The cruelty of the global pandemic seems limitless. So many broken promises, broken connections, broken hearts. News that the sympathy card sections at the drug store are as bare as the toilet paper aisle at the supermarket might seem like a small detail in the current landscape. But it is a loss layered upon the…

In 1993, in Billings, Montana, someone threw a brick through a window that displayed a child’s drawing of a menorah. That was the year I bought an electric menorah. I had always turned up my nose at them: ugly, commercial, crass, nowhere near as beautiful or meaningful as real flames. But candles burn out within an…