Shalom at Home

When I was growing up, my mom used to tell me that her mother — my grandmother — would wake her up every morning with the same question: “What do you want for dinner?”

Recently, my daughter made a friendship bracelet with her Jewish Girl Scout troop, complete with Star of David charms — very on brand.

As the point person for our local PJ Library, I am proud to foster Jewish community everywhere. Playgrounds, pools, splashpads, coffee shops, community centers and the occasional escape room or movie theater: Jewish life happens wherever there are Jews.

My favorite day of the year is the first day of summer.

We are hurtling through May toward the summer. Brace yourself, parents.

My first article in these pages was about “scruffy hospitality.” Dedicated readers of this esteemed column will recall that I encouraged us all to embrace the dust in the corners and the toys on the couch in the interest of welcoming more people into our home – and thus, our community. (I stand by that, by the way, even as I panicked about the literal dust in the corners only minutes before my Seder.)

Passover is, hands down, one of my all-time favorite Jewish holidays. A gripping story? Check. A delicious meal? Absolutely. A gathering of friends and family filled with song, laughter and a high-stakes game of afikomen hide-and-seek? Check, check and double check.

On the first night of Passover, the opening of our festival of liberation, the celebration of the birth of our peoplehood, Darby, my oldest son, will be 10 hours away at a Greco-Roman athletic competition.

Do we want to raise our kids to be more like Esther or Vashti?

“Purple” by Alexis Rotella

“In first grade / Mrs. Lohr said / my purple teepee / wasn’t realistic enough / that purple was no color for a tent… that my drawing / wasn’t good enough to hang / with the others.”