Kitty Hoffman

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Apr 24, 2024, 11:31 PM

When Free Speech Isn’t

As this week’s news cycle feeds on the children of privilege ‘occupying’ US campuses, I’m noticing something different – the ongoing anxiety and insecurity I feel as a North American Jew about Israel’s situation is being amplified by an...

Apr 22, 2024, 7:16 PM

A New Passover?

This year I learned a new paradigm for understanding the Haggadah – that it contains not one narrative but rather two (or three), not one point of view but rather two (or three). The archetypal story, the Exodus –...

Apr 15, 2024, 12:15 AM

After Iran’s Missiles

Since the days when they excused the atrocities of Oct 7 as 'resistance', I've unfriended former 'friends' who turned out to be virulent antisemites under cover of 'human rights defense'. But I check their threads periodically just to see...

Apr 12, 2024, 12:55 AM

Among the Many Betrayals

Much has already been written about the deep sense of betrayal many of us feel about those we expected to be standing with us since Oct 7. Here’s one example among many too numerous to recount. I've long been a...

Oct 18, 2023, 9:40 AM

It used to be called the 'Arab-Israeli conflict' -- which in reality it still is; then it was called the 'Israeli-Palestinian conflict'; now it is the 'Israel-Hamas conflict'. See what happened there? See how those name changes alter the perception of relative size and power? And...

Oct 10, 2023, 10:49 AM

My feed is filled with posts by people seeking their missing relatives; triggering memories of my parents' bedtime stories of post-Shoah searches -- desperate; futile. This is no accident. Nor are the Hamas videos of abducted children of women degraded of corpses defiled. This triggering of intergenerational...

May 29, 2023, 5:45 AM

Speaking of Language

In the flood of congratulatory articles celebrating Israel’s 75th birthday, it's been odd and surprising to encounter one side of the language debate that filled my childhood home -- Yiddish (my leftist father) vs Hebrew (my right-wing Zionist mother)...

Apr 21, 2023, 8:39 AM

Images of Survivors

On Yom Hashoa a friend, also 2G, wrote: What strikes me on this day is the simple heroism of those that survived against all odds, in such dreadful conditions. We owe them our lives, our children's lives, grandchildren's lives -...

Mar 28, 2023, 7:57 AM

It Feels Like Redemption

We who don’t live in Israel have been stuck to our social media as though with velcro. As I write this, an immediate danger has been averted. The crisis, which feels existential, continues. We continue to wait, we continue to...

Jun 7, 2021, 7:23 AM

You haven’t been paying attention

In the last month or so, life online has been emotionally turbulent and painful. Like you, I’ve unfriended and even blocked a number of lifelong friends. My social media world is filled with laments by Jews long active in...

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About Me

Kitty Hoffman's award-winning writing has appeared in literary anthologies and journals including The New Quarterly, Boulevard, The Commons, and Prism. A spiritual director in Montreal, she is in the final year of rabbinical studies and working on a book of literary nonfiction about her medieval ancestor, the father of European kabbalah, and the weight of her Holocaust legacy. More info at kittyhoffman.com

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