Findings

The memory is clear. And it must have happened dozens of times. Soon after my grandmother arrives on a visit to us in Maryland and is settled in the basement guest room, she appears in the kitchen with a bag ...
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In Memoriam: Randolph Braham, 1922-2018 I first encountered Randolph Braham by accident. In my early thirties, I lived on West 97th Street in Manhattan, and on weekends I often went for walks down Broadway just to enjoy the sites and ...
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One of my most favorite desserts growing up was the seven-layer cake we bought at Giant, the local grocery store. Yellow cake. Chocolate icing. Heaven. Along with Hostess cupcakes and Suzy Qs, was this not another of the crimes committed ...
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[The second half of my digression into Hungarian food will feature three desserts. Here's the first!] My father empties a small ladle-full of batter into a cast iron pan in quick circles. He adjusts the heat, picks up a long, ...
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[My series on Hungarian food continues with a final main course...] If there was a royal dish in our home it was Chicken Paprika. It was the most elevated, the most beloved dish. It possessed its own distinct pageantry. It ...
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This is part of a series on Hungarian foods - three main courses, three desserts. This is the second main dish, following stuffed cabbage. Rakott Krumpli is not the name of a man in a folktale, it is a food ...
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[This is the first in a series of posts on Hungarian foods.] Stuffed cabbage was a dish I picked at as a child, and over time it sank into the deepest recesses of my mind. I’d surely never eat it ...
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If there is a major gift in memoir, it is the close exposure it gives a reader to a particular character, or small set of characters, and the ability to watch up close what happens to the author and the ...
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We are lunching at Josephina, right across from Lincoln Center, and for some reason I am babbling excitedly to my grandmother about the motorcycle I’d bought recently. I hadn’t even told my parents, and as I spoke I worried a ...
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"A Stirring Song" Our daughter stood on the bimah facing the congregation, cradling a Torah nearly half her size. She chanted the Shema, loud and strong, filling the airy synagogue. Her song stirred reflections on assimilation and annihilation, the twin ...
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Avoided At All Costs I could not understand my grandmother’s comfort with tragedy – not at the start anyway. “Life in Hungary is terrible. Terrible!” she said, recounting a recent trip to Hungary during one of our weekend lunches in ...
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“March 19, 1944. I never forget that day,” my grandmother told me. She spoke in that particular Hungarian accent, with its often-compressed phrases and odd-sounding emphasis on early syllables. “NEVerforget” began with an exclamation and a shake of the head ...
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