After all of your thoughtful responses to my failed-mystery-writing-summer, I felt like a kaleidoscope that had been shaken back into place. What it boils down to: you don’t have to try to be someone more market savvy, or normal, but you do need to focus on getting your own particular stories written, whether they are fiction or non-fiction, whether the outside world is desperate to hear those stories or not, and stop letting the need to be acceptable cut you off at the knees. Because, really, what if we’re all more interesting than we’ve been given credit for? And what if expecting everyone to hit the same milestones at the same times and learn the same life lessons from our disparate lives is a misunderstanding of why we’re even here in the first place? What if the things that feel vulnerable and not good enough about me are the real things I have to offer the world and by trying so hard to fit in, or sound normal, I’m losing what’s special about me? What if by reading an endless supply of stories about the same successful, good looking, well-regulated people, we’re getting only a tiny speck of the wisdom the world has to offer us?
I don’t completely buy this vision yet, to be honest. I’m still too aware of the American ethos that everyone should be ruggedly independent and capable of surviving by ourselves in the wild; every man is an island, etc. But I’ve never actually been able to live like that. I’ve always needed help to get from point A to point B, and the only real variable is whether I ask for the help I need, or fail to ask for it. And maybe that’s normal. Maybe most people are just putting on a shiny gloss and pretending at normal too.
So, my job is to write the stories, essays, songs, novels, that keep screaming at me to be written, and not to sit in judgement of all of those stories before they’ve even been told. It’s still hard to ignore the voices in my head telling me to just shut up and let the smart, capable, useful people talk, but getting so much support and validation from all of you makes a real difference. I can’t promise that my brain won’t go off the rails again by tomorrow, but at least for a few minutes I’ve been able to take in the love and acceptance you’ve been offering me, just as I am. And I am so grateful to you.
“I could use some more chicken treats, Mommy. just so you know.”
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?
The last story we looked at in Bible Study, before breaking for the summer, was the sacrifice of Jepthah’s daughter in the book of Judges. This is clearly not the most inspiring book of the Hebrew Bible. The first five books are the stars, of course, with the origin story of the Jewish people and their relationship with God at center stage, so even when those books get boring you give them a pass (I see you Leviticus and Numbers, I see you). Then in Joshua, you get the (mostly) triumphant story of the first military leader of the ancient Israelites as they return to the land of Canaan after generations of slavery in Egypt. But then we have the book of Judges, where the ancient Israelites are living in the promised land, but still in tribal groups, and being led by one military leader (aka judge) after another. These are not the great heroes of Jewish history, and they are not portrayed as if they are.
“Are there any dogs in this story?”
Jepthah’s name in Hebrew (Yiftach), literally means “He will open,” and therefore my rabbi nicknamed him “big mouth,” because his most obvious quality is that he opens his big mouth when he shouldn’t. He’s introduced as the disinherited son of a prostitute, kicked out of Gilead by his more respectable brothers, living with the bad boys in a place called “Tov,” which, ironically, means “Good.” Eventually, the elders of Gilead go searching for him, because they are under attack by the Ammonites and he’s developed a reputation as a fighter.
Of course, his first response to them is disbelief. They kicked him out of town and now he’s supposed to save them? But then they tell him that if he can deliver them from the Ammonites, he will become their leader, which would be the ultimate turnaround for him. And, we are told, God is with him. Unfortunately, Jepthah either doesn’t know that God is on his side, or doesn’t trust in God, so he makes a vow to God, “if you deliver the Ammonites into my hands, then whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me on my safe return shall be yours and will be offered by me as a burnt offering.” To be fair to Jepthah, people kept animals in their houses, so he probably assumed he would be sacrificing a cow or a goat or a chicken.
