The Candy Man Is Getting Old

Noam Lazarus

Part 1:

The Candy Man

The candy man is getting old

(I should not say that I’ve been told)

But sitting here just me and you

I guarantee that it is true

His eyesight’s not too great you see

It’s going with his memory

But since he won’t admit that fact

I try to handle it with tact

I go to him and get a sweet

Then go and sit down by my seat

Five minutes pass, I try again

He looks me up and down, and then

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A Grandmother Gone

Sara Liss

I remember the moment I became a terrible granddaughter.

Sometime in the early stages of her Alzheimer’s, my grandmother, who attended a weekly meet-up of Holocaust survivors at the Borough Park YWHA, tried getting her caretaker the free Y lunch by telling the meeting’s organizers that the woman with her was actually her younger sister who had flown in from Israel, and who herself was a survivor. This fib of my Babi, as she was known by everyone under the age of 80, might have been convincing, excluding several inconvenient truths: My grandmother was 91, while her caretaker was 28; my grandmother was a petite Hungarian woman with olive complexion, while her caretaker was a visibly pregnant black woman from the Caribbean. READ MORE...

When Christmas Gets Complicated

Rachel Benaim

For Christians worldwide, Christmas is a day of celebration. For Orthodox Jews, it’s just another day on the calendar. For me, it’s complicated.

My mother converted nearly thirty years ago. While my dad’s side of the family is pretty right wing Jewish, my mother’s side is frum Catholic. My parents raised me in an extremely open-minded and independent environment, and our home was completely observant: kosher, Shabbat, minyan. Raising a child, especially an Orthodox Jewish child, is never easy. Parents make hard choices about what to expose their kids to and what not to. Because of their background, my parents' job was even more challenging. READ MORE...

Lighting Alone

Anonymous

Last year, I spent Shabbat Chanukah with my sister who lives 15 blocks north. She told me to stay with her until the end of Shabbat so that I could say havdalah and light the menorah with her. Knowing that your menorah should be lit in the house you sleep in, I insisted on going to my apartment. But thanks to the convergence of Thanksgiving and Chanukah, none of my roommates were home.

I went to light my menorah, and as I sang Maoz Tzur in the tone-deaf way I was raised to do, I stopped singing mid-song. No rabbi pictured this scenario – a woman lighting alone, not in her father’s home and not in her husband’s home. And not just one girl, but thousands of young men and women living alone. Chanukah lighting is my happiest observance, and yet, on this Saturday night, I was sad.

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Parasail

Samantha Turk

What we are doing, up in the air, is parasailing. Lake Tahoe in June, so Eden it’s brutal. The sky, a blue blind, shading nothing. Wind heaves us heavenward. Wind crazed in our hair and wound down our throats.

Sweetheart, she says. She’s looking out. God, she says.

We are five hundred feet above the blue belt of the water, unhitching the land from the land.

The sun is not brutal. The sun is a hot chip. The sun has turned her body copper. It’s a steely ache on my legs, like something you win.

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Flame of Desire

Isaiah Rothstein

From as early as I can look back, I was larger than everyone—everyone. Between the ages of six and sixteen, I had about an average weight gain of thirty pounds a year. Growing up obese, I was the source of much bullying in elementary school and never thought things would change.

Childhood can be hard enough, but when you weigh more than 95% of the teenagers in entire country, you may feel a little less than perfect. Nearly 400 pounds, blood-pressure through the roof, some heart risks and showing signs for initial onset of diabetes, life at sixteen was pretty chaotic. By junior year of high school, I weighed 380 pounds. I felt nothing and nobody could help me—not even me. It wasn’t just that I was chosen as the teddy bear look-a-like for my high school yearbook, and I used to threaten to sit on people—on my insides, I was hurting.

You know the moment you realize you are out of control? I remember coming home that night, just crying because I didn’t believe I can change--I did not have the will power. At that point, I felt as if my reservoir of hope was running on it last drops. I was scared, I felt angry and helpless.

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Tears of Insight

Aryeh Amsel

My Uncle David died suddenly.

I wasn’t bedside, but was told of his remarkably accepting demeanor anticipating his fate. After an odd spontaneous burst of anger, he quietly passed on a Montreal hospital bed. It was Sunday morning, Chol Hamoed Sukkot, October 12th. He was diagnosed just two weeks prior.

Loneliness may know us best, but our friends and family love us more.

No one knew my father better than David. Even sadder, he was my father’s last remaining immediate family member. “Daddy, not true! You still have us!” my sisters and I exclaim. But I know our words cannot console such familial void.

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The Non-Lucrative Pursuit of Happiness

Yaron Weitzman

It happens slowly. One by one, your friends and peers all begin to get “real” jobs, with law firms, banks and the like. The real jobs come with real salaries, and these real salaries, and what they’re used for, just remind you of how little yours is and how little it buys. That’s when you start to question yourself even more and start to wonder whether you made the right decision, whether it’s all worth it.

I’m a 26-year-old freelance writer, mostly covering sports. I’m not an employee of any company, though I do have a few steady paychecks coming in. Journalism is not a particularly profitable industry, especially for those of us just starting out. My paycheck doesn’t amount to a lot, even though I make enough to pay the rent of my Upper West Side sort-of-studio apartment without having to ever worry about my latest credit card bill.

That said, when my friends go out, I’m always the one worried about how much it will cost. When a bachelor party comes around, I’m always the one wandering the casino floor with nothing to do because I don’t have cash to throw around.

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"Radzyn: Introduction"

Illustrated by Joel Golombeck
Written by Michael Weber

The overflowing wine turned the white threads beneath it red.

The thousands of eyes staring at the Rebbe would not dare assume that he felt uneasy, but his appearance certainly suggested it. He would usually be waving his hands with an abandon both reckless and intentional, orchestrating whichever tune the moment called for. But, now he was silent. He stared down at his cup with the concerned eyes of a father to a sick child, opening his mouth to speak then stopping himself once more.

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