When Mom and I bought our Subaru Crosstrek last summer, the car salesman demonstrated how to link an iPhone to the car’s computer in order to answer phone calls hands free. But as soon as Mom’s phone was linked to the car’s computer, a podcast or a phone call or a voice mail came bursting out of the speakers at us, and we had to press every button in the car before we could finally make it stop. And as a result we decided, as we often do, that this latest technological advance was not for us.
But then, a few months ago, when I was listening to music on my phone in the car because I was tired of hearing the same Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift songs on the radio over and over, I noticed that the battery was low and plugged my phone into the car charger, and suddenly my Spotify account was playing over the car’s speakers. And it was wonderful! So now, as soon as I get into the car, I put my phone on the car charger and open my Spotify app and my music fills the whole car instead of just the cup holder next to me.
Of course, I still pay attention to the news, but only when I feel like I have the energy to deal with it because trying to make sense of the different narratives of what’s going on in the Middle East (and here), as reported by different outlets through varying lenses feels like trying to untangle a pile of fishhooks. But listening to Israeli music, with a playlist that has ballooned to over 300 songs, has become my sanctuary. Especially when I’m on my way to school to teach my students, listening to Israeli music instead of news about Israel helps me get into a mindset where I can have hope for the future, so I can be the person I need to be for my students.
Alas, I only have a free Spotify account, which means I can only listen to my playlist on shuffle, and I still have no idea how Spotify decides to shuffle the songs. Luckily, even though my Israeli music playlist is ridiculously long, it is filled with songs I really like, so even if the shuffle decides I need to hear the same song on the drive to and from work, or jumps from one style of music to a very different style of music, it’s all good. And there’s actually something comforting about having the app choose which song to listen to next, because it makes me feel like I’m not really alone in the car; like there’s a tiny DJ in there, somewhere, keeping me company and telling me everything’s going to be alright.
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?
As part of our preparation for Passover this year, my students and I looked at different elements of the Haggadah, the book used to guide the Passover Seder. We tried to figure out the mysteries of the ten plagues (What’s so terrible about frogs? Why do you need Lice and locusts? What does it mean that God hardens Pharaoh’s heart against letting the Israelites go and yet also sends plague after plague to convince him to let them go? Does this mean that God wants to cause Pharaoh pain? And if so, why must all of the Egyptians suffer along with their leader?); and we looked at the objects on the Seder plate (does anyone actually eat the parsley dipped in salt water? Couldn’t we just substitute pickles for the green vegetable and the salt water, all in one convenient package?); and, why is the Seder so freakin’ long?
I bought a roll of these stickers for my students last year. Lice was a favorite.
But the part that always gets to me most is when we read about the four sons (the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who doesn’t know how to ask) and how the rabbis recommended we answer their questions.
There are many reasons to find fault with this section of the Hagaddah, but first and foremost my reasons are personal: my father always chose for me to read what the wicked son had to say. He thought it was hysterical that every year he could call me evil in front of guests and get away with it. But having read that passage so many times has focused my attention on the question: what’s so wicked about the wicked son wondering what this whole Exodus story has to do with him?
I’ve seen dozens of revised versions of the four sons: changing it to the four children to include the other half of the population; renaming the wicked son to the rebellious child; and imagining the four children as four parts of all of us.
I actually love the idea that the rabbis thought to add a section to the Hagaddah where we are told to look at the children at the table and try to figure out how to answer their questions. It’s just that the rabbis gave terrible advice, and their method of categorizing the children is both vague and judgmental and still doesn’t really help us figure out what to say to them.
Earlier in the Seder, the youngest child recites the official Four Questions, chosen by the rabbis long ago and usually answered before Passover even begins by your friendly neighborhood synagogue school teacher. Why Matza? Because the Israelites had to rush to bake bread the night they escaped from Egypt and the bread had no time to rise, or because we used to rely on sympathetic magic at this time of year to encourage the harvest, and preventing the bread from rising was a way to reserve all of the fecundity for the crops. Why bitter herbs? Because slavery is bitter. Why dip a green vegetable in salt water? Because the green vegetable (often parsley) represents spring and the salt water reminds us of the tears of our ancestors. Why do we recline at the Seder? Because free people are able to relax while they eat and somehow don’t mind the resulting heartburn.
The recital of those four basic questions is supposed to be the beginning, and not the end, of the questions people ask at the Seder, and in the same way I wish we could portray (at least) four different kinds of children at our Seders in a way that would inspire us to be more curious about the actual children in our lives and to come up with ways to spark their imaginations.
What if instead of labeling the child who agrees with us as wise, and the one who disagrees as wicked, we could listen to them long enough to figure out the who behind the concerns they are bringing up?
In that spirit, I asked my students which children they would choose if they were writing the Hagaddah today, and they had a lot of ideas. They thought about the depressed child and the bored child, the discombobulated child and the hungry child, the happy child and the lonely child, the frightened child and the curious child, the constipated child (too much Matza), the self-absorbed child, and the brave child. And really they could have gone on and on. What they didn’t do was to describe the children in the judgmental and external ways the rabbis had done. They focused on who the child is to him or herself: she feels sad, he feels uncomfortable, she’s shy around so many strangers, and he wants to see what happens if he feeds horseradish to the cat.
The central obligation at the Passover Seder is not to eat Gefilte fish or hide the Afikomen, but to re-tell the story of the Exodus, because we recognize the power of this story to help us find meaning in our lives: to teach us to have hope even in dark times, to learn how to stand up to bullies, to remind us that we can ask for help and that we should help others on the journey when we can. This yearly retelling also teaches us to remember our own individual traumas, and name them, and embrace the ways they have made us who we are today. If we pretend that life is beautiful all the time we won’t search for new ways to solve our problems and will remain stuck in Egypt. The mantra to “never forget” has been associated with the Holocaust in modern times, but the lesson is thousands of years old and stems from the Exodus story and the command to retell it. Our ancestors knew the power of memory and the need for storytelling to help us shape those memories into life lessons.
