jewish history
Finding Helen Keller’s Thank You-Note to a Southern Rabbi
“The birds are gone. The life that throbbed through tree, bush and grass is stilled. The ground is frozen so ...
Researching Jewish History through a Woman’s Eyes
It’s strange but true that being a woman made me uniquely positioned to write my historical novels. Growing up a ...
Jewish History and Jewish Memory
On the first day of “The History of the Jews in Eastern Europe,” my college professor explained the tension between ...
On Being Jewish in Amsterdam
Recently, a journalist who was interviewing me asked me to describe what it felt like to be a Jewish New ...
On Writing a Fictionalized Account of Baruch Spinoza’s Family
I’ve often been asked both by journalists and by my readers why my novel The Elixir of Immortality tells the ...
Illusions and Remembering
I liked to sit sipping coffee in the tall kitchen window of my apartment in Vilnius. The window overlooked the ...
A Yiddishist in Vilnius
I had fun in Vilnius, despite my low tolerance for fun. Not to mention that fun in Vilnius seemed like ...