Jepthah, of course, successfully defeats the Ammonites, and when he returns home his only child, a daughter, comes out to meet him, dancing and playing a tambourine (as one does). Upon seeing his daughter, he tears his clothes in mourning. “Ah, my daughter! You have brought me low; You have become my calamity. I have opened my mouth to Yahweh and I cannot turn back.” The Mishna, composed by the rabbis 1500 years after the period of the judges, says that a vow like this that goes against Jewish law is an invalid vow, but Jepthah didn’t get to consult the rabbis and he clearly thought he had no choice. His daughter quickly accepts her fate and just asks that she first be allowed to go away to the mountains with her friends to weep for her virginity, and I was sure this would be the moment when she ran away to live on a kibbutz, or something, but no, according to the text she is then sacrificed by her father. There’s some debate among the commentators over whether she is actually killed, or if maybe she was dedicated as a servant to God (and therefore remaining a virgin for the rest of her life, which would explain the mourning for her virginity thing). The act itself is not described, so there’s some wiggle room.
The lesson of this story has come down as: don’t make a hasty vow because there are consequences to your words. Though you could also choose to learn the lesson that if you are so insecure in your relationship with God that you can’t feel when God is with you, bad things will come of it. Of course, it’s hard to focus on either one of those lessons over the horror of child sacrifice. There seems to have been a lot of confusion in the ancient world over whether God wanted human sacrifices or not, because it was something everyone else was doing at the time and it seemed like such a good idea.
To try to make sense of this story, we read excerpts from Phyllis Trible’s Texts of Terror, which compares the story of the daughter of Jepthah with the attempted sacrifice of Isaac by his father, Abraham.
Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” and he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “the fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So, the two of them walked on together.
When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of God called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” and he said, “Here I am.” He said, do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now, I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.
Later, when Abraham returns to his servants and they all go back home, there’s no mention of Isaac at all, and the interpretation has been offered that in an earlier version of the Hebrew Bible Isaac really was sacrificed, and it was only a later editor who let him live, but didn’t bother to give him anything to say, because, really, what could he say?
My rabbi has long had a fascination with the story of the binding of Isaac, if only because we read about it every year during the high holidays and he has to come up with something interesting to say each time. So, as we re-read the story from Genesis, my rabbi not-so-subtly suggested that someone should write about how Isaac felt that day. Ideally, he would take poor Isaac out to lunch at his favorite diner and get the story from him first hand, but if he couldn’t do that, then maybe someone could imagine how that conversation might go. But to be honest, after reading the scene again, I was as silent as Isaac. His father almost killed him, for no reason other than that a voice Isaac could not hear told him to do it. All of this after, in the previous scene, his older half-brother, Ishmael, is exiled from the family encampment and left to die of thirst in the desert, if God hadn’t, again, stepped in.
Abraham is presented to us as the first person who can hear God’s voice, and the only one at that particular time, and he is so devoted to God that he is willing to sacrifice his sons because God asked him to, and poor Isaac (who, some commentators suggest is actually in his thirties or forties at the time of the attempted sacrifice) is then traumatized for the rest of his life. The end. What else is there to say? God and Abraham are the stars of the story, and Isaac’s fear, or anger, or confusion at his father’s murderous behavior are clearly beside the point. With Jepthah’s daughter it’s even worse, not only doesn’t she get a name, she isn’t saved at the last moment like Isaac is, which is probably why the commentators are looking for loop holes, because this can’t be the story, can it? Why is this even included in the canon?
There are, if you can imagine, even more horrifying stories in the book of Judges, all meant to portray the struggles of becoming a nation, and while we tend to prefer the stories where the people are better than average and God is generous, I think the fact that we have to sit with our ancestors’ mistakes is probably the point of reading the Hebrew Bible. Sure, it’s nice to imagine that your ancestors had a direct connection to God, but how does that help you figure out how to live your life today without God telling you exactly what to do? The word “Torah,” literally means “teaching,” so it’s fair to assume that we are supposed to be learning from these stories about how not to make the same mistakes as our ancestors (though some present-day politicians seem to think those mistakes are actually a road map to be followed). Eventually, instead of leaders who are focused solely on war and security, we start to see prophets and kings and priests who are more self-aware, more strategic, and more connected to God. But we’re not there yet.
