Coloring Within the Lines

Posted on March 8, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            I have been coloring a lot lately. In coloring books. They are “adult” coloring books, so the designs are more complicated and intricate than my old Little Mermaid coloring books, but I’m struggling to stay within the lines just like I used to as a kid, and I feel silly for needing to do this instead of creating something of my own from scratch. I used to knit and crochet as a way to calm down, but I haven’t had the mental energy to focus on a project like that. When I received a handful of gift cards for Chanukah, from my students, I decided to buy coloring books and markers, as a way to de-stress. And they worked. I’ve always needed distractions like this to help with anxiety, but since the presidential election in the United States, and then even more so since the inauguration of our current president, the anxiety in the air and the onslaught of news each day has been overwhelming me.

            I haven’t been writing much about our current political climate, in the United States, in Israel, or in the world at large, because there’s too much to process each day, even each hour sometimes, and I feel like I have nothing to add that hasn’t been said a hundred times already. I’m frightened, and overwhelmed, and feeling helpless, and all of the suggestions for how to take action have overwhelmed me even more, because they assume I have resources (like energy and money) that I don’t have.

            So, I color. I’m on my third coloring book, and I’ve graduated from simple markers to gel pens in every shade. I started with pictures of animals in general, then birds in particular, and then I moved on to abstract designs. I’ve also been watching tons of Hallmark and Hallmark-like movies on YouTube, and the combination of the movies and the coloring have been helping, somewhat.

            I’m still writing and teaching and going to my Hebrew classes and taking care of Tzipporah and going to doctors’ appointments and listening to podcasts and Israeli music and forcing myself to watch and read the news, but I’m depending more and more on my hours of coloring each day to help me organize my brain, following the lines someone else has created and trying to figure out which colors will make the patterns become clear to me.

            I wish I was up to doing something more. I wish I could get more writing done each day, or knit a few sweaters, or go out into the streets, or just fix the world snip snap, but this seems to be what I can do for now. It feels selfish to spend money on pens and coloring books instead of sending that money to various organizations supporting reproductive rights or immigrants’ rights or children in Ukraine, but I can’t help anyone else when I feel so lost. I wake up feeling like everything is out of control and the world is breaking apart like pieces in a kaleidoscope, and then I turn on a Hallmark movie and open a coloring book and I feel a little bit more together and a little bit more capable of doing the things I need to do.

            I don’t know how everyone else is coping. Maybe there are even people who don’t feel stressed at all by the current state of affairs, though I don’t know them. People keep telling me that we just have to survive through the next four years, but I don’t have confidence that I will survive four years of this, or that this will only last four years, and that level of fear makes it hard to plan ahead. If the rules change every day, and I have no idea what the new rules will be, it’s hard to believe that I will ever be able to play the game. I remember this feeling from my childhood, where the only way my father could feel safe and secure was if he pulled the rug out from underneath me, or someone else. His security and mine existed on a seesaw, and that’s how it feels with our current president, that the things that make him feel better will inevitably make me feel worse.

            I wish I could fix this, or go back in time to prevent it somehow, or create a world of my own that I could crawl into and avoid the news completely, but I don’t know how to do any of those things. So, I color, and I get by, and that’s the best I can do, for now.

Tzipporah prefers naps to coloring.

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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Purple

Posted on March 1, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            I am starting a new semester of online Hebrew classes, and I’m excited, but also anxious. I’ve been back in these classes since the summer, with renewed energy and purpose after a long break, and all of that effort has paid off, because I am moving up to Purple, the highest level. One of the things I love about Citizen Café, the school where I take my Hebrew classes, is that instead of offering three levels (beginning, intermediate, and advanced) like most language classes for adults, they are continually adding levels so that each student can start and continue in a class that is suited to their real abilities, without being too challenged or too comfortable. I cannot explain their color wheel, though, which starts with Red and Orange and, for now, ends with Purple, and makes stops along the way in Lime, Pink, and Turquoise.

