The video for our friends The Macaroons’ “Apples and Honey” dropped today. (“Dropped.” Look at me, talking like the youth.) Check out the delightful song, which I think sounds like Matthew Sweet (thus dating myself yet again), and the charming video, which is sure to entertain your tykes this holiday season. And please note the ...

As I write this, kids are going back to school almost everywhere but in New York City. The first day of school isn’t until September 8 here, and thanks to Rosh Hashanah, our second day isn’t until September 13. I think our last day of school this year will be around Tisha B’Av.
Something else is ...

I would rather sit on a stoop in the rain than see Eat Pray Love. In fact, I did just that. Last weekend, my kids were attending a drop-off birthday party at a movie theater, which not only spared me from having to sit through Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore but allowed ...

Anat Even-Or

When I was a kid, I was tall. Crazy tall. I was 5 feet 3 inches by the time I was 10. Everyone thought I’d ultimately reach 6 feet, like my Aunt Belleruth. Sure, Aunt Belleruth was gorgeous, but I wanted to look like everyone else. I envied Carolyn Schachter and Allison Page, the ...

My kids are frolicking in green. Everything around us is green—huge verdant lawns, graceful willow trees. Every day, Josie and Maxie take a yellow school bus past green cornfields and farm stands brimming with fresh tomatoes and pickling cucumbers.
It’s beautiful here in Wisconsin, where we’re visiting my in-laws for a couple of weeks. My kids ...

Are you completely sick of me yammering about camp? Well, you’ll be glad to know that this is my last camp-related column of the summer. But while the others have been jokey, this one is anything but.
Meet Ezra, the 12-year-old son of my friend Jeff Kress. Jeff is chair of the Department of Jewish Education ...

In homage to the fabulous Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook series, we offer you a public service: a guide to negotiating those rocky few weeks between the return of your child from summer camp and the start of school. It’s wise to be prepared for the worst; apparently in a courtroom situation, judges do not consider ...

I’ve been thinking about shatnez recently. That’s the Torah’s inexplicable prohibition against wearing fabric containing a mixture of wool and linen. I say “inexplicable” because neither Leviticus nor Deuteronomy, the two books that mention this rule, explain why we’re supposed to follow it. That makes shatnez a chok, a law given without a reason (as ...

I’m a parent. My editor, Liel, isn’t. But he is an expert in new media. And we were recently chatting about online bullying, a phenomenon that interests us both, but found ourselves completely at odds.
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Hi, Liel, a person whose views are diametrically opposed to mine on everything and who has no child and therefore no ...

Sun-In! Sea Breeze! Dippity-Do! The comments on my last column, about Jewish summer camp in the 1980s, unleashed a torrent of memories. Forgotten images came rushing back so powerfully, it was just like the finale of Lost.
In seemingly but not actually unrelated news, I read Anthony Lane’s hilarious piece in the June 28 issue of ...