The latest edition, The Jewish Wedding Now, came out this month, and I was delighted to interview Diamant after hearing her speak to the Women’s Rabbinic Network at our biennial convention.

I don’t like praying on the women’s side of the divider. I’ve only done so once but once was enough. 

My grandmother, my mother, and I walked into a store. Sounds like the beginning of a joke, right? Actually, the three of us were on a mission to find a tallit for me. My bat mitzvah was approaching, and, since neither my mom nor my grandmother had a tallit of her own, they both wanted to accompany me.

If you’re a driven, self-employed working parent like I am, there’s no internal control mechanism that says it’s time to shut down. I’m nurturing preschool-aged twins, an expanding business, and my next book—entities that call on my resources with infinite demands. Left to my own devices, I would probably crash and burn. In the past, I have.

When I was younger, if you had asked me which of the many Jewish holidays is my favorite, I would never have said Passover. The restrictions that Passover requires made it hard for me to enjoy the message behind the Passover story. Plus, the drama that Passover created in my family, with my parents running around the house cleaning, only added to the stress. My grandmother changed this feeling for me.