            I spent six semesters at the Indigo level, the second to highest level, where there are multiple semesters worth of content to help build vocabulary and fluency, but also a lot of repetition. During my sojourn in Indigo, I kept hoping that they would create a new level, between Indigo and Purple, so I wouldn’t have to keep going over the same material, or move up to the final level, which feels so, I don’t know, final, but no such luck. Eventually, my teachers decided that I was getting too comfortable in Indigo and needed to move up to Purple for a new challenge, and I agreed with them, but now I feel like I’m being thrown into the deep end without my water wings.

From what I hear from friends, purple level is a different animal. The content changes each semester, depending on what the students in each class are interested in, and there are people who have been at the purple level for a dozen semesters or more, to make up for not having anyone in their outside life to speak to in Hebrew. I’m one of the few students at the advanced levels at this school who has never actually been to Israel, let alone lived there, and I worry that I will be intimidated by my classmates who either live in Israel now or have visited many times in the past. At some point soon, I’m sure the school will figure out that if I belong in Purple, then there really should be at least one more level above Purple for the really advanced students. And then they’ll have to come up with a new color to add to their color wheel, like ultra-violet, or maybe chartreuse.

            I’m sure that, originally, when they were teaching classes in person in cafes around Tel Aviv, they assumed their students would only stay for a few semesters, since they’d already done their official six months in Ulpan (when you move to Israel, you take a six-month Hebrew course subsidized by the government). They probably thought that all their students would need was some practice and fine tuning and then they’d be ready to get a job and continue to work on their Hebrew with their new Israeli friends, but the reality is that Hebrew is really hard to learn, and most Israelis are too busy, or too impatient, or too terrible at grammar themselves to be of much help. And most people want to be able to do more than just read road signs or buy cherry tomatoes at the Shuk, they want to be able to watch (and understand) the news, or read novels at the beach, or scream at their friends over loud music at a party and actually know what’s being said back to them. So, the school grew.

            But something else also happened along the way. Once the school went online, during covid, they found out that they had a lot of potential students who didn’t live in Israel at all. Suddenly there were students from around the world who wanted to learn Hebrew before moving to Israel, or so they could speak Hebrew with their Israeli wife’s family, or chat with their grandkids over Zoom. And then there were people, like me, who wanted to speak Hebrew for a million reasons other than moving to Israel. There are a lot of us who are fascinated with Hebrew for reasons of culture, ancestry, community, connection, family and on and on, rather than just wanting to be able to navigate the bus routes from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.

I am still, usually, the only person in my classes who has never been to Israel, though. And hopefully, someday soon, I will be able to afford a trip, but for now, I’m doing my best to travel there in my mind, and on Zoom, and it is bringing me a lot of satisfaction, and a lot of joy, and just a little bit of crippling anxiety.

“I understand anxiety, new 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?

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The Stranger or Sojourner or Neighbor

Posted on February 22, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            All of the recent rhetoric, and actions, on mass deportation of migrants in the United States has made me think about what I believe is right, or wrong, or complicated, around the issue of immigration. There are people who believe that there should be no borders at all, and that all deportations are wrong, and there are others who think that anyone who speaks Spanish instead of English while in the United States should be on the ICE deportation list, no matter what their citizenship status may be. I know I don’t agree with either of those extreme points of view, but I’m not sure what I do believe.

            We have a tendency to simplify and generalize in our public discourse, relying on pithy sayings that can fit in a hashtag or on a protest sign, instead of having in-depth discussions about what we believe is right. And especially now, when we are being told that the only solution to illegal immigration is to hunt down anyone with questionable status, guns blazing, in hospitals and schools and houses of worship, it is even more important to take a breath and take responsibility for figuring out who we are and who we want to be, and why.

I teach the Book of Leviticus in synagogue school, so I spend an unreasonable amount of time marinating in the Hebrew Bible and what it has to say about who our ancestors were, and where they went wrong, and which lessons they did and didn’t learn from those mistakes. So, when I am confused about a moral issue, the Hebrew Bible is one of the first places I look for edification (other than Hallmark movies, of course). And we are reminded over and over again in the Hebrew Bible that we were strangers in Egypt, and therefore we should be compassionate to others in the same position. It is said so many times that we almost don’t hear it anymore, like we miss the birds chirping outside our windows, or the nagging inner voice telling us to exercise, because it is just so ubiquitous. And, to be honest, I’m not sure I ever spent much time thinking about what it means to be kind to the stranger, or even who qualifies as a stranger in our modern, globally connected world.

