Monthly Archives: February 2026

Tzipporah’s First Official Walk

Posted on February 28, 2026 by rachelmankowitz

            In the past, when I’ve tried to take Tzipporah for a walk she just sat on the ground and shivered, and if I dared to tug on her leash she fought like a wild animal to get away, burrowing under the bench by the retaining wall or trying to climb the wall itself. I was still taking her with me to therapy once a week, but I hadn’t tried putting her toes on the ground in months, and then last weekend something changed. Usually when we return home from therapy, Tzippy is exhausted, waiting just long enough to eat her chicken treat before stretching out in her bed for a long nap, but the day before the big blizzard she seemed more awake and aware, as if she was waiting for her next adventure.

            I’m not sure what convinced me to try again, maybe just knowing that we would be snowed in for the next few days, but I bundled her back up in her winter coat, and put her leash back on, and carried her down the stairs and outside. At first, when I put her down on the walkway, she just sat down and waited as usual, shivering and looking around in alarm. But when Grandma started to walk ahead of us, Tzippy actually followed her. She only took a few steps before sitting back down again, but when I gave her some head scratches and encouragement, she took another few steps, and then a few more and a few more.

            We managed the equivalent of one block – between our front door and the next building in the complex – and then she sat down more firmly and refused to go any further. I was sure I’d have to carry her, but when I turned back towards home Tzippy stood up and followed me, taking five steps at a time instead of three. She finally hit her limit about ten feet away from our front door, and then she sat down in front of me and refused to go another step. I picked her up and gave her kisses and so much praise for her amazing accomplishment, and she seemed to understand that she’d done something special, but she was also exhausted. As soon as I carried her upstairs and gave her a treat, she ran back to her bed to eat it and then stretched out for a long nap.

            I’m sure it sounds like the tiniest of accomplishments, but it felt like a huge breakthrough. I’d almost given up on the possibility of change after more than a year of trying everything, and I have no idea what made this breakthrough possible; maybe it was all of those hours in therapy, or maybe her new food changed something, or maybe she was just ready.

            The next day, after the snow had started to fall but before the real blizzard kicked in, we decided to try another walk just to see if the first one was a fluke. Tzippy was not at all sure about putting her paws down on the snowy walkway, but once again, when Grandma walked ahead of her, Tzippy followed.  We walked twice as far, because Grandma insisted, but Tzippy wasn’t thrilled with the extra distance and kept trying to crawl under and through my legs to convince me to pick her up. With frequent breaks for head scratches and encouragement, we made it all the way back to our building, but the two steps up to the door were a no-go. When I picked her up, I touched her toes to each step to show her how it was done, but she was not at all interested and just wanted to get back inside.

Once the blizzard kicked in, we were content to stay indoors for the duration, and we didn’t go back outside until all of the shoveling and plowing had been done (by other people). But then we tried walking again. The third walk was short, and Tzippy was not enthusiastic, but she did it, so as the snow melts, I see a lot of short walks in Tzippy’s future. And if she needs to complain, I’m sure my therapist is ready to listen, and Grandma will hand out chicken treats by the handful as needed. I just hope it doesn’t take another year before Tzippy is ready to try the stairs.

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?

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The Hebrew Break

Posted on February 21, 2026 by rachelmankowitz

            I was really discouraged during my most recent online Hebrew class; most of my fellow students were more advanced than me, and much more confident, and I struggled to keep up with the discussions and the homework and even getting to class by the end of the semester. When my teacher suggested that I sign up for a fluency class next, instead of continuing at my current level, I agreed in the hopes that a class focused on speaking (instead of on learning new vocabulary) might be the right next step for me. But it was a relief when I found out that I’d have to wait two months for the next fluency class to start. I’ve also found lots of excuses to skip weekly Hebrew practices, and I haven’t really looked over my notes from the last class, which, honestly, might as well have been in Greek.

“I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

            I keep wishing that language acquisition – and all learning, really – could be more straight forward for me: read A, write B, take tests C, D, and E, and then you know it. But even back in school, when that was the dominant learning model, it didn’t actually work for me. I could get straight A’s in class, or spend months writing a paper on the symbolism of birds in hieroglyphics, and I would still forget most of the material by the next semester. I was surprised by how little math I actually remembered from high school when I took the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) ten years later. I had to re-learn all of the math from scratch, and quickly forgot it all again when the test was over. Tests always seemed arbitrary to me, like I was being judged on my ability to guess what this or that particular teacher wanted from me, rather than being tested on my actual mastery of the material.

