For my first day back teaching, I was a whirling dervish of energy. I followed along with the Israeli teenager who led us in a TikTok style dance; I taught Hebrew through Movement, which involved a lot of standing up and sitting down and walking, walking, walking; and then I taught my two classes and met (most of) my new students, which meant a lot more standing and dancing and crazy hand gestures and funny breathing exercises. At the time, I was sure I was going to be fine. I mean, it’s not like I was running around the building, or doing pratfalls for laughs (like my students).
But a couple of hours after I got home, my body started to stiffen and the pain began to set in. By the next morning, I could barely move.
“Hey! I can’t move either!”
It took me a few days to recover. And, if possible, the second day of teaching was even more challenging. So now, I’m scared. I’m not sure if this physical response is worse than last year’s, or if I just got out of the habit of feeling like I’d been run over by a truck a few times a week. And I’m frustrated, because I spent the whole summer trying to build up strength and endurance in the hopes that I would start the new school year feeling more resilient, and, at the very least, it didn’t work.
It was wonderful to see my students from last year, and to meet the new kids and hear their unique stories and start to untangle all of the drama among them (this will clearly take all year). And I can see a lot of interesting discussions and tons of silliness in my future, but there’s a voice in the back of my head warning me, you may not last the whole year.
The fact is, I know I will do everything I can to be there for my students and to live up to all of my commitments – but it’s going to be harder, and it’s going to hurt.
A few weeks ago, my therapist said, in passing, that my disease/disorder/undiagnosed chronic illness, is degenerative. She didn’t say, “it may be degenerative,” she said “it is.” For many years, she didn’t even believe that there was anything physically wrong with me. She was convinced that all of the pain and exhaustion was psychological, and therefore hard work in therapy would fix everything. But after decades of intensive therapy, and obvious progress in my mental and emotional heath, my physical issues have only worsened, and, finally, her theory of the case had to change.
But there are so many things I still want to do! I want to teach more, not less. I want to write more, and meet more people, and travel, and dance, and sing. I was really hoping that this summer’s home-made physical therapy regimen was going to make a difference, and I’m so disappointed that it hasn’t helped. To be fair, it’s possible that without all of that work over the summer I would have been in even worse shape for the start of the school year. But for many years now, I’ve been trying everything I could think of: every medication and supplement doctors have suggested, and every exercise and treatment and strategy I could find. But I’m going to have to accept that it’s possible that this is as good as my health is going to get, and find a way to deal with that.
But really, I don’t wanna. I want to throw a tantrum and scream and kick the floor and just cry. It seems to make my students feel a whole lot better, so, maybe it’s the next thing I should try. It couldn’t hurt! Much.
” I love a good tantrum!”
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
At our first professional development of the year, we were asked which sound most characterized our summer, and I realized that mine was laughter, because the laughter in my online Hebrew class this summer was constant, even when we were on mute and could only see each other’s laughing faces. We became a tight knit group, with our young Israeli teacher, able to cover all of the emotional ground that came our way, without ever getting too depressed, because we knew we would be laughing again soon.
But actually, I spent even more time in Hebrew practice groups this summer than in the class itself, because I had the time and because I finally felt like I could handle the social anxiety that comes with meeting so many strangers and making mistakes in front of them. It was all under the safe canopy of the same online Hebrew language program as my class, but in the practice groups I was meeting dozens of people from different Hebrew levels, and time zones, and ages and cultures.
There are so many strange topics for discussion in the practice groups. Of course there are the standards: favorite food, favorite movie, what would you bring to a desert island. But then they start to get creative: what’s the weirdest food you’ve ever eaten (Ptcha – calf’s foot jelly); how would you solve global warming? (teach everyone how to fly: Laoof, like a bird, instead of Latoos, on a plane); how many languages can you speak (this one gets very competitive, and more than a few people have tried to count Spanish because they know how to say “Hola.”)
“I can teach you how to fly, if you want.”
But we are always free to talk about something else in the breakout rooms, as long as we say it in Hebrew, so I’ve had long conversations about my dogs, or teaching, or growing up Jewish on Long Island. And if we’re pretty sure the teacher isn’t about to pop into the breakout room, we can discuss our favorite and least favorite teachers. You’d be amazed how diligently we can stick to Hebrew in the midst of a good gossip session. Because, you know, we’re studying here. We take it very seriously.
The way the teachers lurk in the breakout rooms is always a topic of conversation. First of all, because they just appear and disappear without warning, like spies. But also, they keep their cameras off, as if we’re supposed to pretend they’re not really there. So, if I make a point of saying hello to the other students in the breakout room and don’t specifically say hello to the teacher, a disembodied voice might say, “Whatever, I’m not here, just ignore me,” which means, Hey, how dare you ignore me!