The Israelites are never portrayed as perfect people in the Hebrew Bible, they are intentionally portrayed as human and flawed so that we can see ourselves in them and learn the lessons they learned from their lives. The four children can be seen as part of this tradition too: the one who complains all the time (Manna? Again?!), the one who is always jealous of someone else’s share (why does Moses get to be in charge all the time?), the one who is afraid to cross the sea (why does everything have to be so difficult?), and the one who has the faith to take the first step and lead the rest to freedom. They are all part of the same whole; they are us.
Splitting of the Sea, from Chabad.org
Moses’ first try, from The Jew In You
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?
Dayenu means “it would have been enough” in Hebrew, and it is the title, and refrain, of a song that is sung every year at the Passover Seder. It’s an upbeat tune that lists all of the things we are grateful to God for in the Exodus story. Dayenu is over a thousand years old, and appears in the first medieval Hagaddah (the book used to guide the Passover Seder), so it has staying power.
There are fifteen stanzas, all in the same format, for example: If God had only brought us out from Egypt, and had not carried out judgements against our oppressors – it would have been enough; If God had split the sea for us, and had not taken us through it on to dry land – it would have been enough; If God had given us the Torah, and had not brought us to the land of Israel – it would have been enough.
Dayenu
The mystery of the song, for me, has always been: how can any of these things have been enough when all of them were necessary for the survival of the Jewish people? What is “enough” supposed to mean? Do we really mean it would have been enough if God had split the sea and then not allowed us to reach dry land?
I’ve been listening to the podcast For Heaven’s Sake, from the Shalom Hartman Institute, ever since October 7th, not because it gives me answers on how to view what’s going on in Israel and Gaza, but because it helps me to formulate my questions; and recently, Rabbi Doctor DonnielHartman referred to himself as a “Dayenu person” in the course of a conversation with Yossi Klein Halevy, who pronounced himself definitely not a Dayenu person, which started me thinking about what they meant by a Dayenu person, and what the tradition means by Dayenu overall.
I think what they mean by a Dayenu person is someone who is able to accept the limits of what’s possible, and to celebrate what’s achievable in the moment, even in the face of wanting, or even needing, more. If I’m using Rabbi Hartman as the model, then being a Dayenu person wouldn’t have to mean that you’ve stopped hoping for, or recognizing the need for more, because he always talks about wanting more from himself and for the Jewish people. But I think that in order to be a Dayenu person, you’d have to have faith that more good things will come, so that pausing to be grateful for your incomplete gifts wouldn’t leave you worrying that that’s all there’s ever going to be. And that sort of leaves me out.
I used to call myself an optimistic realist, because while I could see the suffering and pain in the world, I totally believed that my problems and the problems around me could eventually be solved. And I still act as if I am optimistic, but internally my expectations for my life and for the world around me have been lowered significantly; and not in the I-accept-you-as-you-are sort of way, but in the I’m-screwed sort of way.
But, the idea of being a Dayenu person resonates for me. I really do crave the feeling of having enough, and the faith that everything will be okay. I just don’t know how to get there from where I am. It feels impossible to pause in the middle of a raging sea and be grateful that I have a boat: a very small, very rickety boat. And I’ve always heard the words of Dayenu as a command to act grateful and act satisfied even when I’m not, in order to please someone else; in this case, God. But what if there’s another way to read the words of the song? What if the song is, inadvertently or intentionally, telling us that we can be grateful for each step of the journey only because we already know that all of the steps took place and we reached the Promised Land? As we sing through all fifteen verses the song can teach us how to toggle between the two mindsets: gratitude for what we have, and willingness to keep working for what needs to come next.
One of the primary purposes of the Seder every year is to help us feel as if we personally experienced the Exodus from Egypt, and I’ve always thought that meant reminding us to be content with what we have, and not be so jealous of what someone else has been given; but I wonder if it’s also about reminding us that there is a path forward. So that if we feel like we are in the middle of a raging sea, with only a dinky little boat to cling to, singing Dayenu can remind us that this crisis moment is not the end of the journey, or even the beginning, it’s the middle; we’ve already come a long way, and, the song tells us, there are still many gifts ahead to help us on the journey.
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?
My ideal next dog would be a Maltipoo (Maltese/Poodle mix), ten pounds or less (small enough for Mom to be able to pick him or her up), non-shedding and hypoallergenic (as much as possible), and healthy enough so that I would have him or her for a long time (because having less than five years each with Butterfly and Ellie was heartbreaking). Ideally the next dog would also be a rescue, but I may have to accept that the ideal dog for me will have to come from a home breeder again, like Cricket did, rather than a rescue organization.
My biggest anxiety, dog-wise, is the cost; because I’m not sure I can really afford a dog long term, and all of the vet care and grooming costs involved, on top of the adoption/rescue fees. I still have a lot of medical debt to pay off, and I’m afraid it’s selfish to risk getting another dog without knowing for sure where the money to take care of them is going to come from. And yet, I really need a dog, or two, to make life worth living.
Back when we got Cricket, sixteen and a half years ago, we were still recovering from the death of our Lab/mix, Dina, who had died half a year earlier, at sixteen years and two months old, after a long but difficult life. She’d had false pregnancies for years, and for the first eight years, while we still lived in my father’s house, he refused to let us get her spayed to relieve her suffering. Either as a result of that, or just along with that, Dina had a lot of fears: separation anxiety that made it very hard for me to leave her home alone; fear of children and other moving objects; and fear of bridges and water and all kinds of sounds and smells. I learned an enormous amount from Dina about how to care for my own limitations with more creativity and compassion, because she couldn’t just “get over it” the way people always insisted I should be able to do, but by the end I was exhausted, and I just wanted an easy dog, a small dog, a happy and healthy dog.
