Short stories (nice ones!) from real life

Plus, reading, writing, resources, & a dinner game plan

I still send postcards. Am I a relic?

Let’s begin with the good news that four more hostages — Daniella, Naama, Liri, and Karina — are, thank G-d, home in Israel. May they continue to feel the power of our prayers and our love as they heal in body and soul. And may the rest of the hostages be released soon.

There’s so much bad news out there, but I’m trying not to doom scroll. Chin up, my Grandma Sadye would have said. Look through the mess to see the light, no matter what’s happening in the world.

So I thought I’d first share a few recent real-life stories, nice ones, from my corner of the universe. After, keep reading for some great resources, a bit about books, and a game plan for those cold winter nights when you don’t feel like cooking.

Here & There

I ran into a friend outside the supermarket last week. He asked, “You know what positive means, don’t you?” He’d recently heard a talk by a rabbi visiting from Israel, who said, “Positive is po zeh tov!” in Hebrew, playing on the syllables. Here is good. Not just geographically, but wherever we are emotionally, spiritually, and existentially. To make the best of things, despite our challenges.

It’s a helpful message for the times. Po zeh tov is also catchy. I can’t get it out of my head.

Postcards

When my son joined the IDF this past fall, I began mailing him a postcard every Monday. I wanted some kind of ritual to help me pass the years of his service and to let him know I’m thinking of him.

Postcards seemed perfect. Short, sweet, cool artwork, interesting images. Besides, I’ve been collecting them since I was eight and have since amassed a large collection to choose from.

On average, they reach him in about 8 or 9 days, which isn’t bad at all, especially considering the wartime postal slowdown, not that the mail to Israel is ever quick. He’s saving them, he said. “I’ll have a collection by the time I’m out of the army.”

With his birthday coming up, I seized the chance to send a package of 23 postcards, all addressed with little notes. A friend visiting Israel hand delivered it on his big day. He thought it was a hoot.

Postcards as love.

Give Me Your Hand

My playlist is growing with the Israeli music I remember from my year in Jerusalem and subsequent travels. Among the recent additions, the song T’ni Li Yad by Boaz Sharabi, an old favorite. Give me a [your] hand, he croons, while I’m reminded of the time I got lost in a department store when I was a little girl of about four.

We were in the notions section (Do they still call it that?), which carried sewing items like buttons, appliques, and zippers, all displayed in glass cases. It was crowded, the space aromatic with a stifling blend of perfumes.

Anyway, what’s important to the story is that my hand was in my mother’s until it was not. I can still see myself sweating in my faux-fur-hooded coat, feeling so untethered and alone, spinning around in panic until I slipped my hand into the nearest empty adult one and told the woman to whom it belonged that I was lost.

For decades, the memory has surfaced like a familiar dream, stirred up by all sorts of things. This week alone, Sharabi’s song, and by a jar of buttons, and then again, by an old sequined applique of a parrot I found while cleaning my mother and stepfather’s house.

But there was also the flipside to the story – the relief I felt when I was found and we arrived back home.

As time passed, as I aged and the memory deepened, I understood that moment of getting lost in the notions section of the department store to be about something else – about faith and sensing G-d’s closeness as real and tangible.

I often imagine myself slipping my mortal hand into His mighty celestial one, clinging to the hope that somehow, somewhere down the line, in some way I cannot wrap my head around right now or foresee, whatever it is that’s troubling me, that’s troubling the world, will all work out. That He’s with me, with us, even when it does not.

That, too, is a kind of love.

Writing Updates

I’m very excited to be keeping up my mini-interviews with Jewish writers because I believe that #everydayisJewishbookday. Check out my Facebook page for recent conversations with novelists, poets, memoirists, and also a comic book writer. More wonderful interviews to come over the next few weeks.

And this was fun. Writer Judy Gruen asked me what one book I recommend folks read in 2025. Here’s my answer.

Reading & Resources

• The Jewish Book Council has announced the winners of the 74th Jewish Book Awards. So many of the books I read last year — and one of the first books I’ve read in 2025, The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden — are on the list. Van der Wouden’s has a great plot twist, but it’s not for young audiences.

• And speaking of books and book clubs, check out this story about a college football player who joined a local women’s book club quite by chance.

• After staring at a pile of books for half an hour this past Shabbos morning, I landed on something lighter for a change. Alan Furst’s Blood of Victory. A quick-paced read.

• These newly discovered poems reveal a more playful, poetic side to Virginia Woolf.

• The United States Postal Service plans to release Goodnight Moon forever stamps later this year.

• Watch the London Vegetable Orchestra perform. Yes, a vegetable orchestra. My friend Riva will especially enjoy this.

• A newly-proven way to let insults and anger go — with pen and paper. I love this, and have been doing some form of it for ages.

• And lastly, polka dots are saving birds in Chicago and I couldn’t adore this more. In a world that seems bereft of compassion, this really struck me with its kindness. Polka dots as love?

What to cook when you don’t want to cook

This is fabulous for those nights when you don’t know what to make for dinner, but you’re still hungry.

Thanks for being here!

Subscribing to Days of Rest is love, too. Just saying. <3

Love,
Merri