Category: Ideas Encountered
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How Can Our Communities Heal from Abuses of Power?
“The good news is that people are more loyal to sex than to taboo play.”
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Love will tear us apart … or not
With all the forces trying to tear us apart, including our own personal idiosyncrasies, it is a testament to our incredible hardheadedness that Kamran and I have remained together.
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“Trickster Crumb”
One day I woke up to discover that the imp in my story is a quantum being. It just occurred to me in a dream. The imp doesn’t travel in time. The imp is not measurable at times. When the imp is not measurable, strange things happen. Time changes shape. The imp divides into many.…
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“Dina, it’s time we moved to America.”
My grandmother was six and was in the market with her good friend, also six, when strangers attacked the shtetl where she was born. They set angry pigs loose in the streets, killing her friend right in front of her. My grandmother was unharmed. When she returned home, her mother looked at her and said:…
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Tradition! Tradition! Who Has the Right to Ritual
The requirement for a hide used for the Torah is that it come from a kosher animal, not that it be ritually slaughtered. Dozens of hides are needed to create just one Torah. And kosher hunting is quite a challenge given the fact that the animal, hunted or not, needs to be ritually slaughtered in…
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The Rhythm of Tragedy
There is a rhythm to tragedy—especially Jewish tragedy—that feels comic. It begins with a set-up and ends with a punchline.
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Big announcement: I am writing a novel
I always wanted to be a writer, but I hated writing. So why am I writing a novel now? What changed?