Having joined the ranks of the underemployed this spring, Dalia Samansky, 30, found herself trolling Craigslist for jobs in sales or marketing, maybe private-school teaching. “I got one interview, but most didn’t even respond,” she said. “I just sent lots and lots of resumes.” Samansky was frustrated—after all, she has five years of grad school ...

My two-year-old daughter, Bess, understands there’s a baby in mommy’s tummy, but neither David nor I think she really gets what that means. Of course, neither do we.
Especially not me. David has his younger sister, Anna. But right now, Bess and I have something major in common: we are only children. For Bess, ...

I am, it turns out, in a mixed marriage. My parents, my in-laws, and quite a few of my married friends have all realized the same thing. Back on Turbo Tuesday, one half of each couple voted for Clinton, the other for Obama. (And, I might add, the division did not always occur along gender ...

Sunday, October 28 was Bess’s first birthday. The festivities began two weeks ago with a collective party for my local moms’ group’s entire brood—Bess won our first annual crawling race by a mile!—and culminated with an immediate-family-only party featuring homemade frosted pomegranate layer cake. (Rimona, Bess’s middle and Hebrew name, is the feminized form of ...

Last April, we spent five days in Barcelona, the city locked in a three-way tie with Jerusalem and New Orleans for the title of my favorite on the planet. (Not counting, of course, New York.) While on a walking tour of the stony warren that was the city’s medieval (and earlier) Jewish quarter, we began ...

It wasn’t until I was about four that my mother realized how badly, profoundly she wanted—needed, she says—to make sure I grew into a Jew. Before then, raising a Jewish child was something she just took for granted, without giving it much thought. When she married my father—who’d converted to Judaism—they’d agreed that any children ...

Last fall, we renovated our kitchen. Last fall, even though we’d ordered our cabinets in July. One delay had led to another, and as late October rolled around, the cherry, marble, tile, and stainless end was—unlike our baby’s due date—still nowhere in sight. Rome itself, it seemed, had fallen in our living room (the contractor’s ...

For David and me, last year, the year 5766, was to begin with a sweetness we could almost taste. By Rosh Hashanah, we’d calculated, I would be more than three months pregnant. Early prenatal testing safely behind us, we would—after more than a year of trying and treatments—have been ready to tell his congregation our ...

July was Jews for Jesus Month in New York. The worldwide organization, founded in 1973 with the goal of bringing—some would say converting—Jews to accept Jesus regularly sends messengers to Manhattan bearing the “good news.” This summer, 200 of them were dispatched to the five boroughs (and two neighboring counties), including the most Orthodox enclaves, ...

When David and I found out that the baby I’m carrying is a girl, I had several thoughts in quick succession:
1) “Yay!”
2) “David will teach her to throw; ice hockey will be my job,”
3) “She can wear the fabulous baby clothes my grandmother made me, including the dress with the appliquéd dog that turns into ...