Shana Tovah...but the taste is bittersweet...

tonight Jews welcome the New Year...5787...when the sun also sets on the 25th anniversary of 9/11...and when we pray this weekend...and wish for sweetness...we, as New York Jews, will need to wipe the imaginary dust that remain on our lips...so that our prayers might be heard...as we enter the holiest week we ask for so much...so little...that we as Americans may remember what it was like the minutes...hours...days...weeks...and months after 9/11...how we looked after each other...cared for each other...stepped a little closer to being the type of people we long to be...we also will reflect...as American Jews...how can we confront the constant ugliness growing around us...worldwide...antisemitism...and how we can fight a good fight...when we are not united...as a people...fractured...angry...and most concerning...indifferent...this is a heavy day...I can't remember what I ate for lunch yesterday...but I can remember that sunny Tuesday September 11th morning in detail...it still shakes me to the core...there is an entire generation born since...with only second hand stories and online synopsis...yet, it has informed so much of their lives in the background...I can only hope that the horror is not just a ChatGPT footnote for future generations...or a photo op in front of the Greenwich Street Reflecting Pools...much in the way tourists need to pause and reflect at Pearl Harbor... put down the phone...and remember that life is precious...I pray that my people...both Jewish and American...can turn down the ugly noise around them...and think about what is really most important...at least for today...in memory of those we lost...and continue to lose to illness...in memory of what we lost...when I dip the apple in honey this New Year...I will wish for sweetness for this fractured city...country...and globe...L'Shana Tovah...

you say you want a revolution...

Gloria Steinem has passed...they say her legacy will live on...and I truly hope so...but the fruits of the women's movement have often spoiled from lack of care...complacency breeds regression...at 66, I was born into a time of change...that came on the backs of those who worked and marched and screamed so it would happen...I had to wear pants to school until maybe 4th or 5th grade...under my dress in the freezing cold walking the six blocks to school in Brooklyn...my mother could not open a credit card, bank account etc. by herself until the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act...the seventies were a radical decade of change for women...and it continued forward...you can be anything you want...but how?...I straddled that line with success dangled in front of me...but, often, not knowing how to grab it...after all...with my freshly minted BFA from NYU in 1982 I was still plopped in front of a typewriter at interviews...leaving a sick feeling in my stomach...our generation had much success...maybe not as much as those that followed us...we never really had the blueprint of how to juggle it all...women still juggle...I marched in NY on January 21, 2017...the Women's March...and was appalled at the ridicule that faced so many of us afterwards...how prescient that March was...with the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 moving us backwards...and Project 2025...to which no one claims affiliation...is a frightening blueprint of where many would like women to be...Gloria Steinem did not act alone...she was a catalyst of necessity...and many good women...and men...marched with her...physically and metaphorically...so where does that leave us?...as Gloria said...the torch was not for her to pass but to be used to light other torches...and thereby keep the flame from burning out...so, to the younger generation of women I say...all the myriad rights you were born into can easily disappear...nothing in life is guaranteed...but sisterhood will always be there...through diligence and determination...don't squander what your mothers and grandmothers did before...don't let Gloria's torch extinguish...and may Gloria's name always be for a blessing...