Judy's MIRTH & MEANING BLOG

“One Family, Two Faiths and a Journey of Hope”

Gayle Redlingshafer was a minister of music at a Texas mega-church. Harold Berman was a secular Jew from New York. When they married, they agreed on a few things: they would never have children, and religion would never get in their way.

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Ten Tips for Graduates for a Great Life

For reasons that mystify me, not a single university invited me to deliver a commencement address this year. This, despite my having emailed more than 450 such institutions, alerting them to my availability and modest speaking fees. Sure, I may not be famous in the crude, “Entertainment Tonight” sense of the word, but I challenge those more illustrious guests to match my qualifications.

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Jerusalem Reunification Day 2013—Remembering Another Miracle

Israel is known as a land of miracles, and few have been as great as the reunification of Jerusalem as an undivided city in 1967. The tiny Jewish state had already been attacked by its neighbors immediately when it declared independence in 1948 and again in 1956. On May 27, 1967 Egyptian President Nasser announced his intent to destroy the State of Israel—a goal that many of Israel’s “neighbors” still share. Knowing that Arab armies were preparing to attack yet again, the Israeli military undertook a brilliant preemtpive strike, taking the Golan Heights from Syria; Judea and Samaria (called the West Bank) from Jordan, and most critically, the Old City of Jerusalem. The feckless UN had declared Jerusalem an “international” city but Jordan had seized control over it in 1948, barring all Jews from it.

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What Moms Really Want for Mother’s Day—It’s Not a Recycled Tote Bag

Unless you live in outer Uzbek, you are probably under a steady assault of Mother’s Day gift advertising. Despite this media onslaught, I’m not getting excited. With few exceptions, you can hardly find anything for moms today that hasn’t been pulled from a Dumpster and recycled, slapped with a “fair trade” label that cannot be removed under penalty of law, or made from “banana byproducts.”

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Eat, Pray, Love, Connect

It had been an unusually stressful week, so I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I checked into the Hilton Hotel in Woodland Hills, California on a Friday afternoon back in February. Normally, there’s no place I’d rather be on Friday afternoons than my own home, as I count the minutes until I light my Shabbat candles and bask in the glow of a sanctified oasis in time.