October is breast cancer awareness month. Talk to family members about whether there is a history of cancer on either side. Schedule a BRCA test if you have not already been tested.

When you’re experiencing infertility, it can be all too easy to feel like you’re completely alone. As the world moves around you, bustling with adorable children and pregnant friends, you may feel like you’re the only person who wants to be a parent and has yet to see it happen.

When we began writing this piece, we realized just how similar our experiences were as women who became first-time mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We gave birth a week apart, both via C-section, and both of our sons were premature.

I spent months hiding inside my home after Covid-19 was declared a global health emergency. During that time, the Talmudic description of evil spirits resonated with me. It was certainly how I felt, surrounded by invisible threats just outside my door. Since I am a children's author, I channeled these fears into a picture book featuring a supernatural spirit.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM) in the U.S. Each of us likely knows someone, either in our Jewish community or our secular communities, who has been impacted by or is a survivor of domestic violence.

As we look out from the pulpit, we know there are good reasons that some faces that were familiar before March 2020 are now missing. We have embraced technology at every opportunity. The quality of our livestreaming worship, even in smaller synagogues, is excellent. Many congregants have grown accustomed to praying from the comfort of their couch.

The reality is, one never knows whether someone else is suffering from an acute illness. A broken leg is obvious; a broken spirit, not so much. Many of us contend with invisible illnesses, whether physical, such as Multiple Sclerosis or chronic migraines; or mental, like anxiety or schizophrenia.

As a mother of a one-year-old, I’ve watched Encanto more times than I can count. Around my second time watching it, I realized that “surface pressure” is an amazing metaphor for the struggles I face as a parent. Especially as a parent preparing for both my and my son’s first Passover, the preparation of cooking and cleaning before the first seder is certainly stressful.

After two years of teaching remotely and watching far too many movies and television series on Netflix on the same computer screen I use to interact with these students, I wonder if I feel less connected to these "virtual" students than the hundreds of young people I taught in person over the past decades.