We didn’t mean to, but we lied to our kids. Almost ten years ago, shortly after we made aliyah, we were sitting with our three young children having dinner. One of the boys, still getting used to the idea that his life was going to be very different in Israel, looked up from his food, and asked out of nowhere, “Is Israel still going to have an army when I’m eighteen?” He was scared. But we knew that he had no reason to be. “Yes, there’ll be an army,” we told him. “But there’s going to be peace by then. By the time you’re eighteen, everything’s going to be different. You’ll see.” I still remember how certain we were, and how relieved he looked. A couple of ...

This is a country prone to America-envy. If you’re not careful, you can find yourself romanticizing life in the States, constantly seeing reminders of the myriad ways in which this country doesn’t quite measure up to the standard set by its massive ally to the West. Whether it’s bank tellers who really do want to help you, or the ability to walk into restaurants in New York or Los Angeles without getting wanded, or even more substantial matters like America’s impressive democracy, the danger of jealousy lurks virtually everywhere. Usually, I think I’m reasonably successful at avoiding that trap. (I’ll confess to taking some comfort from people like Governor Rod Blagojevich, who reminds me that we’re not the only country with scoundrels in high positions, ...

By pure coincidence, I happened to be in my old Los Angeles neighborhood on Election Day, and like many others, I found the extraordinary power of that day difficult to articulate. At the polling places in which I'd often voted, but had never waited in line, there were lines around the block. Friends who had voted regularly with no more than a mild sense of civic duty now spoke of participating in a moment that - whether they themselves had voted for Obama or McCain - they'd long remember and would tell their grandchildren about. For me, the tears that flowed in Chicago's Grant Park that night were beyond moving. One need neither forgive nor forget Jesse Jackson's abhorrent comments about Jews and Israel to ...

For many of us, the image of Rose Pizem's fragile smile refuses to fade. Her tragedy, like the case of the Bat Yam mother who drowned her son, have aroused painful conversations as to whether we're doing enough to give our children the lives they deserve. We suspect we're not. We're right that we're not, but for the wrong reasons. Even the most decent societies occasionally produce pathologically sick parents. Sadly, horrific stories like these, no matter how vigilant we may become, are to an extent inevitable and unpreventable. Not so, however, with a much more basic injustice that we're doing to the young people of this country. That injustice has nothing to do with child abuse or worse, murder. It has to do with ...

I didn't want to go to Theresienstadt, I told my wife. We would have only a few days in Prague and, for once, I wanted to walk the streets and see the museums without that seemingly inevitable dose of Jewish death that every visit to Europe seems to mandate. To my amazement, she agreed. We'd obviously see the Jewish Quarter, with its famous cemetery, the Alt-Neu Shul and more, but we could let Theresienstadt pass this time. Yet, as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Mine started unraveling on Tisha Be'av. For years, we've been hearing the Book of Lamentations in our local synagogue. This year, though, we finally decided to join our friends who've been ...

I didn’t want to go to Theresienstadt, I told my wife. We would have only a few days in Prague, and for once, I wanted to walk the streets and see the museums without that seemingly inevitable dose of Jewish death that every visit to Europe seems to mandate. To my amazement, she agreed. We’d obviously see the Jewish quarter, with its famous cemetery, the Alt-Neu Shul and more, but we could let Theresienstadt pass this time. Yet, as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Mine started unraveling on Tisha B’Av. For years, we’ve been hearing Eichah, the Book of Lamentations, in our local synagogue. This year, though, we finally decided to join our friends who’ve been reading ...

For me, July is the cruelest month. Maybe it's because it's always hotter than I remember. Or the fact that at my age, birthdays feel more ominous than fun. Or maybe I'm just jealous of my kids - they're on vacation while I trudge off to the office each morning. Who knows? A few years ago, my wife took up bird watching. She trolled the relevant Web sites, eventually got the right kind of binoculars and bought a book with all the pictures of the various birds, in which she meticulously writes down which ones she's seen, where and when. She knows the places to go for the best sightings; she's been known to get up at an ungodly hour to go stare at ...

For some strange reason, I remember the scene with clarity.  I was in the kitchen, early on a Friday afternoon about a month ago, cooking Shabbat dinner.  Micha, our youngest, now 15, was hanging out in the living room.  The radio was on in the background, and on the hour, the news came on.  It was over in minutes, and then the music returned. I hadn't really paid attention to the news, but Micha apparently had.  "Do you think we're ever going to get Gilad Shalit back?" he asked.  Without even looking at him, I said, without even thinking, "Of course we are.  Definitely." "You don't know that," a different voice piped in.  Now, I looked up.  Avi, his older ...

Shortly after the media began carrying the story of former IDF chief of General Staff Moshe Ya'alon's comment that sometimes prisoners of war must be sacrificed if the demands for their return are too high, I found myself at home with two of my kids. My son, headed for the army in just a matter of weeks, had just finished reading the story on the Web. "Sounds like Ya'alon stirred up a hornet's nest," he said. "Pretty painful stuff," I replied, as I'd been trying to imagine what it must feel like to be the parents of Gilad Schalit, Eldad Regev or Ehud Goldwasser, and to have as respected a person as Ya'alon say that, especially this week. "True," my son said, "but he might be ...