Over time, I’ve tried to approach learning in a more comprehensive way, coming at it from as any different directions as possible in order to build solid connections in my brain that might last longer than a moment, but I’m still struggling. I know I’ve learned a lot of Hebrew over the past few years, but I feel like crap for not being confident enough to speak much when I was in Israel, and I feel stupid for needing more classes. I’ve never been able to figure out the best way for my particular brain to learn, so most of the time I feel like I’m making do with methods that are built for a brain that isn’t mine; like trying to use lefty scissors as a right-hander, or trying to paint with a toothbrush. I wish I knew for sure what would help me get to the next level, in Hebrew and in everything else, but all I can do is guess at the right path forward and take a leap.

So tomorrow, I’m going to my first fluency class. It will probably take me a while to warm back up after my break, and I’m sure I’ll be anxious and self-conscious all over again, staring at my face on screen and wondering who that alien might be, but hopefully something in the new format will help me find the words when I need them, or at least calm my anxiety when I can’t think of anything to say. Fingers and neurons crossed.

“And paws too.”

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?

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Blowing Raspberries into the Wind

Posted on February 14, 2026 by rachelmankowitz

            I’ve become more reluctant than ever to write about politics lately, given how extreme our discourse has become, in the United States and seemingly everywhere else as well. Other people seem to be better at dealing with this, or at least more willing to embrace the fight, and I keep sitting here, listening to people conflate so many things, as if all the pages of their books are glued together, and I feel like I’m losing my mind. I don’t remember politics being this stupid, or this futile, before. We seem to have reached the point where you can present solid evidence, and make a thorough and convincing argument, and still be knocked out by someone without any facts on their side, because they’re louder, and more persistent, and willing to blow raspberries into the wind.

“Sounds like I win.”

            It feels like people on either end of the political spectrum have decided that the truth doesn’t matter, and the winning argument is the one that can fit into a hashtag or be repeated over and over like the chorus in a Tik Tok video. And I’m exhausted. I keep trying to engage with the world with an open mind, and curiosity and fairness, to challenge myself by reading and watching and listening to a wide array of media and opinions and develop a more comprehensive and nuanced view of what’s going on in the world around me. And every time, the simplistic, usually incorrect, but oft-repeated mantra wins out over the nuance and becomes common wisdom. And I’m tired. I’m tired of having to make sense of nonsense. I’m tired of being told that everything is fine when it’s not, and being told that A equals Z when it doesn’t.

            The noise of it all is overwhelming, and I’ve been struggling to find anything calm and reasonable in the middle of it all, and feeling like I don’t have the skills to fight the kind of war that’s being waged right now.

            But in the midst of yet another week full of stupid political theater, I remembered that I’d sent myself a video a couple of weeks ago, to watch when I feel this way. When I first watched Renee Good’s brothers give testimony in congress about the killing of their sister by ICE, I felt something shift. Instead of screaming, or blowing raspberries, which they had every right to do, they gave a eulogy for their sister that stopped me in my tracks and made me listen. The love, and hope, in their voices was shattering, and the politicians had to just sit there and listen, and allow us to listen, to remind us that we are still capable of being kind, and poetic, and reasonable, and inspiring. I sent myself this video to remind me that I can choose to listen to voices like these. There are so many things in our lives today that we have no choice about, but I can choose to hear the voices of people who make life seem worth living. While I still have a choice, I choose this.

WATCH: Brothers of Renee Good, woman fatally shot by ICE: https://youtu.be/HX0zWgHc1cg?si=Dd08Dqn7y4zZu2bz

“I choose my bed.”

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?

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Singing Through the Winter

Posted on February 7, 2026 by rachelmankowitz

            After almost two months of singing practice with the Simply Sing app, I’m not sure if I’m getting any better at it, but I’m still enjoying the process. I like learning new songs; branching out from Brandi Carlile’s famous “The Story,” to some of her less well-known songs (that are just as hard to sing), and singing along with Nat King Cole and Selena Gomez and Vince Gill, as if we’re all just hanging out and hiding from the snow together. I’m finding that I know a lot more songs than I realized, so that even when I choose a song whose title and singer seem unfamiliar to me, half the time I’ve actually heard the song before and just didn’t know what it was called. It’s also been interesting to see which kinds of songs are easier to sing, and which ones are more challenging for me. I knew I would struggle with songs that go from very low to very high, or songs with notes that are held forever, but I didn’t realize just how hard it would be to sing a Taylor Swift song, most of which are so crowded with lyrics that there’s barely room left to breathe.

