BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

Dozens of letters found in an American archive reveal the desperate efforts of Anne Frank's father Otto to escape from the Nazis with his family. The letters - including some from his American relatives and friends - were written before the family went into hiding in Amsterdam in 1942. The 78 documents are to be released on 14 February by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York. Anne Frank's diary, found after the war, has moved millions of readers. He survived the Auschwitz death camp, but Anne died just before her 16th birthday in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. The family went into hiding in a cramped attic in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation in July 1942 but a betrayal led to their arrest in 1944. The letters were found in New York a year ago by a YIVO researcher, Estelle Guzik. They reveal how in 1941 Otto Frank had tried to obtain visas for his family to travel to the US or Cuba. YIVO's executive director Carl Rheins said t...

Always amuses and fascinates me how synchronist life is if you pay attention. I was just talking with someone about how, as a convert - I find myself being shunned by Jews. I used to get teased, taunted and beat up as a kid all the time - so I am right 99% of the time when I sense I am being talked about. Things like I will never be a REAL Jew or I am a wanna-be. Or they question my reasons for converting. And today I opened my email and read the article below. In my life I have faced issues like not feeling like a REAL woman because of my infertility and endocrine disorder. Or because I never dated a lot nor pursued men like other girls. Or how I am not a REAL mother because I had 12+ years of infertility treatment to get pregnant; despite 2 abortions when I was younger. Or I will never be a REAL NYer - even tho I have lived here more than 1/2 my life and never felt more comfortable or at home in place in my life, from day one. In my late -marriage - I was not allowed to have...

NO CONVERSION FOR YOU! Remember the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld? Always someone like that wherever you go deciding who can and can't have... Where I used to live in the early 90s there was a newstand on the corner of my block. It had been there for years and was run by what I realized was an older lady. One Sunday morning I walked over to get a newspaper, she said she was all out. As I was leaving I saw one of my neighbors who had lived in that neighborhood for many, many years. He asked her for the same paper... she slid one out from under the counter and gave it to him. My blog friend, Keli Ata - had a post I found very compelling today about a man who was denied conversion. She talks about her understanding of Judiasm and debates the reasons the man was denied. Here are some excerpts: In my case these questions on my concept of G-d were readily addressed. From earliest childhood I never could accept that a merciful G-d would require a human sacrifice from anyone. Washed in th...

CONVERSION - The 'Latent' Jewish Soul I posted this in a comment at my blogging friend, Emily's blog: Becoming Jewish. My brother told me a great joke once - Mr. Schwartz dies - goes to heaven - and St. Peter meets him at the gate. “Mr. Schwartz, we’ve been waiting for you - come on in.” Peter escorts Mr. Schwartz down a long hallway of rooms where people are partying like crazy. Over the door of each room it says: Hindu, Ba’hai, Shinto, Methodist, Presbyterian, and so on. Peter says “come Mr. Schwartz our biggest room is for us Jews!! And there’s a party with food in there like you have never seen in your life!” As he keeps walking - Peter turns to him and says “be totally quiet when we pass this next room.” They pass and there are hundreds of people on their knees praying like crazy. “Who are they?” asks Mr. Schwartz as they pass the room. “Them?” says Peter “Oh those are the super right wing evangelical conservatives! They think they’re the only ones up here.” (its...

Gifts of a Convert The metamorphosis of Ahuvah Gray, a black American who was once a Christian minister and is now an Orthodox Jew. The following is the introduction to Ahuvah Gray's new book, Gifts of a Stranger: A Convert's Round-the-World Travels and Spiritual Journeys . As I follow Ahuvah Gray along the narrow stairway leading to her apartment, and step up into the little light-filled penthouse that is her home above the rooftops of Bayit Vegan, what comes to mind is the childhood classic, A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. In that famous tale, the heroine dwells cozily in an attic room above the rooftops of London, and looks out from her oasis upon the world below. Here, through windows on every side, it's the fast-moving clouds of a rainy winter morning in Israel that adorn the horizon, and the branches of a Jerusalem pine tree that brush up against the opaquely luminous rectangle of skylight. Ahuvah Gray herself -- a black American who was once a Christia...