            But in a recent bible study session, my rabbi told us that even though the word Ger in the Hebrew Bible is often translated into English as “stranger,” it actually meant something more like “sojourner” in biblical times, and referred to someone who was a migrant from somewhere else, without land of his own in ancient Israel.

            We are told, in Leviticus 19:34-35: “When strangers reside with you in your land, you shall not wrong them. The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens; you shall love each one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

            So, first of all, don’t wrong the stranger. Don’t do anything to the stranger/sojourner that would be abhorrent to you, like making them into your slave, or stealing from them, or hurting or killing them. Basically, recognize that the laws of good behavior are not nullified in your interactions with the stranger as if they are less than human. But why tell us to treat the stranger as if he is a citizen? If there’s not supposed to be a difference between how we treat a citizen and a non-citizen, then why not just say, treat everyone the same?

In fact, the Hebrew Bible has a separate law for how we should treat someone who isn’t a stranger. In Leviticus 19:18, it says: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” or in another translation, “Love your fellow human being as you love yourself.” If there’s no difference between a stranger and a neighbor, why are the two laws stated separately?

If we assume that every word in the Hebrew Bible is there for a reason, which not everyone assumes, but hear me out, then just like “stranger” really refers to a sojourner or non-citizen, maybe the “neighbor” or “fellow human being” here refers to the opposite of the stranger/sojourner, AKA a citizen. So, we are being given guidance on how to treat a fellow citizen and on how to treat a non-citizen.

Before settling in the land of Israel, the ancient Israelites were wanderers, and slaves, so they knew about being sojourners in other lands more than they knew about being landowners. And once they owned land, they needed to learn how to treat each other all over again, and how to treat outsiders, given these new blessings and responsibilities. But as their past experiences started to fade from their everyday thoughts, they had to actively remind themselves that they didn’t want to be the kind of landowners they’d known in the past. They wanted to retain their empathy for the outsider, without losing the rights and freedoms they had so recently won for themselves.

One of the important things to remember about the sojourners in ancient Israel, is that they were not bound by all of the same laws as the Israelites (like keeping kosher, or celebrating the Sabbath, or giving of the produce of their land to the Levites, or to the widow or orphan), though they were bound by certain laws that applied to everyone equally (Don’t kill, steal, etc.).

But if the sojourner is so different from the neighbor, why do the laws about how to treat them sound so similar? Or do they? Further along in the Hebrew Bible we get a little more detail on how we are supposed to treat the stranger/sojourner. In Deuteronomy 10:18-19, it says: “[God] upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing food and clothing. You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

            Here we are being told to befriend the stranger (which is pretty vague), and to supply food and clothing to the stranger, the way one would for anyone else in the community who is in need. This suggests that we’re not being told to treat the stranger the same way we would treat a fellow citizen, but rather to be generous to the stranger in the same way we would be generous to anyone in our own community who is in need, specifically, someone who lacks food or clothing. It’s interesting, and maybe significant, that the law doesn’t mention offering shelter to the stranger, which I would have thought of as a primary need, especially for someone without land of their own.

In ancient Israel, those who owned land were members of the twelve tribes of Israel. Period. These are people who, maybe like us, were worried about losing the property and the rights and the freedoms they had so recently won. And they were struggling with their competing desires to keep what was newly theirs and to be generous to those who were not as lucky.

As I often remind my synagogue school students, we don’t have laws in the Hebrew Bible for things we would already do without being told. And I think the two laws, for how to treat the sojourner and how to treat the neighbor, are a way to remind us that both our relationships with our fellow citizens and our relationships with non-citizens will be complicated, and that we will make mistakes, and we will struggle to know what is right or fair, and we will struggle with our own greed and generosity. We need these laws to remind ourselves that we should still strive to treat everyone with respect, especially if they are different from us, or have different status from us. And, maybe more importantly, we need to be reminded that being a stranger is not a character flaw, or a status below that of other human beings. The reality of needing to leave home in order to survive is a vulnerable state to be in, and usually reached through no fault of one’s own, like the Israelites having to leave the land of Isreal during a famine and travel to Egypt. We may not be obligated to the migrant to the same degree as we are obligated to our fellow citizens, but we are still required to see them as people who need and deserve our respect and generosity.