“I like to sing, too. When I’m not freezing.”

It became clear early on that the two minute warm up on the Simply Sing app wasn’t enough, so I usually go to YouTube for vocal exercises first. Sometimes I’ll mix and match a few short videos from the Dots Singing collection: one breathing exercise, and maybe one just humming, and then one for chest voice and one for head voice. And sometimes I’ll do a full warm up video with one of the voice teachers (Kathleen Hansen is fantastic!). My favorite exercise so far is “straw phonation,” because it’s all about blowing bubbles through a straw. You fill a glass of water a third of the way up, and then you put in your bendy straw and blow bubbles and sing through the straw. Straw phonation is part of the SOVT (semi-occluded vocal tract) family of exercises that have become very popular, where the goal is to keep your mouth partially closed while singing to “create back pressure on the vocal folds,” though I don’t know what that actually means. They say it helps make singing less taxing on your voice and makes the tone clearer, but it’s also just fun. The other SOVT exercises include lip trills (blowing air thought partially closed lips to create vibrations); humming; and singing on Z, V, or NG sounds. And for me, the most difficult one is the lip trills. Some people do them like blowing raspberries, with your tongue between your lips, but ideally the tongue stays in, and every time I tried to do the lip trills at the beginning all I got was air, no vibrations. Finally, I went looking for some how-to videos and found a method that worked for me: holding up the muscles on either side of my mouth as I try to do the trills. I don’t know why it works, but it does. I’m not sure if all of this is helping me breathe more efficiently, or sing more clearly, but it’s certainly entertaining.

Lip trills: https://youtu.be/mWw3cjRLrrY?si=M1tRdCoxrvx5SOmp

Humming exercises: https://youtu.be/ElDCTulc96w?si=PJLP1TW_BzO8tm57

Vocal warm up: https://youtu.be/uGnhla2dowg?si=xwNaKETmGKLkH6SQ

            While I was back on YouTube looking for vocal exercises, and still watching Glee videos, I came across a voice teacher who has reaction videos to Glee, and to many other singers as well, where she explains how the singers create the sounds they make: like the “vocal fry” that Brittany Spears made popular, or the breathy quality so popular right now, or the rounded tones of musical theatre. She gets into a lot more detail than I’d ever heard before and it’s also just fun to hang out with her and listen to music together. She’s introduced me to singers I’ve never heard of before, like Dimash, who has a seven-octave range, including notes you can’t find on a piano. I can’t actually mimic the skills she’s describing in her videos, but it’s nice to have these usually invisible things explained in clear language.

The Singing Scientist watches Dimash: https://youtu.be/02gvDy61GhQ?si=jn7hjMZctK_KxG-T

The Singing Scientist watches Glee: https://youtu.be/Z9xz6sy2TPg?si=5Rc5AjBrybJ7vqtn

            I’m still using cheap plastic straws for the straw phonation exercises, instead of a set of the fancy metal straws I keep seeing in Facebook ads, and I haven’t splurged on a voice mister, or a head set that makes it easier for you to hear when you’re singing off key, yet. And I’m still not up to interacting with a live human teacher, and having my voice judged and critiqued, because I’m pretty sure I would shut down in response. But I’ve noticed that my inner critic is finally getting some perspective, because as I watch the American Idol auditions, I’m not comparing my voice to theirs or wishing I could do what they do; I’m just enjoying the music and looking for songs I’d like to sing. And I don’t feel like a failure, anymore, for not wanting to sing on a big stage or be a professional performer, because I know that wouldn’t make me happy. I would love to get to the point where it’s not so hard to manage the transition from chest voice to head voice, though, and I’d love to become more comfortable with sight singing, so I could learn songs more easily. But most of all, I want to chip away at the tension that closes around my throat and keeps me from singing the music I really want to sing.

            Pretty soon, I’ll be back in choir rehearsals, to prepare for the Women’s Seder at my synagogue, and I’ll see if the usual notes are easier to hit, or if I’m still running out of air too fast, and if I feel less self-conscious when I sing in public.

In the meantime, it’s still freezing cold outside, and I leave the house only reluctantly and with a bad attitude. But I do enjoy singing along to my Spotify list of Israeli music in the car and taking short breaks to complain about my fellow drivers, or the ridiculous snow formations on the side of the road. It’s the little things that bring me joy.

“Greenies bring me joy!”

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?

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