Last month, I heard the news: a Jewish summer camp I attended for many years as a child was almost entirely destroyed in the Woolsey fire that ravaged parts of Los Angeles County.  

“I want to tell you what happened to my grandmother, Gladys Green, near the end of her life.”

Several decades have passed since I encountered an All-of-a-Kind Family book for the first time. The newest installment looks different (as do I), but our reunion was sweet. The book is unlike Sydney Taylor’s original series in striking ways. Still, the characters were immediately recognizable, and the book retains the series’ essential New York-yness. Reading it, I was filled with the cozy longing the series has always triggered in me.

For the past 50-plus years, Nancy Romer has participated in, and often led, some of the most important social justice movements in the US: opposing war and militarism; fighting the increasing privatization of public education; and challenging racism, sexism, and homophobia. 

Angela Himsel grew up as one of eleven children in an evangelical family that lived in rural Indiana. The Worldwide Church of God informed her thinking and fulfilled her spiritual needs. Yet she eventually went to Israel, married a Jewish man and is now a practicing Jewish woman. She talks to Lilith Fiction Editor Yona Zeldis McDonough about her unusual journey.