We are struggling with all of this in the United States right now. We are struggling both with how to treat our fellow citizens, when they are different from us, in gender, sexuality, religion, race, culture, belief systems, etc., and how to treat sojourners in our land, those who are here legally or otherwise. We are not sure we can afford to be generous, financially or emotionally, even with our own communities, let alone with outsiders.

And the fact that there are separate laws for the neighbor and the stranger in the Hebrew Bible tells me that my ancestors understood that struggle. They knew that everyone wouldn’t be treated the same, and that maybe they couldn’t, or even shouldn’t, always be treated the same. We are human beings, after all, and we will never be perfect, whatever that is. But there’s also a clear sentiment among the ancient Israelites, at least in their published works, that no matter how flawed and imperfect we may be, we should always be striving to do better, rather than worse.

Right now, it feels like we, as a collective, are doubling down on our deepest fears about the other. And it’s important to recognize that these fears are deep and pervasive and sometimes even accurate. The impulse to protect ourselves, even at the expense of someone else, will always be there within us, and is not, in itself, wrong or evil. It just is. The question is, can we survive and thrive if we feed only the most frightened parts of ourselves? Can we, maybe, also feed the more generous, compassionate, curious, and empathetic parts of ourselves as well, and let them help us make our decisions about who we want to be and what we want to do? Our ancestors believed that if we made an effort, we could do both: take care of ourselves and take care of others. And I’d like to believe that they were on to something.

“I am a stranger in a strange land, too. But I think I like it here.”

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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God as a Metaphor

Posted on February 15, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            A few years ago, Rabbi Toba Spitzer came out with a book called God is Here: Reimagining the Divine, which delves into the metaphors we use to help us discover God. I haven’t finished reading the book, so don’t tell me how it ends, but what has stood out for me so far is how we rely on metaphor to give us a sense of who, what, and how God might be, just like we use metaphors to help us understand emotions and ideas that we can’t describe in any other way. These metaphors are often treated as literal descriptions by many religious people, as if we are watching a play about the world and God is playing all of the roles. And, to be honest, I don’t believe I can know God with any certainty, or that God is literally an anthropomorphic being. But there are metaphors for God that reach me on a deep level, and that seem to help me tap into the “God energy” within myself and/or in the world around me.

            The Toba Spitzer book has been sitting on my shelf for a while, filled with sticky notes and other place markers, because it is too rich to read all at once, but it came back to mind recently while I was listening to Ishay Ribo, a religious Israeli singer who has become very popular among religious and secular Israelis, and Jews around the world, for singing popular music that is full of metaphors for God, with lyrics that are often pulled directly from traditional Jewish prayers. It is surprising, and also not surprising, that his music has crossed over into the secular world, among people who would say that they are agnostic at best, and would scoff at the idea of an anthropomorphic God who actually intercedes in our lives. And yet, the music has meaning and power for them too. Why?

             I’ve always heard these metaphors for God in Jewish prayer: God as nature – wind, rain, tides, sun, moon, trees. God as warrior. God as provider. God as lover and beloved. God as teacher. God as judge, magistrate, accountant, social worker. God as rock, redeemer, savior. God as breath, spirit, life itself.

            But what I realized as I listened to these metaphors as they are used in Ishay Ribo’s songs, is that the metaphor is really about the nature of our relationship with God, rather than a way of describing God him/her/itself. If God is a Shepherd, then we are the wayward flock. If God is a king, then we are the dependent subjects. If God is a mother, we are her children in need of comfort and nurturance and protection. If God is the teacher, we are the students, looking for knowledge and wisdom. If God is the doctor, we are the patients in need of healing. The metaphor for God that we find most meaningful in any instance will depend on how we see ourselves in that moment, and what we are longing for that we can’t find elsewhere.

