Atlantic, is one of many such expressions of horror and shock....
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Jewish Genealogy After 10/7: When Never Is Now
As the world becomes a strange, hostile place, I have begun to look differently at the lives of the relatives lost in the Holocaust. I’m not abandoning the family ghosts who have stalked me for the...
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