My Dina
I researched breeds and temperaments and sizes and on and on and decided on a Cockapoo, and we found a home breeder in New Jersey that we liked and went to see the puppies in person, and Cricket chose us. She turned out to be cheaper than we’d expected because she had an underbite, which, the breeder told us, meant that Cricket couldn’t be a show dog. Fine with me.
Except, I discovered quickly that I am a terrible groomer. I spent two years trying to teach myself how to manage her and her hair, but in the meantime, and then forever after, she needed regular professional grooming, an expense I’d never thought of before. And when Cricket was a year old she started to limp, and we discovered that she needed knee surgery, first on one knee and a year later on the other one.
But most importantly, Cricket, who was supposed to be our easy dog, ended up having all kinds of behavioral problems, most likely as a result of neurological problems caused by being the runt of her litter. She spent sixteen years teaching me how to love someone who is difficult, someone who is capable of biting the ones she loves over and over again, and someone who needs to be protected from her own impulses most of the time. She taught me that not all of the people who need your help will inspire your sympathy, or even be grateful for your help. And she reminded me that being smart (and Cricket was very very smart) does not protect you from struggling with even the smallest challenges in life. She also taught me that it is possible to be so cute that even the people who know you best will keep forgetting what a jerk you are.
“I was adorable. It’s true.“
Maybe the most important lesson I’ve learned from all of the dogs I’ve had is that no matter what you think you are getting when you adopt a dog, each dog who comes into your life will teach you something you didn’t expect. You will be challenged and you will grow, whether you like it or not.
Butterfly, an eight-year-old breeding momma rescued from a puppy mill, taught me a kind of love I didn’t know I could feel. Even from the first time I saw her, dirty from the newspapers lining her cage in the shelter, and missing teeth, I refused to let her go, even though we’d gone to the shelter that day on a whim, with no intention of bringing a dog home right away. I learned from Butterfly that I can take care of someone else, very well, and with an enormous amount of patience, when necessary. And I credit Cricket, who was six years old by the time we adopted Butterfly, with making it possible for me to believe that I might be able to manage the challenges Butterfly presented, healthwise.
“I knew you were the one, Mommy.”
Then, Ellie came to us by luck, when Cricket’s groomer called us to say that she’d rescued a dog she couldn’t keep, because her previous rescue and the new one were not getting along. Ellie was four or five years old and had just been spayed, after spending years as a breeding momma at a home-ish breeder. I didn’t have the immediate “love at first sight” reaction to Ellie that I’d had with the other dogs, maybe because I didn’t choose her myself, but Ellie taught me that love can grow and become just as deep and strong, even without that coup de foudre at the beginning. I’m still too close to the loss of Ellie to take a full accounting of all of the things she taught me, but the realization that my heart can stretch and stretch, to sizes I could never have imagined ahead of time, is one of her gifts to me. And I also learned, in losing her, that a stretched out heart needs a lot of time to heal.
“Don’t worry, Mommy. Cricket’s keeping an eye on me.”
I have no idea what I will learn from my next dog, or how he or she will challenge me. I guess, first, I will need to learn how to feel like I deserve the next dog at all, and to believe that I will be able to live up to the challenges that come along with all of the love and joy and comfort. I hope that this part of the work doesn’t take too long, because life is pretty lonely without a dog.
“There’s always room for another dog.”
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?
My synagogue had planned a big trip this spring – to Germany, Israel, and Jordan. It was originally planned for 2020, and then Covid hit; and it was rescheduled for this spring, and then October 7th happened. The plan for the trip was still up in the air for months, as the clergy watched to see how long the war would last, and what conditions would be like for tourism, but somewhere along the way the decision was made that they would just do the Germany leg of the trip this year, for the people who were still interested in going. A small group of congregants went to Berlin, with the same tour guide who was going to lead the big trip, to experience the different ways Germany has memorialized the Holocaust, and how they are dealing with Jews and anti-Semitism today.
I was not planning to go on the trip this Spring, even if October 7th hadn’t happened, because I wasn’t interested in the Jordan and Germany legs of the trip, and because it was going to take place during the school year and I hate missing time with my students if I can help it, and probably most of all because it was going to be expensive and I am still paying off steep medical loans and I feel guilty being in so much debt at one time.
But if the synagogue group had gone to Israel, in this post October 7th landscape, I would have been jealous of everyone who was able to go.
I have wanted to go to Israel for a long time now, and I’ve gone over and over all of my internal conflicts around the costs, the weather, the social issues, the health issues, and the security issues, without really coming to any conclusions. But post October 7th the drive to go to Israel has increased tenfold.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blind to the security issues, or to the parts of the country that are still off limits because they are under direct attack by Hezbollah; and I still have money issues, and health limitations, and I still worry about being lonely and feeling lost and alienated while I’m there. But the part of me that wants to be there, not to see the Western Wall or the Dead Sea or other touristy things, but just to be there in solidarity and offer my presence and compassion and love, feels newly strong. Maybe because, until now, I felt like I had nothing to offer my Israeli cousins; I even expected them to reject me, because of so many of the clichés about Israelis, that they feel superior and look down on weakness, be it emotional, or physical, or psychological.
But on and after October 7th it became clear to me that Israelis aren’t really the image they project to the world, or at least they’re not only that; they are human like the rest of us. Yes they are courageous, but they are also frightened. Yes, many of them are adventurous and confident, but a lot of their bravado is a defense mechanism against lives lived in a very small country surrounded by people who hate them and keep trying to kill them.