            I decided to do a deep dive into some of the songs, or at least use Google Translate to see what I’ve been singing along to all this time, and I found a lot of familiar metaphors for God. In one of Ishay Ribo’s songs, Tocho Retzuf Ahava (He is filled with love), he says of God: “He never turns a blind eye from the sheep of his pasture,” meaning, we are the wayward sheep longing to have someone keep us safe from harm, and especially from our own mistakes, like a shepherd would do with his flock. In another lyric, he sings, “Even when we’re broken vessels, we are still his precious vessels,” which really resonates for me. Whether we are thinking about God or not, the deep need to feel loved and cherished, especially when we feel broken, is something we all share. And then there’s the magic of God, or the alchemy ascribed to God’s power: “In the future [God] will give glory in exchange for ashes, the oil of joy will replace our grief, a shroud of glory will replace a heavy spirit.” Who doesn’t want to believe that God, or fate, or someone, will eventually step in and make things better. You don’t have to believe in God in order to long for that spark of hope when you’re feeling hopeless.

            In his song, LaShuv HaBaita (To Return Home), Ishay Ribo sings: “The time has come to wake up, to leave everything, to overcome, to return home,” and though I know, intellectually, that he is referring to a return to God and Jewish practice, the metaphor of returning home has power for me anyway. And the idea that, “Even if we’ve done something wrong, he forgives and pardons,” feels like a prayer for how the world, or our loved ones, will respond to us. And, “He reaches out a hand to help, and gives, with mercy, the power to correct and fix ourselves and return to him.” I don’t have to believe in an all-powerful God to be comforted by the image of someone who will help me help myself. And I don’t have to see that help as coming from God. I can replace God with friends, teachers, parents, and mentors, in my mind, and be just as comforted.

            I watched an interview with Ishay Ribo on YouTube recently, in Hebrew and without subtitles so I may have misunderstood, but the message I took from it was that he knows his music is reaching more than just believers in God and or orthodox Jews in particular, and that that’s intentional. The words he sings are meaningful to him because he’s using the language that comes most naturally to him, but he is expressing universal experiences of doubt, pain, anger, hope, longing, and joy. And if you want to call all of that God, fine, and if not, that’s fine too. To be fair, Ishay Ribo probably wouldn’t say it that way, exactly, but I think he would agree that it’s the connection between human beings that holds so much power in his songs, and in his singing.

If the energy that connects us is God, or just our own energies radiating outward, what does it matter, as long as we are, eventually, connected? These metaphors have lasted millennia and have held power for the people who have used them, because they help us to describe parts of our internal landscape that are otherwise left in shadow. The metaphors allow us to see and feel and talk about states of longing and pain and hope that otherwise are left unspoken, and that is why they are so healing.

It’s true that, at times, when I sing along to these songs, or take part in Jewish prayer services, I will notice a line about God as father or God as Shepherd and roll my eyes a little bit at the idea that God would literally be any or all of these things. But most of the time, I just close my eyes and feel deeply heard, and comforted, and seen. And I’m not alone.

Ishay Ribo and the Solomon Brothers, LaShuv HaBaita in English and Hebrew: https://youtu.be/WZ6HvzFh7js?si=F6AIRcWu1XOf3smL

Some of Ishay Ribo’s songs in Hebrew:

HaLev Sheli: https://youtu.be/6U_5KhaH6IM?si=Hl_wcxj0TVhKrMCR

LaShuv HaBaita: https://youtu.be/Y30pfWIQfoo?si=Ly0Wz1qWrltC5dzY

Tocho Retzuf Ahava: https://youtu.be/fQRgX3ivUKU?si=YcFnd-2El0GIzqpj

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 Saga of the Car Battery, or, My Car Needs a Workout Routine

Posted on February 8, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            Since we bought our Subaru Crosstrek (used) a year and a half ago, it has needed to be jump started at least eight times. The most recent episode required twenty minutes of charging before the car would start. The maintenance guy at our co-op, whose truck was charging our car’s battery and who loves my mom (because they like to chat about gardening and plumbing and all kinds of things I don’t understand), insisted that we take it back to the service center for a diagnosis. Again.

“Oy.”

            The last time we’d gone to have the car checked, for the same problem, they told us that the car and the battery were fine, and the problem was that we were probably leaving a light on in the car without realizing it, or that we weren’t driving the car frequently enough, so if we were more careful and made sure to start the car at least every other day, the car would be fine.

