JONAH KRUVANT

I woke up this morning with an image imprinted in my brain. It was the last visualization of a dream that felt deep and profound and of which I had no memory of, save this unusual photograph of the mind.

            I was standing in a desert, looking out at a distant hill of bronze-colored sand. The slope was filled with movement. Horses with riders were galloping toward me.

...

Last Friday, cooped up in my apartment, I knew I had to get out and go for a run.  A good friend of ours has gotten my wife and I into the New York running scene recently, and I had just run the last race—a 10K— before the rest were canceled due to the coronavirus. On that unusually warm March afternoon, it was as if God himself (or herself?) was tempting us to test our luck in the outside world, and I gave in. I put on my run...

My bride

My bride is the definition of sweet.

My bride is authentic, honest, and kind.

My bride is a smile that radiates, making my entire being jump for joy.

My bride is the sparkling aqua eyes that drew me to her the first time we met.

My bride is content to simply be by my side.

My bride is beautiful inside and out.

My bride instinctually knows the difference between right and wrong.

My bride naturally gives to others before hersel...

People gather in collective silence

in a state of stupefaction 

to gaze at this waterfall,

its ferocious energy somehow soothing,

its spray a vast wispy cloud so opaque

we sense its movement through the mist,

the fog in our head lifted

as we simply be, 

awed and unencumbered.

Mossy rocks emerge and surround the canyon

as the breeze of Dettifoss

flips the page of my weathered notebook,

but I don’t want to leave just yet.

I’ve found a p...

Unless you go to a place, there is no way to really know what it’s like. Before going somewhere, we form pictures in our heads of what we perceive it to be like, based on what we learn, hear, or see around us. For example, I couldn’t understand, when I first moved to Japan, why Japanese homes didn’t look like the old bamboo huts in a Miyazaki anime film. Equally surprised was my Japanese friend, Masataka, when he learned that...

One evening in Warsaw, after a long day of visiting museums and memorials, I stumbled upon a Chopin concert. After learning of the worst in World War II, the unavoidable lessons of the brutality and cruelty that humankind is capable of, the concert reminded me that humans are also capable of something else. At the Warsaw Cemetery, visitors turned silent when they viewed the mass grave in front of them. The way the pianist evok...

Here I sit in the center of the Krakow Ghetto. It’s impossible to convey the reality of what went on here, the horrors unimaginable. A place where “mercy” is a forgotten word. Where cruelty and brutality were commonplace. A place that more than anything has forced us to question humanity. It’s impossible to comprehend the Holocaust. But we must never forget it.

            How does it feel that it was my people who were persecu...

I didn’t know what to expect when I first arrived in Poland. Would it be safe? Would I have enough to eat as a vegetarian? Was I going to Western Europe, Eastern Europe…or Northern Europe?

            As for the last question, it would turn out that it was a fusion of all three, yet at the same time, none at all. Partitioned by Germany and Russia, western Poland has an intricate system of train lines and highways built by the G...

The following is the first of a series of blog posts from my trip to Israel and Poland, an exploration into my family and cultural roots.

            Summer for a teacher offers limitless possibilities. In addition to preparing for the next school year, many teachers work summer programs; some catch up on sleep, reading, and their favorite Netflix series; and others go to the beach or Italy or Honolulu. Me? I chose to study the...

My summer trip this year was to Switzerland and my assumptions of Swiss culture were shattered immediately upon arrival. The Swiss are “efficient,” I’d been told. “Their trains run like clockwork.” Yet my first train from Zurich Airport into the city malfunctioned and everyone had to vacate the train.

I was reminded, within the first few minutes of arriving in this new land, that you cannot begin to understand a place and its p...