I wish, with all my heart, that this unveiling of their true selves had happened any other way, but I am truly grateful to feel more connected to them and to learn more about who they really are. There are, of course, some people who are so frightened and defensive, like Benjamin Netanyahu and his fellow politicians on the far right, that they never let the facade drop, even on October 7th itself.
I am also aware of, and overwhelmed by, the news about the war itself and how it is being conducted. It has been especially difficult to watch the news about the seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen who were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. It’s painful and disheartening to see something so awful happen to people who are there only to offer help to those who need it. And I don’t understand how a mistake like this could have happened when the aid workers and the IDF say they had deconflicted their itinerary ahead of time to keep the workers safe. But it’s also heartbreaking to hear people insist that this was an intentional, rather than accidental, killing. I don’t believe that the Israeli army would target innocent aid workers intentionally, but, given the complications of managing a war in this territory, with so many voices pulling in different direction, I don’t understand how the army hasn’t become more and more careful over time, and I don’t understand why mistakes like this are still possible. At the beginning, when they were first trying to figure out how to fight a war like this, the mistakes in targeting and choice of munitions that led to so many civilian deaths was horrifying, but maybe understandable. But now? I don’t know what to think.
And yet, with all of my questions, and however conflicted I may feel about how the war is being waged, and interpreted, Israel and Israelis themselves are still very close to my heart. If I could plan the perfect trip right now I would want to visit my niece at her school and go with her and her friends to volunteer somewhere, picking clementines or folding uniforms or whatever volunteer activity the girls are doing now; and I would want to stay with my best friend from high school, and hear from her kids and their friends about what their lives are like right now; and I’d want to sit on trains and buses and listen to the conversations around me; and I’d also want to go to every concert in every venue possible; and visit my teachers in Tel Aviv, and finally taste real Chummus, since I’ve been told over and over that the Chummus I can get in New York is a pale imitation of the real thing.
Knowing me, though, I would be too shy to really talk to anyone, or to ask the questions I really want to ask, and I would spend half my time beating myself up for not having the courage to go and do and say what I want. But that’s still the trip I’d want to take, if I could. Those are the experiences I wish I could collect and bring back home with me.
For now, accepting my own limitations and the state of the war, my plan is to take another online class through the Hebrew language school in Tel Aviv, where I’ve taken classes in the past. That way I can continue to build my confidence in speaking Hebrew and listening to Israelis, for when I’m ready to go in person. And, through the zoom screen at least, I will still be able to make some of the connections I’ve been looking for, with my teachers and classmates, and through the music and stories and culture of Israel.
As always, I’m listening to podcasts and music to try to understand what’s going on. The latest podcast episode of For Heaven’s Sake, hosted by Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevy, is an honest accounting of how things feel for Israelis after six months of war.
And I’ve been listening to a lot of music by Idan Amedi, an Israeli musician who was injured while serving in the reserves in this war. He wrote a song twelve years ago about how hard it is to talk about the pain and memories of life as a soldier, even to the ones you love most, and the song still resonates.
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?
We had our usual Purim Spiel at synagogue this year – a musical version of the Purim story, set to Taylor Swift’s music, performed by adult congregants and synagogue school kids. In the past we’ve had a Wizard of Oz themed Purim Spiel, a Star Wars version, and a Billy Joel version, for example, and the dialogue and new lyrics are written to tell the story of Queen Esther, while also making jokes about our modern world and local and national news stories and whatever else can make people laugh.
Artwork depicting a Purim celebration(not my picture)
The kids love doing the Purim Spiel, because they get pizza at all of the rehearsals, and then they get to dress up and be on stage and sing and dance. The adults, who do it year after year, are often really talented singers and actors who love the chance to ham it up once a year as a break from their day jobs.
Given the news of the day in Israel and Gaza, though, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Purim Spiel this year. I, personally, was not in the mood for it, but four of my current students were in the play, so I had no choice but to go and support them. And it was just as outrageous and funny and zany as usual, and the kids and adults had just as much fun as usual, and people shook pasta boxes (instead of groggers) each time the name Haman (the villain of the story) came up, and then we ate Hamantaschen (triangle shaped cookies with jam or chocolate or poppy seed fillings), and after it was over the pasta boxes were donated to a local soup kitchen. It was all very much as it usually is on Purim, and I was surprised.
Homemade hamantaschen cookies, noise maker and mask, for Purim party. (not my picture)
For some background, the Purim story is about a man named Haman who is second in command to the king of Persia (Achashverosh) some time before the birth of Christianity. Haman decides that he wants to kill all of the Jews and asks the King for his stamp of approval, and gets it. Why? Because, the King is sort of an airhead and easily swayed, because antisemitism has existed forever, because Haman was angry that Mordechai, the Jew, wouldn’t bow down to him (because a Jew is only allowed to bow down to God). But what the King doesn’t know is that his new wife, Esther, is really a Jewish girl named Hadassah (and Mordechai’s niece). In the end, in the Book of Esther itself, Haman’s genocide plan can’t be undone but the King gives the Jews the right to fight back, and orders the death of Haman and all of his children (the spiel usually tempers the ending so that there is no obvious violence or loss of life).
It’s a dark story to read, even in the most peaceful of times, but a bit too on-the-nose for the current situation, especially given the bizarre coincidence that Hamas is only one letter away from Haman, at least in English.
It’s important to say that the Purim story is fiction. It is, as far as I know, the only acknowledged fiction in the Hebrew Bible, though it is inspired by many real life stories in the seemingly endless history of anti-Jewish violence. The point of the book, and the holiday, is to celebrate one time when Jews were able to thwart a genocide against them, and to celebrate the power of being able to stand up and say I am a Jew.
