Ruti Mizrachi, at The Blogs

Feb 24, 2021, 11:33 AM

I was driving myself to Towson Mall, and got lost. (Directions were never my strong suit.) I pulled into a gas station, and the young Black attendant bounced out the door with the most radiant smile. “How can I help...

Aug 29, 2019, 11:06 PM

God Drove the Ambulance

You can't help but find good stories at the Flag Football European Championship games. Many countries, accents and languages make for a delicious salad of humanity. Mostly good attitudes and brother- and sisterhood abound. People are on their best behavior,...

May 5, 2019, 12:15 PM

Sabbath Hell

'Love Safe': a How-To: - "1) Upon hearing a 'Color Red' siren, or explosions, one is to enter the protected space and stand behind the yellow line. 2) One may exit the protected space after five minutes, unless provided with other instructions.": Israel Ministry of Defense rules for using portable bomb shelters, in this case, one set alongside a children's playground at Kibbutz Alumim, alongside the Hamas - ruled Arab Gaza Strip. Colorful graphics and smiley-face graffiti, however, do not dispel the persistent threat and such shelters are common sights throughout towns villages, and at bus stops across the region.

We wish each other "Sabbath peace." And yet, we know, better than we know what weather to expect over Shabbat, that our friends in the south of Israel will have a better than even chance of having the opposite...

Feb 26, 2019, 2:27 PM

The 100 Blessings of a Walk through Jerusalem

You're on the bus in Jerusalem. Once you determine that the uncharacteristically not-plugged-in woman sitting next to you is neither Anglo nor Israeli in native language preference, you muddle through with a German-English-Hebrew hodgepodge conversation. You give each other...

Sep 3, 2018, 11:50 AM

Returning to the Land of the Living

What if you could go back in time and fix that one terrible error you made in your youth? Or even if you couldn't fix it, you could at least seek resolution and absolution... There were moments in Yael Shahar’s...

Jul 24, 2018, 11:39 AM

Millennials ROCK!

I'm getting tired of the Millennials getting a bad rap. This is possibly because I am a fair-minded person who believes, as Rabbi Y.Y. Jacobson puts it, that you can't be a leader if you look at the next...

Jan 8, 2018, 11:43 AM

The Demon Dementia

"Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you." -- Paul Simon She was once smart enough to hold her own in conversation with her nuclear scientist husband. I sit with her in the opulent dining room, for months now in disarray...

Nov 8, 2017, 6:15 PM

Featured Post

On a new derech: A letter from a son to his mother

One year old baby and his mother are playing together. The mother gives a kiss and the baby is smiling. (iStock)

Response to an Orthodox Jewish mother grappling with a son's decision to take a new path

Oct 25, 2017, 2:11 PM

Forced to hide — a love story

Finding a really good book is one of the sweet pleasures of life. Daniella Levy's first novel, By Light of Hidden Candles, is by turns a troubling love story, a glimpse into two related religions and their practices, a mystery,...

May 16, 2017, 9:42 PM

Fade Out: Walking on a Wire

He had noticed it first yesterday afternoon, but he supposed it had been happening for a while. It was when he said hello, again, to his boss, and again, his boss had grunted something without glancing up. Adam looked...

About Me

After serving in the US military, Ruti Eastman (aka Ruti Mizrachi) married her hero, homeschooled four sons, and intermittently worked in the field of education over a span of 30 years. She has worked in radio, has played in several bands, and teaches harmonica and percussion. Ruti and her family made aliyah in 2007. She currently maintains two blogs, one about Israel, called “Ki Yachol Nuchal!” and the other about general topics such as family, childrearing, marriage, and family history, called “Never Ruthless." Ruti Eastman has published two books of essays on the above topics, both available on Amazon.

Contact Me