When someone walks into my office, my goal is to make them feel at home. I want my patient to know that not only did I look at their chart, but I also extensively reviewed their medical history and am ready and able to meet them. I want them to know that my office is a place in which they ca…

Last week, Isaac Herzog was elected to be the 11th president of the state of Israel. As an Israeli, many people asked me, “Who is he? What is his story?”

Perseverance, tenacity, time, patience are all needed for “first-degree family of olim” (non-Israeli citizens with family that recently made an aliyah) to travel into Israel. There are lots of forms, documents, COVID-19 tests (both serology and swabs) and permissions to be granted. All of th…

The verdict was swift and concise: Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

Some of you may have noticed a billboard on Interstate 271 with a large photo of President Joe Biden stating: “Mr. President, with honor, dignity and courage! Recognize the Armenian Genocide.”

Over the past few months, whether through hushed whispers during Zoom calls or otherwise, many people have been on both the asking and receiving ends of the same question: Did you get the vaccine? Are you going to get it? How did you sign up?

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

There is an old Dr. Seuss book, “Dilly Goes to Delancey Street,” that features a black-bearded, hook-nosed Jewish man leering at a pair of little girls in white pinafores.

The Cleveland Jewish News has reported on the normalization treaty signed last August between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. My perspective on this positive development is based on experience in the UAE including a visit last month during which – thanks to an introduction from the Jewi…

I was 6 years old in 1976 when Black History Month was officially instituted by President Gerald R. Ford for national observance. I still recall how my homeroom teachers, February after February, would display pictures of famous African-Americans – Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, Shirle…

It’s not like I didn’t know what was coming.

It’s almost a law of nature. Today’s media fixation displaces the prior one and bad news drives out good. In 2020, COVID-19 and the US presidential election sucked the oxygen from other topics, large and small, including Israel. Its historic, region-transforming breakthroughs in relations wi…

Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, I had lunch with an elderly cousin because I was interested in the history of our family – why we fled Europe, how we ended up in Cleveland, and what it was like growing up in a home of immigrants. What began initially as an earnest inquiry into family roots r…

Last week, we were saddened by the news of the passing of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of England and world-famous Jewish philosopher and author.

I’m a Holocaust brat. Kind of like an Army brat, except that traveling never ends. Once exposed to the Holocaust, it stays with you. But my story is different. While other Holocaust brats remember the cruelty, I remember the goodness.

There are moments in time that take our breath away. We ponder what we believe. We question why things happen. We wonder if a situation will resolve and whether or not we will have the strength to persist.

In June, the Jewish Federation of Cleveland adopted a set of policy recommendations to help achieve safe and accessible elections in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Guided by our Jewish values and our commitment to public health, we strongly believe that people should not have to choose b…

As philosopher and playwright Mike Tyson once said: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

As a pre-teen, I memorized the entire ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. At age 11, I had The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s cadence and hand gestures down exactly. My parents would often direct me to recite it when friends and family would stop by our home.