Artwork depicting a Purim parade (not my picture)
The trappings of Purim – the party atmosphere and the costumes and the drinking and the spiel – are more modern developments, likely inspired by Carnival and Mardi Gras, but the Purim story itself was written before the Common Era, and the holiday used to be celebrated in a more serious way, and still includes a fast day before Purim itself, to mirror the fast done by Esther, the heroine of the story, when she is praying and hoping for the survival of her people. And I guess I thought that, this year, with the Hamas attack on October 7th and hostages still being held in Gaza, and the death toll and imminent state of famine in Gaza, there would be some attempt to change the tone of the holiday back to the original seriousness, or at least to make a point of the deeper resonance of the themes this year. And from what I understand, that was true in Israel. The mood of the holiday was muted and the celebrations were somewhat altered. But not here. Or at least, not in my community.
In a way, maybe, this highlights the gap between American Jews and Jews in Israel; that in America we have so much distance from the recent traumas that we can continue with the regular patterns of the liturgical year, and continue to treat the Purim story’s antisemitic storyline as a distant memory, rather than as a page pulled from the news of the day. It’s possible that other American Jewish communities had more subdued Purim celebrations, or used their Purim celebrations to help them reflect on the situation in Israel in a new way. I don’t know.
But, for me, the easy victory of Esther and Mordechai over Haman in the story was jarring this year, and the violence of the response to Haman’s deadly genocidal intent was overwhelming too; not that it never bothered me before, but in the past it felt like a blood thirsty dream, a wish fulfillment story, rather than something that would actually happen in real life. The Book of Esther is written in the form of a court intrigue or a farce, with all of the exaggerated caricatures and deceptions and misunderstandings that come with that genre. It’s not meant to be naturalistic, or even realistic, in tone; it’s meant to be outrageous.
Artwork depicting the reading of the Book of Esther for Purim, with music and costumes and food (not my picture)
And, every year, I wonder how Purim became such a big holiday on the Jewish calendar, with all of the food and parties and drinking and costumes, when the story should have been shelved a long time ago, left to be read and studied with sober intention, if at all. Especially this year, I wanted some acknowledgement of how contrary this revenge tale is to our morality, and how simplistic the characters and plotting are compared to real life dilemmas like the ones we are facing, and how unhelpful it is to act as if heroes and villains are so black and white.
But Purim, like Halloween, has become a children’s holiday, at least here in the United States, and just like Halloween has lost most of its religious connotations in favor of fake gore and candy and fun, Purim has lost the seriousness of the original story in favor of big laughs and silly costumes and carnivals and food.
At the same time as these Purim celebrations were going on, the UN Security Council was debating ceasefire statements on the Israel/Hamas war, vetoing one by the United States and then passing an alternate version that didn’t tie the release of hostages to the ceasefire demand. And, by the next day, Hamas had, inevitably, refused the latest ceasefire deal authored by the United States, which Israel had accepted. And, as Israel and the United States and Jordan and Egypt and many other countries were trying to come up with new ways to safely bring aid into Gaza, despite complicated conditions on the ground and many different political perspectives, the world was branding Israel’s failures to solve these problems as an intentional genocide.
I kept thinking that an alternative Purim celebration could, maybe, have helped us deal with the simplistic characterizations and statements made at the United Nations, versus the complicated and messy reality on the ground; or it could have helped us acknowledge that simple answers may be morally satisfying, but often don’t actually work. A thoughtful Purim celebration could, maybe, have helped people who are feeling like it is dangerous to be Jewish right now, and are tempted, like Esther, to hide who they are; or it could have helped people look at the differences between justice and revenge, and to try to define where one ends and the other begins, or to acknowledge that there is no clear or obvious line between the two; or it could have addressed how people use exaggeration to tell a story and to make their arguments, in real life even more than in fiction, to the detriment of any real understanding or path to compromise.
All of these could have been helpful discussions, even cathartic storylines to address in a more serious Purim play, but maybe it’s all still too raw, or too frightening, or too easily misinterpreted, given the high stress of the moment we are living in, for us to handle right now as a community. There is so much outsized and overwhelming criticism of Israel, including criticism of its existence in the first place, that even the more subtle and nuanced criticisms become too hard to hear, because every criticism starts to feel like a domino ready to take down the whole country, or even the whole Jewish people.
There are truths in the Book of Esther that are important to face, despite its fictional format: one, anti-Semitism is and has always been part of Jewish life and the temptation to hide who we are in order to fit in has been felt in every generation; two, people who are constantly under threat will crave revenge against those who have hurt them, whether we are talking about Jews or Palestinians. Many people have called the Palestinians who celebrated Hamas’ massacre of Jews and others on October 7thinhuman, and others have used vengeful comments made by Israelis as evidence of genocide, but the Purim story tells us that we can all become so enraged that we crave and celebrate the death of the other. It’s part of human nature, rather than evidence that we are something other than human.
We need to be able to know all of these things about ourselves if we are ever going to truly make ourselves better, instead of just pretending to be better. My sense of the UN, and related humanitarian organizations, which were seemingly created for the specific purpose of preventing another Holocaust like what was done to the Jews during World War Two, is that they have become a performance of moral clarity rather than an attempt to reach real moral clarity. No one lives up to all of the Humanitarian statutes as written, but some people are called out for their failures, and others are not. We deserve an international organization that we can turn to in times of conflict and despair, but we need it to be an honest broker and not just another form of political power to be wielded against an enemy.
I wish these were conversations we could have had during Purim this year, along with the laughs and the silliness and the cookies, but I think I understand why so many people needed distraction instead: the current reality is so painful and frightening and complicated that those of us who are far enough away from the immediate horror are looking for an escape, in whatever form we can find it.
I can only hope that a ceasefire will actually be possible soon, and that the hostages will come home, safe and sound, by Passover or soon after. Maybe then we can continue to have some of these difficult conversations, integrated with the regular prayers and holidays that make up our usual religious lives, to help us through whatever will come next.
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?
