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Walter Estever Gonzalez

Jun 25, 2026, 5:38 AM

The Roof Where I Watched the War

An illustration inspired by childhood memories of watching the Salvadoran Civil War from the rooftop of a family home in San Jorge, El Salvador.

There are memories that return first as light. Not faces. Not names. Not even fear. Only flashes against the darkness. When I was a child during the Salvadoran civil war, I used to climb onto the roof of our house...

Nette Berelson-Hatan

Jun 21, 2026, 5:04 PM

Esau’s Eye Exam

Esau suffered from spiritual nearsightedness. He couldn’t see clearly into the distance, but could only see visibly up close. The distant site was blurry, and in his desperation to satisfy his immediate need, he made a bad deal. This...

Jun 16, 2026, 8:46 AM

Truths and Constructed Myths Regarding the Jewish Presence in Albania

The tendency to produce, package, and instrumentalize myths for specific purposes—whether individual, collective, historical, or political—is considered “normal” in the Balkan Peninsula. It suffices that such actions yield the desired effect or outcome for those who construct, package, or...

Walter Estever Gonzalez

Jun 11, 2026, 4:32 AM

Before We Understood What a Grenade Was

A childhood memory from San Jorge, El Salvador, during the Salvadoran Civil War.

There are memories that remain suspended between childhood and catastrophe. At the time they happen, they do not feel historical. They do not announce themselves as trauma. They arrive disguised as confusion, as heat, as adults behaving strangely while...

Jun 9, 2026, 11:15 PM

The Israel I Heard on a Mountaintop

John Boyd Thacher Park in New York's Helderberg Mountains. (Photo Credit: "Discover Albany"--https://www.albany.org/listing/john-boyd-thacher-state-park/1967/)

In June 1967, a high school friend and I spent six consecutive nights driving from our homes in Albany, New York, to the top of John Boyd Thacher Park in the Helderberg Mountains. We arrived just before midnight carrying...

David Rosh Pina

Jun 3, 2026, 3:07 PM

David Rosh Pina

We enter this world with a cry and a breath, Every step that we take is a dance closer to death, We cling to what's fleeting, what time will refuse, We cherish, we love, but we're born to lose. He...

Walter Estever Gonzalez

May 28, 2026, 2:01 PM

Where Was God When He Asked for Water

A mother hides her children during the Salvadoran civil war.

There are nights that never end. They do not remain in the past. They return quietly, without warning, and sit beside you as if they had never left. One of those nights still lives in me. During the Salvadoran civil war, when...

Brendon Stewart Freedman

May 28, 2026, 3:57 AM

Michelle: Israel’s Eurovision Lament for Europe

Mons, Belgium. Photo by Emmanuel Codden / Pexels.

There was something almost unbearably poignant about this year’s Israeli Eurovision entry. On the surface, Michelle appeared to comply perfectly with Eurovision’s insistence on political neutrality: a multilingual love song, wistful, romantic, and melancholy, about a toxic relationship and lingering...

May 26, 2026, 9:03 PM

The Breath Between: Consciousness, Evanescence, and the Art of Re-Entry

The evanescent self

By Joe Nalven + Claude + Gemini This essay revisits my earlier essay on consciousness. The process we often use to describe the experience (from our own first-person awareness to investigators who seek to measure it) requires that evanescent memory...

Walter Estever Gonzalez

May 18, 2026, 5:08 AM

Before I Knew the Name

Childhood in El Salvador during the civil war.

There are things the body recognizes before the mind has a language for them. When I was a child in El Salvador, I attended a small church with my mother. It was not a Jewish place. It did not call...

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