This multi-dimensional collage of archival photos, as well as my own personal photographs and prayers and symbols of our faith and nation, was created as my tribute to the Shoah and those who perished. The few who survived are dying, and it is for their children, and the children to follow, to be taught about what happened to our people and the incredible horror of it. There are white roses affixed to the collage to symbolize the hope that still remained in so many hearts thereafter, and of course the purity of the children who perished.

Speaking as an older mother in a very young Jewish community of 20- and 30-something parents, I find myself much outside of the box. It is not exactly by choice that I have a late-in-life child. Some things simply happen, and others are meant to be in a way that is indefinable. Parenting is a tough job with a partner and support system, and 100 times harder flying solo.

I had already raised three children to emancipation and lost my life partner when a situation arose that led me to motherhood yet again. It was an unusual occurrence and like many women in their 40s, I had long stopped actively thinking of babies and caring for them. Or perhaps not, for the year that my husband died I had the opportunity to adopt yet another infant. I did not give it much thought, for the decision had already been made by some unfulfilled mothering instincts that were still inside my heart. I was reaching the end of my 40s when I adopted my son, the age at which my neighbors were already grand-parenting or at least, paying off college tuitions.

I had never made an"official" aliyah though I traveled to Israel literally as a commuter for many years. None of my contemporaries from New York were Zionists, nor did they have any interest in living in Israel. Somehow the commitment to remain in Israel was frightening, so I pretended that it was all temporary while settling into a rented apartment in Tel Aviv and going through all the tedious bureaucratic hullabaloo of becoming a "new immigrant" as though it were just an incidental thing — as if anything in Israel of a bureaucratic nature could ever be "incidental."

In years long past, we had the miracle of the oil burning for eight days rather than one and a small band of Jews led by Judah Maccabee fighting off an army.

Here are a few "miracles" I would like to see in my lifetime:

1. that Jews unite without discriminating against each other because of differences of belief and observance.

2. that the Israeli government would stop publicly slinging mud at whoever is prime minister.

As a 10-year old child, new to Teaneck and straight out of Washington Heights with its Orthodox community of refugees, I felt very estranged coming to a town where there was not yet a kosher butcher or an Orthodox shul. Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur passed, and then came one of my favorite holidays, Sukkot. Child that I was, I had always created my own rules and prayers, confounding my parents not just in being so frum but in my little deviations on the themes of holidays and such. I improvised, added, and subtracted, being a child of imagination and not just religious belief.

My adopted daughter Keren is now 28 and lives in the small city of Afula, slightly south of Tiberias and close to Nazareth. It is definitely not a prime location for newcomers to Israel. But that is where she came from, the place where her biological parents once lived and where they gave her and four other children away for adoption — five children altogether, unwanted by their parents.

My husband and I adopted two of them.