Sometimes we’ll talk directly to the teacher – or to the box on the screen with the school logo on it – and ask for the Hebrew word for this or that, and the teacher will pop up on screen to answer “in person.” One time, a friend of mine asked her question, got her answer, and then said, “okay, you can go back into your little box now.”
We get to meet a lot of teachers in the practice groups and see what their styles are – how they do corrections, how rigidly (or not) they follow their lesson plans, whether or not they have a sense of humor – and I’ve been able to get a much better idea of what works for me and what doesn’t, so that when a teacher’s style starts to get on my nerves, or leaves me feeling stupid, I’m less likely to assume it’s my fault (but only a little less likely).
Our young Israeli teachers have also introduced us to something called pitzuchim – which literally translates to cracking nuts or seeds, but is used in Hebrew to refer to the way Israelis are always trying to figure out where they might know each other from (among American Jews this is called Jewish geography). It turns out that a lot of the teachers and students in the program have connections, through second cousins or long lost neighbors or who knows what else. So far, though, I have cracked no nuts or seeds on these zooms, which is kind of disappointing. Getting to Israel would be so much easier if I discovered a long lost wealthy relative with an empty apartment by the beach.
(Not my picture)
This time spent in breakout rooms used to be the most stressful part of practice groups for me, and the reason why I avoided them so assiduously for years, but now, after the first few twinges of anxiety, I’ve come to really enjoy hearing everyone’s stories, and I’m less self-conscious about my broken Hebrew (though I still feel grumpy each time I make a mistake, which happens often).
The most stressful part for me now is when we have to translate sentences from English to Hebrew, often using words I haven’t practiced recently (because I’m visiting practice groups at different levels from my own); but I’m getting used to laughing at my mistakes, and I’ve noticed that when I screw up, and laugh at myself, other people start to relax about their own mistakes. It’s almost like I’m doing a service.
In some of the practice groups, after we go over some grammar from previous levels, we’ll read short articles together, or even just headlines, from online Hebrew language newspapers – often about food or travel or popular culture, so we can learn words we wouldn’t come across in class, like how to say “laundering money” in Hebrew. The words that are hardest to read in these articles are often borrowed from other languages. So, more often than not, our Israeli teachers will start to giggle when we can’t figure out how to pronounce “Mexico,”when it’s written in Hebrew letters.
One of the lowest stress exercises that we do in practice group – though I can make anything feel stressful without really trying – is when the teacher puts an article on the screen and instead of asking us to read, and, God forbid, translate it, we just have to find one word at a time. It reminds me of being in first grade or so and realizing that there were English words I could just recognize on the page, without needing to sound them out, because they had become so familiar to me just by their shape.
As a result of all of this time in the practice groups, I sometimes hear myself speaking in Hebrew, without having planned what to say ahead of time; the words just come out of my mouth, and I kind of look around the room, wondering who said that.
And, really, during a summer where, aside from Mom, most of my in-person human interactions were at supermarkets or doctors’ offices, these practice groups gave me the chance to meet and chat with and learn from dozens of real people, who are fascinating and funny and weird and challenging. It’s still strange to me how real a community can feel, even when it only exists online; but in a way, the boundaries created by the computer (of time, and purpose, and mute buttons) creates a sense of safety that allows me to say what I really mean more often. Now, if only I could translate those safe boundaries into the real world…
“Pfft. Who needs the real world?”
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
This question came up after a conversation with my boss at the synagogue school, because she was trying to figure out a way to remind kids and parents about the value of building a community. I tend to speak without thinking (which is why I prefer writing, because it gives me a chance to revise my thoughts into something I can agree with), and I may have said something like, wouldn’t it be great if we had a prayer to say, in English, that specifically focuses on the value of being in community, so they can hear themselves saying it each week. My boss’ eyes lit up and she said, that would be great! Can you have it done before school starts?
The fact is, there are plenty of traditional Jewish prayers that imply the need for community, but I don’t know of any that do it explicitly, in a way that makes everyone realize that they need to show up on a regular basis to make the magic to work.
So, to start with, I need to figure out what I want to highlight about community in this prayer. The most obvious benefit of having a community, to me, is the way we can offer each other comfort and attention, and experience joy in each other’s company. Then, there are the invisible threads we create during those moments, that we can still feel later on when we’re alone, and that can hold us together through hard times. And, then, most concretely, there are the things we can accomplish together as a community that are impossible for any of us to do alone.
My next task was to see what has already been said about community in the Jewish texts, since this prayer should be rooted in the tradition, rather than floating around untethered to anything that came before. I went to a site called Sefaria, where many people have created source sheets on different topics, quoting traditional Jewish texts. It has become a very popular site with Judaic studies teachers, but also with anyone who wants to research a particular Jewish topic, in depth, without having to, you know, read a lot of books in Hebrew and Aramaic.
