Michelle Schwartz

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Apr 25, 2023, 5:54 AM

Israel: Yours, Mine, or Ours?

My soul was hungry, empty, but I didn't know it. I felt disconnected, disappointed. My life had not taken the path I thought it would have; I expected myself to have made different choices. At each juncture and moment in...

Oct 4, 2022, 10:32 AM

Tipping the Scales

The fall holiday season is a challenging time for our family. Rosh Hashana falls two weeks after our son’s passing on the 16 Elul, and it was 12 years ago that we got up from shiva for our son...

Sep 29, 2017, 8:55 AM

The new year is is the season of formal prayer, connecting us to traditions thousands of years old, and to issues ever-present in our lives. Prayer is communal in its performance, yet deeply personal in nature, which is why...

Aug 1, 2017, 7:37 AM

I spend my days seeking balance in life: creating joyful moments to offset challenges I face, practicing righteousness to outweigh injustice, finding the calm to counter the frenzy. I surround myself with reasonable, good-hearted people, and I attend to...

Oct 11, 2016, 3:10 AM

Foreign language

The death of her son forever transformed the synagogue experience for her

Sep 22, 2015, 1:16 PM

Inspired to Pray or Praying to Be Inspired?

It’s the eve of Yom Kippur and we are knee-deep in our holiday season. We menu-plan and shop and cook and freeze; we invite guests and polish the silver and iron the white tablecloth. As we welcome Rosh Hashana,...

Oct 25, 2014, 8:49 AM

Reverberations and aberrations: Tefillin laying fallow

Pondering the meaning of religious observance after all those prayers to save her son's life were futile

Sep 19, 2014, 7:51 PM

Rosh Hashanah: And his name shall be called

The friends of a son who died, carry his memory forward on their wedding days and in their children's names

Aug 6, 2014, 5:32 PM

Just One Mournful Day?

If my heart carries sorrow every day, am I required to mourn beyond that? How do I add a layer of communal loss onto the burden that already weighs me down, to grief that is emotionally deafening on more...

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About Me

Michelle Schwartz is a wife, mother of 4 children (3 of whom are in this world), and savta! Michelle works at a local university in academic guidance.