Az Nashir: Echoes of Eicha-
Reflections on the Unfolding of Redemption

I don't think I'll ever get over looking up on the highway and seeing this glorious flag blowing in the wind. This particular one was enormous. Larger than my SUV. The hot wind was blowing so hard that it had enough power to open the entirety of the flag so that it was fully extended in the sky. For the novel I'm (please God) finishing this summer, I spent many years intensely studying different moments in Jewish history. Mostly challenging ones were our existence, and certai

I'm not just angry. I'm nauseous. This week, Susan Abulhawa, an anti-Israel activist with a long history of dehumanizing Jews, responded to criticism that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani had failed to appoint a single Jewish member to his 18-person judicial screening panel. This is not an isolated outburst. Abulhawa has repeatedly referred to Jews as "vampires," "demons," and "ghouls," celebrated the October 7 Hamas massacre, and previously collaborated with New York City

I’ve started asking a strange question in Israeli grocery stores. Who is all this food really for? In the entire time it took me to pick out my fruits and vegetables, an older man stood by the cherry table. Going through each bundle of cherries, picking through the stems, choosing the very best fruit for his little basket. He brought them up to eye level and studied them, wiping the dust from each one, checking carefully for bruises and blemishes. When he finished, he looked

I spent 30 minutes trying to find a movie that fit the appropriate Tisha Ba'av mood, aware that my teen, like all kids in Israel, has lived through too much heavy stuff the last few years. I played him the trailer of a couple, and he said, "This feels too much like Oct 7th to me..." Made sense. Scenes of violence, Israelis, refugees, escape. Too close to relive that today. Holocaust movies are a hard no for me. I've watched too many in my lifetime. Read too many stories. It's

I've spent enough time paying attention to the news that now I've decided to spend more time paying attention to people and their real lives. Today I went to the market, and I saw an elderly couple loading up their cart with all sorts of Israeli party treats. Enormous bags of salty sunflower seeds and toasted almonds. Candies in all colors and shapes: little gummy strawberries and candied worms covered in sugar. Little balls of chocolate filled with ganache, freshly popped po

I remember the day she was released. I remember the footage of the way she was speaking to her captor, with such vehemence and defiance. When former hostage Rimon Buchshtab-Kirscht was finally driven toward the Red Cross after 53 days in Hamas captivity, her captor tried one last time to torment her. "Yagev will be here in two days," he told her. "Yagev will be here in four days." He was referring to her husband, Yagev Buchshtab, who had been kidnapped alongside her from Kibb

I'll admit it, I've got a rollercoaster relationship with antisemitism. There are days when I read comments, posts, or articles, and I will find myself in a rage. Disgusted and furious- my zealous nature bubbling under the surface. I rant about the lack of justice, the lies, the libels, the lunacy of it all... I will barely contain my anger at the ignorance, stupidity, the evil that underlies Jew-hatred and all the fallout from its sudden upswell post Oct 7. And most days I j

My grandmother's blue Le Creuset pot is sitting in the drawer under the stovetop, along with the rest of my pots. I never use it. I don't touch it. Sometimes I think about moving it my office and putting it up on a bookshelf, just so that I can look at it. For some reason, I can't put it away. Its enamel is peeling, the iron is rusted over, and it is likely unsafe to cook in. It's too small, the perfect size for a serving of six for soup, not enough for many more I cook for t

I've been thinking a lot about what happens when Jews are rejected from Western society. There are countries like Australia, where Jews are hiding their Judaism in order to receive medical care because they fear sabotage or intentional injury. On American college campuses, students and professors can be doxxed simply for identifying as Zionists. There are cities in the Western world where wearing a kippah, a headscarf, a Magen David necklace, or tzitzit has become a calculati

I know far too much about ballistic missiles for someone who studied social work. I have accidentally become conversant in at least 7 subjects that I wish I knew nothing about. I miss the days when I had no opinion about uranium enrichment. Or how long it takes a missile to get to Israel from Yemen or Iran. I wish I could erase my entire COVID epidemiology vocabulary from my brain. My military strategy knowledge could have been better used for recipes. I think we all have deg