One of the first quotes I found was very familiar to me: I do a lesson with the kids each year on a saying by Rabbi Tarfon (from Pirkei Avot/Sayings of the Fathers) that has been made into a song: Lo alecha hamlacha ligmor, ve lo atah ben chorin le’hibatel mimena – “it’s not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” I like that it implies community, by saying that while we must do our part, and there will be others who can continue on after us.
Another quote I use each year, because it’s from the book of Leviticus (the book of the Hebrew bible that I study with my students), also showed up on Sefaria: Ve’ahavta lerayecha kamocha, “love your neighbor as yourself.” This is another universal value, across religions and societies, though it feels impossible to live up to, which makes it more intimidating than inspiring, for me.
Then I found a familiar quote from the Talmud, Kol Yisrael arevim zeh la zeh, “all of Israel is accountable/responsible for/connected to each other,” which has become more obviously meaningful again since October 7th of last year, though I worry that it could feel alienating to some of our interfaith families.
A quote I found that I’d never heard of before is from Rabbi Soloveichik, a modern orthodox rabbi: “a community is not just a group of people working together for mutual benefit, but a metaphysical entity.” And that’s much closer to what I’m looking for, because I want people to feel like they are part of something larger than themselves and that they are essential to it.
In my search for sources, I also came across some explanations for why certain traditional Jewish prayers (like the prayer for mourning) are only said when you have at least ten Jews together (ten men above Bar Mitzvah age, if you are orthodox). The idea that you’d need ten men to make a prayer legitimate always bothered me, because, of course, I couldn’t count as one of the ten to make a quorum. But now that I am part of a liberal Jewish community, where women do count, I’m a little more open to the idea that we benefit from having a group of people with us when we say certain prayers. The idea I liked most was: when ten people pray together the divine presence comes into the room, specifically the Shechinah, or the female face of God. There’s something beautiful about the idea that creating a community, even for a few minutes, brings in the presence of God. But it also makes practical sense to require a community in order to say something like the Mourner’s Kaddish in particular, because when people are grieving they often isolate themselves and they need to be reminded that they have a community around them to provide support and comfort.
A few more things I found, or imagined, because I wrote them down in my notes but now I can’t seem to find the attributions: God is the Neshama, the soul, of which each one of us has a small part. We ask for rain even when only our neighbors need it, and we ask for guidance when it is a stranger who is lost, and we ask for abundance even when our own plates are full.
But even though these are all wonderful ideas, I have no idea how to transform them into something short and sweet and to the point. I feel like I’m in danger of creating a Frankenstein-style prayer, and, if we believe Mary Shelly at least, those sorts of things never end well.
There are already some songs in our repertoire that I like very much and that capture aspects of what I’m looking for. Rabbi Menachem Creditor wrote a beautiful song based on a Jewish text, called, Olam Chesed Yibaneh, which he translates as “We will build this world with love,” and it emphasizes how people can come together to change the world.
There’s also a variation on a traditional prayer (Ahavat Olam) by another Rabbi, Rami Shapiro, that has been made into a beautiful song by Shir Yakov (yet another rabbi, I think), called “We are loved,” which focuses on how we find God in our relationships with other people.
So, if I can’t write my own prayer, these are both good options. And, really, I’m sure it would be fine with my boss if I didn’t come up with something. In fact, since she’s currently drowning in a maelstrom of new school year details, I doubt she even remembers our conversation. But I do.
I worry, though, that not only don’t I know how to write a prayer, as opposed to a short blessing, I’m not sure if I’m even allowed to write one. Like, do I need permission from a rabbi? Or do I need to actually be a rabbi to write a prayer?
My answer to this thorny question is to avoid it completely, so instead of calling it a prayer, maybe I can call it a kavanah (the Hebrew word for intention or direction). When I teach the official prayers to my students, we do all kinds of writing (and singing and dancing and drawing) to try to understand the purpose of each prayer, and then the kids offer their kavanot (the plural form of kavanah) at a family service, before they sing the prayer itself. So maybe I can think about this as writing a kavanah, a piece to be read before we say the real prayers, as a way to help us keep the idea of community in mind throughout the service.
Here’s what I have so far:
We are part of a community that has existed for thousands of years, and embraces all of us, every version of us.
We renew and re-build this community with each word, each action, each gift of time, and attention, and compassion.
Each time we come together to pray or work or sing or study, we create invisible threads attaching us to one another, connections that can still be felt when we’re alone, and that can hold us together through hard times, like a net that will catch us when we fall.
We pray for everyone, because even when we aren’t struggling ourselves, we know that someone else is struggling and needs support.
We are all part of one soul, each carrying a small light within us, and when we come together we beam like the sun. Together we can accomplish more than we ever thought possible alone.
“I pray that one day I will be a real dog and get to eat chicken treats.”
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
rachelmankowitz 