We had our yearly Women’s Seder at our synagogue recently (far in advance of Passover this year, because of scheduling issues), and the music was lovely, and I got a chance to sing with friends, but it was bittersweet because so many people I hadn’t seen in a while asked about the dogs. Some knew that Cricket had died, but not Ellie; most didn’t know about either one. And I found myself having to explain, over and over, that they’re gone and I’m heartbroken. Like a mantra.
The fact is, I’ve had to go over their deaths again and again, just for myself, to remind me why there won’t be a dog at the door when I get home, or to explain to myself how I managed to get through a whole day without going outside.
Kevin, the mini Goldendoodle in our complex, left a squeaky tennis ball on our steps the other day. I don’t know if he left it for Cricket, still hoping she would come out to see him, or if he just left it for me; either way, it felt like a gift.
I’ve started to have more memories of Cricket from before she got sick; just glimpses, of her standing on my chest to wake me up, or bouncing around the yard with Kevin, or flying like the wind when she was younger, fitting as many sticks as possible into her mouth at one time. But I’m still haunted by Ellie’s last days. It’s very hard to remember happy Ellie, for now. I just keep seeing her struggling to breathe, looking to me for help but I didn’t not know what to do. I hope this stage will pass soon and I will be able to remember her happy years, her joy, and her peace.
“I could’ve fit more in there.”
“I was so happy, Mommy!”
I’m trying to be patient with the grieving process, letting it unwind at its own pace, even though I wish it would hurry up. I’m still not ready to spread the dogs’ ashes and say a final goodbye. I think it took a year before I was ready to say goodbye to Butterfly, and back then we still had Cricket with us for comfort. Losing both dogs at the same time has been brutal.
One of the families at my synagogue has an emotional support dog who comes into the sanctuary for services. He’s basically a smaller version of Kevin: a poodle mix with curly reddish gold hair. He’s very well behaved and knows how to sit on a chair by himself; looking as if he’s listening attentively. A few weeks ago he came to services wearing his new blue satin Kippah, with a Jewish star on it, and the cuteness almost killed me.
I do my best to absorb my doggy vitamins from witnessing the joy of the dogs in my neighborhood whenever possible, and I watch a lot of dog videos on Facebook too, to take the edge off of the longing for another dog, because I’m not ready to start over again, yet.
There’s something about the Passover story, the escape from slavery to freedom, that seems to fit this stage of grief. We tend to see the Exodus from Egypt as an ecstatic, completely positive moment; but how can it be? There’s so much fear and grief in leaving a familiar place, even if it’s full of pain, and there’s so much anxiety in going somewhere new and unfamiliar. I like that the Seder encourages us to sit with all of those feelings, and I love that we go through this process every year as a way to practice these difficult skills so they will be there for us when we need them. It makes me think of how tennis players practice their forehands and backhands, or figure skaters run through their programs endlessly, or football teams practice different plays so that it can all be automatic under stressful conditions, when it’s impossible to really think it all through.
I like that the Passover Seder creates space for talking through the story of the Exodus, and asking questions and arguing about how the lessons of the past can apply today, but is also filled with physical experiences, like eating the maror, the bitter herb, with the Charoset, the sweet apple or date sauce, to remember that we can survive the bitterness, and this is how. I remember learning about a group of Sephardi Jews who would carry a pillow case filled with heavy books around the Seder table, to feel the burdens of slavery and then to experience the relief of letting the burdens go.
I’m trying to use all of this practice now, to remind myself that I can handle this transition better if I take the grief in small bites, and with the help of some sweetness to balance out the pain. I’m trying, but each day the grief turns again to a slightly different edge, and it feels like I have to learn all of the same lessons all over again. Maybe the point of all of the practice isn’t that it will make these difficult transitions easy or automatic, but that it will give me a memory of having made it through to the other side, so I can have faith that I will make it across the sea this time too.
“We’ll always be here.”
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?
Even with many of the broadcast TV shows returning after the long hiatus (because of the writers and actors strikes in Hollywood) there are still a lot of empty spaces in my TV watching schedule that need to be filled. For a while there, I was happily ensconced in episodes of the Murder in (France) series, on Hoopla (though seasons 6 and 7 are missing for some reason), but I only have a certain number of monthly views, so I keep having to go back to the other streaming services, like Netflix, to fill the empty hours.
Murder In (France)
I started, of course, with One Day, the constantly-advertised-on-social-media-limited-British-series about a two-decades-long-bittersweet-love-story. Eh. It was okay. But when I finished watching that, I found a Spanish movie called Diecisiete/Seventeen, about two brothers and a dog and a grandma and a camper. Did I mention that there’s a dog? And that it’s really a love story about brothers finally figuring out how to be there for each other? It was wonderful! There was also a limited series, also from Spain, called Un Cuento Perfecto/A Perfect Story, about the romance between two (gorgeous) people with low self-esteem, who finally realize that in order to find love you have to risk being known for who you really are, with all of your imperfections. It almost ended badly, but Thank God, in the form of a Deus Ex Machina, it all worked out in the end.
Diecisiete, and a dog!
Then there was a Korean romantic comedy series, and a Croatian/German movie about mid-life love, and then I went through Chaiflicks, one of the Jewish streaming services, where I watched some episodes of Soon by You, an American show about young orthodox Jewish singles in New York City, and Yidlife Crisis, a Yiddish language show by two comedians from Montreal, and Checkout, an Israeli comedy set in a small supermarket, and The New Black, about misfits at a yeshiva in Israel, and Cupcakes, a silly, sweet movie about a group of friends who are accidentally chosen as Israel’s representatives at a Eurovision-type competition show. I finally landed on Unchained, an Israeli show set in the Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox Jewish) community, about the difficulty of getting a religious divorce if the husband doesn’t want one; it was uncomfortable and enraging to watch at times, and not much of a break from the news, but it was definitely interesting.
