Of all life's pleasures, only love owes no debt to death.

One of my great secrets was knowing I had the power to make her smile.

Since 1985, I have written about contemporary Jewish practice and the Jewish community.

The other reason women wanted daughters was to keep their memories alive.

The painful things seemed like knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads in place.

I lived through a classic publishing story. My editor was fired a month before the book came out. The editor who took it over already had a full plate. It was never advertised. We didn't get reviewed in any major outlets.

It's a wonder that any mother ever called a daughter Dinah again. But some did. Maybe you guessed that there was more to me than the voiceless cipher in the text. Maybe you heard it in the music of my name: the first vowel high and clear, as when a mother calls to her child at dusk; the second sound soft, for whispering secrets on pillows. Dee-nah.