Contemporary Stories

"Back in Morocco my husband was a taxi driver. Ten days after our marriage he traveled from one city to the next and I never heard from him again. They say he died in a crash, however, they cannot locate his body, only the wrecked car."

Just before the siege, Yaakov met his sister, Ita Sosonkin at the outskirts of Leningrad. With tears in their eyes, they promised each other that whoever stays alive will take care of the other's children.

As the hours passed, the students became frustrated and some planned on closing the doors early. They began assessing the cause of the failure.

As the crowd dispersed from around the child, the Soviet official suddenly awoke from his drunkenness, pointed, and asked, "Who is that holy man?"

Prior to the next Shabbat, the commanding officer, Victor, announced that ten percent of the soldiers could go home for Shabbat, a twenty-four hour leave. Unfortunately, the truck that came to take us back to civilization arrived twenty-five minutes before Shabbat began.

Even though Basia was occupied with supporting her family, three times a week she would make the long trip to visit her husband.

"Chazan, why are you here?" asked an officer whom he encountered. "Are you not supposed to be eating now?"

They commanded Father to dress and come with them. Father came to my small bed, bent down and gave me a kiss, long and painful. Tears – big ones, hot ones, blazing ones – rolled off his cheek and onto my forehead.

His parents had been painfully trying to reach him the entire time he was in Shanghai... For months upon months, they had not been able to make contact with him. Had he made the right decision to depart from them? What ever happened to them? Would he ever see them again?

As he was running his hands up the side of the coats, he suddenly realized that his pockets were still filled with wads of money from that day's dealings.

"Listen to me, Mrs. Rosenberg," her heavy face was flushed with excitement. "Let me take her. Why should she die, the innocent babe? I will care for her as if she was my own. I never had children, you know. Give her to me..."

Yisroel stood in the doorway, cheeks and nose bright red from the cold, snow crusting his thick brown bangs. "My mother is still not here, and I'm frozen. Can I wait inside?"

"It's just not the same anymore without him..." She bows her head. I nod in agreement, but inside I'm singing

I glanced at my watch nervously. Usually, I avoid flying Friday afternoons for fear I won't arrive in time, but this time, I figured I'd be safe. I figured wrong...

The doctor picked up the sample. He placed a drop on a slide, then slipped it under the eyepiece of the microscope. One glance showed him that it was full of bacteria--he did not bother to analyze it further

The death of a thousand cuts would have been preferable. I briefly considered crawling, until I realized that everyone would be able to see me anyway.

Do you know where Kano is? Look it up on the map of Nigeria in West Africa

"Why," pondered the sad little accountant, "couldn't I get into a government refund loop, instead of a Shmurah Matzah loop? Just my mazel," he said to himself, "everyone else gets money when there is a mistake, I get Matzah."

The soldier stared at the boy, fighting back tears. "Over these four terrible years, this is the first live Jewish child I have seen..."

"Go find someone else to bother," he shot back at me. "I want nothing to do with you!" My head was spinning; I was hurt inside, yet knew I had done nothing disrespectful. Obviously, what I represent—being a religious Jew, wearing a beard and a kippah on my head— upset him so.