In 1981 while living in California, Barbara Esmond read in her temple bulletin about the Pomegranate Guild of Judaic Needlework, and it piqued her interest. She had recently purchased a painted needlepoint canvas, all the rage in the early ’80s, and had started working on it. She knew only one basic stitch and was quickly…
There are certain heartfelt and unshakable promises we make to those we care most about. In the context of aging, a child promises a parent, “I will never put you in one of ‘those’ places.” The bride and groom vow to care for one another “for richer or poorer, for better or worse, in sickness…
Scottsdale resident Barbara Mark-Dreyfuss says she wrote “America at Last: A Family’s Journey from Fear to Freedom” to provide her children and grandchildren with some semblance of family history. “Very little information was uncovered during many attempts to retrieve memories from family members, so embellishment became an essential part of the storytelling,” explains this mother…
After being featured on the cover of the November 2012 Arizona Jewish Life, Ester A. Leutenberg says she had “loads of reactions from people … who knew me for years and learned so much about me from the article (and didn’t realize how much they didn’t know).” Ester, who turns 77 on Nov. 18, has…
When Dr. Sheldon Winkler retired from Temple University in January 2006 as professor emeritus (where he previously served as chairperson of the department of prosthodontics and dean of research, advanced education and continuing education) he started a second career as an author and speaker on the music of the Second World War. Dr. Winkler attended…
If you’re lucky enough to visit with Buddy and Gloria Stein, you’ll spend so much time laughing that your insides will feel as if they’ve been whipped up in a blender. Not only are they a delightful couple – married 64 years – but Buddy has been a successful stand-up comic for almost as long…
Until the film “Schindler’s List” came out 20 years ago, 90-year-old Alexander White never knew how or why he was lucky enough to have survived World War II while most of his family perished in the death camps. He was 16 when the war began. He never knew what Oskar Schindler had done. He had…
The year was 1982 and the 12-kilometer run for Soviet Jewry drew thousands of people who cared about their plight. Dressed proudly in my “Free Soviet Jews!” T-shirt and armed with enough water to fill a small swimming pool, I sprinted enthusiastically for the first half-mile or so, waving to friends along the sidelines like…
Todd Herzog grew up in a secular, casually Jewish family in Rockland City and Spring Valley, NY. That is, until his mother went to Israel when he was about 7. She came back inspired and shortly thereafter started Todd in religious school and eventually bar mitzvah training. Todd always felt like he was playing “catch-up”…
I remember the first time I pled my case for overnight camp to my husband, Mark. My eldest son, Levi, wanted to go to Camp Newman in California. Mark was against it and offered the age-old rationale: “I never went to sleep-away camp and I turned out just fine.” Luckily I knew better than to…