We didn’t read the story of Jepthah’s daughter at this particular moment because we knew it would resonate uncomfortably with the present day Middle East, it was just the next book in the series, and, according to my rabbi, we have to read every word, no matter how boring, or how many unpronounceable names we come across (usually it’s my job to read the unpronounceable names, and the repetitive lists of animal sacrifices, because I’m the youngest and have dues to pay). But there’s something reassuring in knowing that, eventually, even the book of Judges will end, and better times are ahead. With new elections coming up, both in Israel in October and in the United States in November, there is the possibility that smarter, better leaders will prevail over our present-day Jepthahs, and this cycle of history can finally move on. We can only hope.
“Or we can hide until it’s over.”
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?
My plan for the summer included writing the first draft of my mystery novel, finally, after years of thinking about it and plotting it out. Everyone I talked to said it sounded like a great idea, and of course I should pursue it, and it would be so much more fun than all of my other writing ideas, which are, let’s face it, pretty depressing. So, I wrote out my list of open questions about the plot and the characters and who was getting killed and who was doing the killing, and I printed out worksheets with one prompt per page (so it wouldn’t be too overwhelming), and I got through the first few pages and then…nothing. I also bought a few (used) copies of How-to-write-a-mystery books, and I read half of one chapter of one book and then that petered out too. Which is, I guess, my brain’s way of telling me that it’s not the right time for the mystery yet.
“I think you need a nap.”
But I’m not sure what to work on instead. Most of the summer, and for a long time before that, to be honest, the writing that has come most naturally to me has been memoir essays, for the blog and otherwise, but does that mean I should be writing a memoir? Because I still don’t really believe that I can write a whole memoir, or get it published, and I’ve also been thinking about a bunch of other projects that have been on hold for one reason or another, and I’m asking myself how much memoir and how much fiction is the right balance for me at this moment. How much of my own pain can I tolerate? And how much fiction do I need to infuse into my life to make it bearable? I once had a non-fiction teacher who said that all writing is 80% true and 20% fiction, whether you choose to call it a novel or a memoir, which sounded both jaded and possibly true to me at the time, but then a lot of memoir writers got caught outright lying, so… Honestly, I’ve always believed that full-length memoirs only work when people are writing about suffering and struggles and vulnerability that they have already overcome, and therefore I should write fiction until my life works out, and then I can write a memoir if I really want to. I’ve also never been much of a memoir reader, even when literary memoirs were at the top of the best seller lists, and they say that you should write the book you want to read, which is why I thought I should write a mystery in the first place. So, I’m confused.
My therapist used to tell me that my problem was stubbornness. She believed that I was choosing not to write the kinds of things that would get published, and choosing not to do all of the other things that normal people do – because of my ideals. And I would love to be able to take credit for that, but it’s bullshit. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out academic writing, until I finally had to accept that a PhD thesis would probably kill me. And I took classes in poetry and TV writing and playwriting and fiction and non-fiction and on and on and I tried to figure out what was getting published and how to write it, I just wasn’t successful. So, sitting there in therapy and being told that I was being stubborn, and a perfectionist, when I knew that’s not what was going on, left me feeling like I couldn’t be trusted to know myself, or know anything. If no one believes you are who you say you are, are you still you?
I love writing the blog. I love writing essays, period. I always have. In college, I used to write essays for my teachers, not for credit, just to try out my ideas and process what I was learning in class. But when I sent my essays out to literary magazines, and my short stories and poems and novels, they were rejected over and over again. And I figured, first of all, if I’m going to be rejected, I’d rather it be for something that isn’t 100% me, thank you very much. And second, I can’t really fix who I am to make myself more palatable and marketable, but I can make things up, so better to stick with fiction. Except, I don’t know what to fix in fiction anymore either. I really don’t know what makes one story/novel/memoir/artist successful and another an also-ran.
I’ve been watching the auditions from The Voice Israel on Youtube and most of the people who don’t get a chair to turn, sound (to me) just as talented as most of the people who do. It has so much to do with what each judge can relate to, in that moment, on that day. And that sucks. If I can be just as talented and work just as hard as another writer, but because their stars align and mine don’t, they are successful and I am not – where does that leave me?
