Bill McLean

Noam Kulbak’s diving career started with a backward fall into a pool. His father, Shlomo Kulbak, had encouraged Noam—a grade-school student at the time—to take the Nestea Plunge. Go ahead, son, don’t just get your feet wet. Drench your entire frame. “I was terrified,” Noam Kulbak recalls. Shortly thereafter, at the age of 10 at

Kyle Jones was disappointed. It was autumn 2019, and North Shore Country Day’s (NSCD) boys’ soccer coach had just guided his Raiders to a fourth-place finish in the Class A state tournament. He should have been thrilled, since a boys’ soccer team at the Winnetka school had never before reached a state semifinal. But he

Brett Gelman grew up in Highland Park and usually ordered a jumbo char dog, a classic hot dog, and cheese fries at Michael’s. But the comedian/actor/writer, who appeared as Pig Parker in the “Vow of Silence” episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2011, savored something even more than his favorite fare at the iconic restaurant

Rabbi Jacob Rosenberg’s spleen had to be removed five years go. A cyst inside it was threatening to outgrow the fist-sized organ. Blessedly, something else, something soothing, expanded at the same time—the rabbi’s perspective. “All of sudden, day-to-day problems and anxieties, little things, were nothing compared to what was truly important in my life, like