One recent summer weekend, my life—or my awareness of its imperatives—underwent a radical shift. My 28-year-old son was away at the beach with friends.

Sixty-seven years ago today, Bess Myerson was crowned Miss America, the only Jewish woman ever to be so honored.

There’s a spot in the morning Shacharis service that reminds us that honey can’t be added to any offering.

Labor Day. In America, this holiday is more often associated with barbeques, sales, and the farewell to summer and white linen than with the contributions of workers. By design, it’s a less overtly political holiday than the workers’ holidays in Europe—the U.S. intentionally picked a day other than the International Workers’ Day of May 1^st to avoid any whiff of radicalism.

The summer’s whizzed by and so has JWA’s fiscal year (which ends September 30^th). As that date approaches, we’ve been taking a hard look at the numbers.

Hurricane Katrina, one of the most destructive and costliest natural disasters in U.S. history, slammed into New Orleans on this day in 2005.

More than half a century after the August day in 1944 when Ruth Gruber coaxed reluctant refugees off the bus—told they would be taken to the showers, these concentration camp survivors refused to disembark—I stood on that very spot in upstate New York.

So, it’s an educators’ conference. You can imagine, we are caught in our business casual pastel prints and scarves, pencil skirts and ballet flats.

On August 22, 1893, a child was born who would make the world a decidedly wittier place.

Despite being a Jewish educator, I have never felt a strong, personal connection to our sacred texts.

What if you were promised you would never have another BHD (Bad Hair Day)? What’s more, what if you never again had to wonder if your roots are showing?

In 1878, Naphtali Herz Imber, an English poet originally from current-day Ukraine, paid tribute to the dream of a Jewish homeland.

If you are under the age of 20, there’s never been a time in your life when a Jewish woman hasn’t been sitting on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Last January, a 4-foot, 9-inch bundle of power named Naomi Kutin squatted and focused her considerable energies on the task at hand: hoisting a whopping 214.9 pounds (more than double her own 97 pounds). At the moment of that seemingly impossible lift, beating out her much older competitors, Naomi set a new powerlifting world record for women in her weight class.

To be human is to feel pain. Show me a soul that has walked this earth, that has lived and died unscathed, unscarred—physically and emotionally.