The problem with watching all of these foreign language shows, though, is that I can’t get my typing done, or scan social media, or play video games, while the movies are on; I actually have to pay attention and read the subtitles in order to follow what’s happening, so it’s a more intense experience than just watching American broadcast TV. And the fact is, sometimes I just want the TV on in the background to remind me that the world still exists, while I focus on other things.
So, I gave in, and watched a handful of Hallmark-lite movies on The Great American Family Channel, and found myself unable to sit through a bunch of them, even with only half an ear paying attention. It’s as if someone came up with a list of plot points and then forgot to write the actual scenes. There are millions of good, heartwarming, reassuring stories to tell, and I really don’t mind repeating tropes or unreasonably happy endings, but I do care if I can relate to the people in the story, so that I can buy into their romance and live vicariously through them for a couple of hours.
Even if I only have my TV on in the background to remind me that the world still exists, I’ve discovered, some part of me is still paying attention and needs to be respected. It’s the same with junk food; I’m not eating French fries for their nutritional value, but, at the very least, they need to taste good.
So, I’m back to the foreign language films, mixed with some returning broadcast shows like Will Trent (there’s a dog!) and The Rookie and Law & Order SVU. But I’m craving something more hopeful, and believable, that will lift my spirits and block out the news; just for a little while. Oh, and I really think my cable and streaming bills should be covered by my health insurance. Because it’s medicine.
Will Trent and Betty
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?
I was both thrilled and a little trepidatious when I heard that Jon Stewart would be coming back as host of The Daily Show one day a week; thrilled because he was always a voice of reason for me back when he was the host of the show, and worried because in the intervening years he’s said a few odd things, about Covid, about Israel, about comedy, that I haven’t agreed with. And he’s been wearing these weird grey jeans on every appearance he’s made on The Late Show with Steven Colbert that are just not flattering.
First and foremost, thank God, he’s back to wearing a suit on the Daily Show. That deserves a grateful paragraph all on its own.
Second, as soon as he returned to The Daily Show, the critics had a lot of things to say about his tendency to both-sides-ism (both Trump and Biden are really old), and about his age (not a Millennial), and whiteness (after Trevor Noah), and maleness (after a lot of the frontrunners to host the show after Trevor were female). For me, though, none of those things was a deal breaker, but the topic of Israel, which is always in the news lately and on which I know we disagree, was the big test, and on Jon’s third episode back, he started with a segment he called The Futile Crescent, about Israel/Palestine. Oh boy.
And, yes, he did simplify certain issues too much for my taste, and repeat some of the tropes about Israel that I disagree with, but even with all of that, it became clear to me that he is still the Jon Stewart I remember: vulnerable, funny, snarky heart intact. He ended that third episode with a moment of Zen dedicated to his dog, Dipper, a three legged brindle-coated rescue dog who had died the day before. He cried, and I cried, and I mourned Cricket and Ellie (and Butterfly and Dina) all over again, and I finally felt the relief that I used to feel every night when Jon Stewart was the regular host of The Daily Show, way back when. My buddy was back.
Miss Cricket in full flight
Miss Ellie ready for a snack
Miss Butterfly resting on my dog-walking shoes
Dina on her way to the beach
It took me a few weeks, but I finally realized that the fact that Jon Stewart and I disagree on some things is actually a feature, rather than a bug in the program. His willingness to accept that, of course, his viewers won’t agree with him on everything, is what makes him Jon Stewart. He doesn’t expect everyone to agree, in fact, his goal seems to be to have difficult conversations with people who can respectfully disagree on a wide range of important issues (as long as he can find a joke in it). Sometimes he makes me angry or uncomfortable, and sometimes he makes me laugh, or cry, but most of all he somehow creates this space that allows me to breathe more deeply, and feel less alone. And given the rigidity of opinions that has become the norm for both political parties in the United States, and the replacement of actual discussions with Tiktok videos and memes and mantras and marches, I really appreciate how Jon Stewart looks around at all of us, laughs, and says, uh, no.
I remember learning about the bell curve in college, in relation to IQ scores at first, but then with almost everything else, and the lesson was basically that even though some small amount of people live at the extremes, of beauty and intelligence and wealth, the majority of us are somewhere in the murky middle. So, why aren’t we actively listening to the variety of opinions that make up the wide political middle, and trying to find common ground and even reasonable compromises, and instead we’re required to pledge allegiance to Alexandra Occasio Cortez on one side or Donald Trump on the other when they don’t really represent who we are?
There’s so much to learn, and so much nuance and complexity to each one of us, and all of that gets steamrolled when we’re told what we’re allowed to say before we even open our mouths.
Back when Jon Stewart hosted The Daily Show full time, which feels like a million years ago now, there were always things he said that I didn’t agree with, or sex jokes I really didn’t want to hear, and yet I loved him anyway, because he made me laugh and think and feel just a tiny bit less overwhelmed by the news of the day. And that hasn’t changed.
I don’t know how long he’ll stay at The Daily Show this time, maybe just long enough to get us through the 2024 presidential election, and if that’s the case then I’m going to work hard to be grateful for whatever time he can give us, and treasure the chance to disagree with him in good faith, knowing that our differences are part of what makes him worth watching. Unless he becomes a cat person. Then we’re done.
“Oh come on. I’m adorable.”
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?
In my adventures through Israeli music I’ve found one song title coming up over and over again: Lo Levad, or, Not alone.
At first, I thought they must all be covers of the same song, because Israeli music is filled with covers and mash ups and duets, in a way that makes it feel like the whole country is one big Glee club. But when I listened to each recording, I realized that, no, they were all different songs, with different lyrics and musical styles and intentions.