And I guess I’m thinking, maybe there is no “right” answer. Maybe there is no type of writing that will automatically be successful, and I’m not stubbornly avoiding the correct path, and I don’t need to browbeat myself into becoming a totally different kind of writer, because it wouldn’t make a difference.
Ideally, I would have a plan going forward. I would work on one project at a time, research the perfect agent/publisher/audience for it, become wildly successful, and then move on to the next one. But my brain doesn’t work that way, and trying to twist myself into shapes that don’t fit me is both really uncomfortable and clearly a waste of time. So, what does that mean? I have no idea. I guess it means that I should write what I’m up to writing, when I’m up to writing it, and ignore as many of the insistent shoulds as I possibly can, except that ignoring those voices in my head is not one of my natural talents either. Basically, I’m getting my writing done, if I’m learning about myself and the world around me and I’m doing the best I can, maybe that is enough for now.
“Have you considered chicken treats? They’re like magic.”
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?
I wrote a set of lyrics, or a poem, or something, and I wanted to see if I could translate it into an actual song, at which point, of course, I forgot everything I’d ever known about music or writing. I went to Google to ask how to write a song and found page after page that boiled down to: set up the story in verse one, state the basic emotion of the song in the chorus, advance the story in verse two, and good luck. But shockingly, I still felt clueless about how to proceed. In general, when I write I just write, and the rhythm comes from the words themselves and from how often I need to stop and breathe. In order to write a song, though, I needed a more deliberate structure and I was still at a loss.
“Oy.”
So then I collected a YouTube list of songs that seemed well-structured (to me) and started listening to them to see if I could figure out how they worked. I listened to a lot of Mumford and Sons songs, like Awake My Soul and I Will Wait, and My Church and The Bones by Maren Morris, and Falling and Sweet Creature from Harry Styles, and songs from Regina Spektor and Van Morrison and Sarah Mclachlan and James Taylor and Nat King Cole. And what I noticed, after listening to dozens of songs and reminding myself to listen for rhyme and meter each time, wasn’t rhyme and meter. Instead, it was how I felt. Even when a song didn’t bother to finish telling its story, as long as there was one moment where I felt something or saw something or maybe even smelled something, the song felt successful.
I also noticed that I really wanted to rewrite other people’s songs. I’d be singing along, feeling like this is my song, until a word or two would ring false and break the spell. For example, Kelly Clarkson’s song Mine is beautiful and heartbreaking and almost perfect, until she gets to the line “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,” which feels like a foreign substance dropped in from popular culture rather than part of an organic whole. (I blame my rabbi for this tendency of mine to want to edit. He “adapts” poems and essays from established writers to fit his purposes throughout the year, and especially on the high holidays, when we need as much help from English as possible to try to understand the endless Hebrew liturgy. I mean, I was always like this, but now I have, like, God’s permission.)
Anyway, with all of that in mind, I was even more uncertain about how to proceed. I was especially flummoxed by the need to rhyme, because it reminded me of having to buy a thesaurus in graduate school and being told there was always a “right” word for each purpose. But one of the things I learned from my long listening experiment was that rhyme schemes can help create a sense of anticipation, or inevitability, in a song, taking something that otherwise feels humdrum and making it almost magic. So, bravely, I looked through my existing lyrics and made a list of words I thought I could find rhymes for, and then I asked Google for rhymes (no more stupid thesaurus for me!)) and wrote down every possible word that resonated for me. At this point I was lost in a sea of words and even more overwhelmed than before, but I reminded myself that there’s always a way forward and I started freewriting every image I could think of for each word on my list.
If this is starting to sound like a ridiculous amount of work, especially with no guarantee that it would lead anywhere productive, I agree. But I can’t think of any other way forward. The gulf between “I want to write a song” and “I know how to write a song” feels so vast, it’s like trying to fly over an ocean without a plane, or a life preserver. And I’m still somewhere over the Atlantic at the moment, desperately flapping my wings. Wish me luck!
“Good luck and chicken treats, Mommy!
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?
rachelmankowitz 