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Notes on Summer Camp

The buildings at Green Cove consist of a main lodge, an infirmary, and a variety of cabins arranged in “lines” according to the ages of the girls who ­inhabit them. Most of the camp’s structures were built in the 1940s and have changed little since then. The cabins have concrete floors, . . . . Continue Reading »

The Gift of Children

Children are gifts. In them, we respond to Moses’s urgent imperative: Choose life! (Deut. 30:19) Men and women have always brought children into the world. To be a parent is the most natural of things. It is fundamental to what it means to be human. Yet the birth of a child is also an . . . . Continue Reading »

Love, and Be Silent

Regretting Motherhood:  A Study by orna donath north atlantic, 272 pages, $15.95 In March, a self-help author tweeted that whereas he once intended to have many children, now, after putting in a few years on his first, he had decided that one was enough, and more than enough, and if he had it . . . . Continue Reading »

I’ll Have Consequences

Not too many years ago, I knew a little boy who was prone to temper tantrums that included yelling, kicking, and hitting. He wasn’t entirely to blame for this, having had a rough start in life. Nevertheless, that sort of behavior couldn’t just be excused, and, of course, if uncorrected it would . . . . Continue Reading »

Job’s Children

In S. Y. Agnon’s 1939 novel A Guest for the Night, one of the protagonists, Daniel Bach, recounts his loss of faith. Throughout World War I, as a soldier in the trenches, he had been meticulous about donning his tefillin to recite his daily prayers. Until one morning, the tefillin . . . . Continue Reading »

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