Since loneliness is a feeling I’m very familiar with, I wanted to understand why Israel in particular would have so many songs on this topic, not just referenced in the lyrics but in the titles themselves. So, I chose three songs that I found particularly powerful, maybe only because they are “my” kind of music, to examine further.
Jane Bordeaux’s Lo Levad (written by Doron Talmon) was posted on YouTube soon after October 7th and is set at a kibbutz overrun by Hamas. A lone, burned tree is the first and enduring image of the song, but the roots of the tree are still strong, because of the people who are coming together to remember those they lost, and to rebuild. The melody is sad, but the message of community coming together is hopeful, and that melancholy contrast lingers long after the song is over. It’s not a big, banging rock song, or a cry for help; maybe it’s more like a folk song, the kind of thing you’d sing at a campfire, after a long day of cleaning up or picking clementines, to remind yourself that the effort is worth it. The basic message of Jane Bordeaux’s Lo Levad: some limbs of the tree may have been burned, but the roots are strong and with help the tree will heal and grow again.
The second Lo Levad I chose was posted just before October 7th this year, and is performed by Aviv Alush and Omer Adam, and written by a collective of artists called Veteyn Chelkaynu, as part of a yearly project leading up to the Jewish high holidays, to inspire secular Israelis to return to religious study in some small way. The message of this Lo Levad is that you can always go home again, by which they mean return to God and to Torah (the Hebrew bible), which is very much in sync with the message of Rosh Hashanah, and the month of Elul that leads up to it. This is my favorite of all of the Lo Levad songs I’ve heard, and did the most to genuinely make me feel less alone each time I heard it, maybe because the idea of prayer and study, as part of a community, actually does resonate for me, a lot; though I wouldn’t limit it to religious study, because in my experience almost any group studying together, or singing together, and willing to acknowledge weakness and the need for comfort, creates this same powerful energy. I also like the contrast of the two voices, one gruff (Aviv Alush, a popular Israeli actor) and one sweet (Omer Adam, maybe the most famous and certainly the most prolific of Israel’s singers), and I like that in both the lyrics and the music, this song champions both crying out for help and reaching out to help someone else; there’s no sense that one role has more value or respect than the other. The basic message of Aviv Alush and Omer Adam’s Lo Levad: life is a difficult journey for everyone, with lots of choices along the way, but you don’t have to go on this journey alone, and you can find your way home, with help.
The third Lo Levad I chose is from Hanan Ben Ari (co-written by Roi Chasan), a popular Israeli singer/songwriter who sings a kind of pop/religious hybrid that really seems to crossover well. His Lo Levad, which is actually from seven years ago, is anthemic, built like an uphill climb, both in the music and in the lyrics (or what I understand of them, because the Hebrew here was hard for me in certain places). It’s written in third person, so it has that distance of speaking about someone else’s pain (even though it could be about him, who knows), and there’s a choir that jumps in when the song builds. The basic message of Hanan Ben Ari’s Lo Levad: even if you fall into the dark cavernous pit of loneliness, you can find the light and even the wings to fly.
Together, all of these songs feel like puzzle pieces in the larger picture of how loneliness feels and how we try to combat it. Loneliness is certainly not unique to Israelis, but maybe their willingness to acknowledge it, and their focus on combatting it in community fits the Israeli ethos in particular. In the United States, where our most insistent value is independence, we have mixed feelings about acknowledging loneliness as a problem. We, maybe, see loneliness as a necessary price for the kind of rugged individualism we are supposed to strive for. But in Israel, where collectivist kibbutzim played such a big role in its beginnings, and mandatory army service brings people together from all walks of life, community is the key to survival.
The loneliness theme also resonates in the physical isolation that is inherent in where Israel is located in the world, surrounded by Muslim majority countries that have, historically, seen Israel as a cancer that needs to be excised; and it responates with the long history of Jewish wandering that has led to being seen as the other by the majority populations of pretty much every place in the world.
Wherever the loneliness comes from, though, it’s a relief to have it expressed, in music and in words, in so many ways; just the chance to hear about someone else’s struggle, and their attempts to find comfort, helps me fight off at least the bitterest edges of the loneliness.
I didn’t include translations for these songs, because I wasn’t happy with my inability to really capture the magic of the words, and because I think it’s the music that is most powerful in these songs. There are, of course, other songs that have helped push away the loneliness, even when loneliness wasn’t even mentioned in the titles:
Shleimim/Complete is performed by Idan Rafael Haviv (written by Avi Ohayon, Akiva Turgeman, and Matan Dror) and is a gentle love song about the kind of love that grows with every year together. https://youtu.be/kRy0xSsly_o?si=DKlSPPCyykkSRcdU
Am Echad/One nation is written by Eli Keshet, Ben Tzur, and Omri Sasson and performed by a bunch of different Israeli musicians, and it’s a call for national unity in response to the current war, but also manages to capture the sweetness of coming together, even in hard times. https://youtu.be/u7CeOuIrxBM?si=8dtFFim9SZTnF9Bk
Im Hayah Lanu Zman/If we had time, performed by Elai Botner and Noam Kleinstein and written by Elai Botner and Oren Jacoby is a re-recording of a song from a movie I never saw, about a different war, but Noam Kleinstein’s voice, even if I never understood the words, cracks me open every time I hear this song. https://youtu.be/mwPAlYxqLqE?si=uXKDfSQDW7xHKIXD
As usual, I’ve been reading and listening to lots of voices about the war, and I found two people who were especially helpful in explaining the difference between the media coverage of the war in Israel and internationally:
It still feels pretty lonely to be Jewish right now, but all of these resources have helped in different ways, and writing the blog and hearing from my readers and fellow bloggers, helps immensely. I don’t need everyone to see things the same way I do, but I do need to feel like I’m part of the picture, part of the community of voices that are hearing and being heard.
Thank you for helping me feel less alone.
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 