"Today is day 572, which are 81 weeks and 5 days of the captivity of 59 hostages living and dead in Gaza."

"I knew she was coming because I had heard it from her mom, who sings with me in the same choir in Tel Aviv and is colloquially known as Aviva the Soprano."

"So, we decided to hold our barbecue at Tel Eshomer, except that it couldn't be a barbecue because you're not allowed to barbecue on the grounds of the hospital. So we decided we would forego the barbecue and just have, you know, food, you know, still meat there, but without a barbecue. ... two of us in Jerusalem."

"My most quintessential only in Israel moment came three years ago when I was teaching a semester in San Diego on an Israeli visiting professorship."

"And we started 25 years ago at the brieft of my husband's nephew, Razi, who was the fourth child of my husband's brother, Neil. Neil and Sharon live on kibbutz Keturah. And the brieft was on Yom Ha'atzma'ut. So, we all, you know, trekked down to kibbutz Keturah, which is about 40 minutes north of Eilat."

"There's a few in Be'er Sheva, a few in Modi'in, one in Ranana, kibbutz Keturah, two of us in Jerusalem."

"There's a few in Be'er Sheva, a few in Modi'in, one in Ranana, kibbutz Keturah, two of us in Jerusalem."

"There's a few in Be'er Sheva, a few in Modi'in, one in Ranana, kibbutz Keturah, two of us in Jerusalem."

"In a way that connects us to each other, to this place, and yes, to Israel. Now, I bring up this as the thing that's Israeli in my mind because it exists in a dialogue with some of the reasons that 44 years ago, two in particular, of the reasons that 44 years ago, I came to this country. One being that I didn't want to have to drive my children to a Jewish thing. That is, I didn't want to have to drive my children to a Jewish thing. I didn't want to have to say, as much as I remember this as a 22-year-old thinking but being expressed by a 65-year-old, as much as I think the American Jewish community is a rich, varied, and wonderful place, you do have to drive to your Judaism unless you live an Orthodox lifestyle. You get in the car and you drive to your Jewish summer camp, to your JCC, to your Hebrew school, or your day school, or your synagogue. I wanted to live in a country where Judaism was the only way to live. I wanted to live in a country where Judaism was the only way to live. I wanted to live in a country where the air we breathe and the water we swim in, where everything was so natural that we weren't even aware of that. And that's the case with my daughters. I raised three daughters here. The most obvious thing in the world for them was that when they became bat mitzvah, one of the things that they would do was on Hanukkah, they would hike up that mountain and light those giant torches, just like young people lit torches on mountains 2,000 years ago to signal the coming of the new moon. And that when they went into first grade, it was going to be the beginning of their learning to read and write a language that had been spoken by King David 3,000 years ago."