Selected Essays
Against Romance: An anti-Valentine
One Valentine’s Day many years ago, my spouse, Gil, brought home a bouquet of roses. I am Dutch and he is Israeli, so neither of us had grown up celebrating Valentine’s Day….
Read more in the New York Times.
Cowards and Accomplices
The first thing I did when I learned the alphabet at age 6 was to spend a weekend writing out a stack of flyers that said, in large, uneven block letters: “Ret de weerelt!”…
Read more at Longreads
Our passage in Londre was as inconspicuous as we could have wished. Not one of the villagers whom we met appeared to take any particular notice of us.” This is how Alexandra David-Néel, a French Tibetologist and explorer, described the beginning of her journey in Tibet in the fall of 1923. Read more in Tricycle Magazine.
The Red and the Black
Stendhal’s novel Le Rouge et le Noir inspired me to one of my most absurd and meaningless acts of courage: when I was fifteen years old, after having read the novel for the first time, I took a bite out of a dusty, dead, black scorpion…
Read more in Zone 3
The Stories That Matter. I panicked when C, one of my students at the correctional facility, rolled up his sleeves to display a large black swastika tattooed on his right forearm.
Read more in The Forward.
Running With Montaigne
I choke on my own breath as the incoming air clashes with the air I have not yet exhaled; my feet thud on the pavement, reluctantly pushing off to keep me in motion...
Read more in Crab Orchard Review, Volume 24,1. Summer 2019. (Listed as a notable essay in Best American Essays 2020.)
Matzevah
I laughed a lot at my father’s funeral.
Read more at Indiana Review
Circling Lhasa
I have always looked for a place where I can find back my memories: : the cooing of the doves that woke me up on Sunday mornings at my grandparents’ home…
Read more in Tricycle Magazine.
Fathers and Sons
I could barely get through the last chapter of Fathers and Sons. Tears kept dripping onto the page, fogging up my vision and causing blotches of water damage…
Read more at Tin House
Coming Home
The matkot players on the crowded beach in Herzliya tik-tokked their ball dangerously close to the faces of the other beach goers…
Read more at Tablet
A Loophole In Time When I was four years old, my father decided it was time for me to learn my address . Read more at The Common.
Zeno’s Paradox
Everything has fallen away. There are no sounds, no colours, no flavors, no scents, nothing to hold on to…
Read more at The Evergreen, Volume 4, edited by Lucy Ellmann.
Selected Journalism and Interviews
About China co-opting Tibetan Buddhism.
Read more in The Atlantic
Read more in: Foreign Policy
Read more in Tricycle
Read more in Guernica
Interview with Cornel West for The Sun
Cornel West’s Quest For Justice
Read more in The Sun
Interview with Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan for The Sun
An Israeli And A Palestinian Make The Case For Peace.
Read more in The Sun
Interview with Jamyang Norbu for The Sun
The Tibetan writer and activist Jamyang Norbu has a reputation as a troublemaker…
Read more in The Sun
Cover article for the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine
Read more at Dartmouth Alumni Magazine
The Sakyadhita Movement
Judith Hertog profiles the Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women, which has been leading the way for gender equality in Buddhism for more than thirty years.
Read more in Lion’s Roar
Interview withttps://tricycle.org/magazine/susan-griffin-interview/h Susan Griffin for Tricycle Magazine.
”“The best writing often occurs at this boundary between vocabulary and emptiness.”
Read more in Tricycle Magazine.
Storytelling
The Greatest Nation
So, we’re turning into the parking lot of Historical Society of St. Albans VT for my swearing-in ceremony...
Listen at the RISK! podcast
And more:
“Jerusalem Syndrome,” Hotel Amerika, Volume 17 Spring 2019. (Also selected for the long list of the 2017 Notting Hill Essay Prize.)
“The Fog of Citizenship,” (column), Arrowsmith, Volume 7.
"Writing in Tongues," The Southampton Review.
"Atonement," Consequence Magazine.
"Raw Milk," Hunger Mountain.
"It Won't End Until We Talk," Tablet Magazine.
"A Monitored State," Dartmouth Alumni Magazine.
"Voices From Israel," Your Middle East.
"Atonement," Consequence Magazine.
Regular contributor to Dartmouth Alumni Magazine since 2005.
Tibet's Chinese Characteristics, South China Morning Post Magazine. (Article and photo reportage on Tibet.)
Reportage, Onze Wereld. (Reportage on Indigenous people in Taiwan.)
Photo Reportage on Tibet, Cheers Magazine Taiwan.
Reportage, Marie Claire NL (Travel story and photo reportage on Tibet.)