YEHUDIT
FEINSTEIN
MENTESH

My mother was always busy. She was a mother to four children, a full-time nurse, the wife of a man who came back from war, injured, broken inside. She carried so much. She was always there, yet not there. Still, she always found ways to make our world beautiful. She cooked the best meals, cut flowers from the yard, and placed them in small vases throughout the house. Handmade tablecloths, scarves, old bags, and curtains filled our home, woven, sewn, and stitched by her hands.

Lately, I find myself gasping for air in moments I don’t expect. The weight on my chest doesn’t leave, and sleep feels like a distant memory. The world around me is in chaos, and my deepest fears, fears I have carried long before now, are surfacing with every news item. The hostages. The unimaginable suffering. The images of people returning, broken but home. And those still left behind. And then there is my father, 52 years ago, a POW. His face, his story, suddenly merged in

“Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. In 3rd grade, my parents took us on a trip across the United States, coast to coast. It was part of my father’s research journey in education. The year was 1984, my first time leaving Israel, and that experience imprinted itself on me in ways I’m still discovering. I remember being captivated, almost in shock, by the American landscape. The architecture, the houses with their

Our memories are a collection of moments and items that shape us, often in ways we don’t fully understand until we meet them again, sometimes as gentle waves, other times as rushing storms that flood our consciousness. Memory stores fragments of time, pieces of experiences that build the very cells of our being, the structure of our souls, and the foundations of who we are. But what determines what stays with us? What makes certain moments or objects so significant that they

What is it about time that is so painful? I feel its cycles deeply, from within and from without. Each season, each turn carries its own weight. Some intimate longings and untold stories linger in the air. They are all that I know and miss, all that I cannot reach. And in between are the hours: the mornings and nights, the winds and the sun, the smell of cold air that signals a coming change. There are the longings for warm summer nights, for connection, for moments that feel

Why is it so hard to find and listen to our own inner voice? What happened along the way that we learned not to hear it? These questions have stayed with me for years, often surfacing when I’m faced with life’s quietest yet most profound moments. A Childhood of Silence and Strength I was born just over a year after my father returned home as a POW from Egypt. It was the mid-seventies, and no one truly understood post-trauma or the ripple effects it had on families. My father

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