Personal Stories

My friends and I made our way to the lake after we stocked up on apples, bananas, chickpeas, and corn at lunch. I threw in ...

During the holidays, BJ members Gratia and David Meyer take on the mitzvah of sharing the vegetables from their garden with food banks. Gratia harvests ...

This summer, I was lucky enough to learn in a program at The Pardes Institute. Pardes is an open, inclusive, diverse, and intellectually challenging Jewish ...

As every camp enthusiast knows, a “camp wrist” is necessary for the summer. When I was at camp this past summer, I brought bracelet-making beads for ...

Given the tragic events unfolding around the world while so much is happening at BJ, we felt it was time to share another edition of BJ ...

For some Jews, February 1 simply marks the beginning of a new month—a transition from one cold winter month to the next. But for me ...

For my military service in Israel, I served as a battlefield medic. After a while on the job, I was asked to go back to ...

At Kadima tefilah, after singing Olam Hesed Yibane (Build a World on Love) I asked kids to share in the chat one way they were ...

I haven’t had a moment yet to really process all that has happened in our world. At first, each fragment of energy was dedicated to ...

Letter to the Editor Published in the New York Jewish Week on March 29 2020

Galit Lopatin Bordereau (BJ member) shares her impressions about a recent opportunity we had to support an AFJ member who lives upstate.

When my parents, Freya and Ludwig Maier, returned from their honeymoon in early February  1933, Hitler had been chancellor of Germany for just a few ...

The Dimentstein family resided in Florence for eight months while awaiting their U.S. visa. Chanka and Pinya were married in Venice in one of the ...

​​We believe that my father’s role as advisor on Jewish Affairs had a profound impact on his life. We know from his diary and book ...

My mother was able to fully appreciate and celebrate the many good things in her life: the birth of two sons; their marriages to exceptional ...

My parents met for the first time in that DP camp. My father, who was just 13 when the war began, lost his parents in ...

I am overjoyed that for my sons, silence will be transcended by memory. Meeting these individuals was truly improbable and miraculous; the moments spent in ...

These pieces of the puzzle enabled me to patch together a reasonable narrative. As the truth slowly emerged, I couldn’t help but wonder why it ...

Poland is a beautiful country, but I will go there only once more—to visit with my family the same places that I visited with my ...

Like snowflakes swirling past each other on a winter’s wind, my parents and my children never touched. Their descent into the Holocaust and their slow ...