            The next time after that when the car wouldn’t start, we called Triple A, and the service guy told us that what we really needed was a new battery, because the one that came with the car was now too old to hold a charge, and luckily, he could sell us one on the spot. He also told us that we could get a battery charger of our own, so we wouldn’t have to call for help the next time. So, we bought the battery from him, and ordered the car charger online, and hoped for the best.

            And, not many weeks later, we had the chance to use the new battery charger, and then again, but then it didn’t work, and we had to have the car charged by our maintenance man at the Co-op.

            So, there we were, back at the service center, not feeling especially hopeful and worrying that we would be told there was no real problem, again, or if there was a problem, there would be no solution and we’d have to get another car. But this time, either the service team did a more thorough work up on the car, or the guy who came out to explain the work to us was better at his job, because he actually made sense. He told us that: 1) our new battery was too small for the car, and each time the car had been jump started the battery had worn out even more, so now it was barely able to hold a charge, and 2) all of the electronics in the car were fine, but cars like this, with a lot of computer elements, drain the battery more than older cars and need to be driven at least 20 to 30 miles per week to keep the battery charged (mileage rather than frequency was what mattered, he said).

We asked a lot of questions to make sure we understood the situation, and to make sure he understood that we’d been told something different at the previous visit, and we agreed to buy a new (full-sized) battery, and to put the car on an exercise regimen.

            From what I understand now, the reason we’d never had these problems before was: 1) we used to have two people driving the car and therefore it got enough mileage without effort, and 2) our previous cars didn’t have anywhere near as many electronics, and therefore they didn’t wear out the battery as quickly.

            I don’t understand why it took a year and a half for someone to tell us all of this, and I’m crossing my fingers that we’re on the right track now, and we won’t need a jump start someday soon, though I’m keeping the charger in the car, just in case.

            I’m also thinking I should buy, or make, a special exercise journal for the car, with colored highlighters and happy face stickers, to keep the car on track with its new exercise routine. And I’m wondering if cars require treats for learning new behaviors, like people and dogs do. I mean, not chocolate, or chicken treats, of course, but…something. More importantly, I myself will need some hefty rewards for all of the extra driving I will have to do. Ideally, the car would be able to go out for drives on its own, or maybe there could be a special gym filled with car treadmills that we could send the car to once a week. Because I really hate driving, and even extra chocolate wouldn’t be enough to make me happy about all of this. I may have to plan trips to distant specialty food stores, for more exotic, high value treats, to keep myself on track. But, if this actually works, and I don’t have to jump start for months at a time, it will be worth all of the extra effort. So, here’s hoping this problem is finally behind us. Fingers, paws, and wheels crossed.

(found this car treadmill online)

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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Au Revoir, Netflix

Posted on February 1, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            We decided to cancel our subscription to Netflix recently, since we haven’t been watching it very much and it’s our most expensive monthly subscription. So, of course, as soon as we scheduled the end date, for not-quite-a-month away, I started to panic and look through every Netflix recommendation to add anything to my list that I might ever want to watch, just to make sure I wouldn’t miss anything. Surprisingly, or not, I didn’t find that many shows I needed to binge, except for what seems like an endless supply of heartfelt, limited series from South Korea that I can barely distinguish from one another just based on the descriptions; and, really, I could never watch all of them, or even the first episode of each one, before our Netflix subscription ends; though I will probably try.

My one-month trial of Prime Video (Amazon), last month, was probably what taught me that I could do without Netflix, and also that I could binge an enormous number of shows in a short period of time, if I was really motivated.

            Lately, I’ve been much more interested in watching shows on MHZ, an international streaming channel that we subscribed to for the year, to try it out. It’s filled with French murder mysteries and Italian and German and Danish and British and Israeli shows of all kinds. I still watch regular cable and broadcast shows too, though I tend to record the shows so I can watch them on my own schedule and fast forward through the commercials. I wish there was a way for cable and all of the streaming channels to come as one package, and be more affordable, because it’s a blessing to have so many options, but we are paying top dollar for that blessing.

            In the past week or so, I’ve been trying to rush through what’s left of my Netflix watchlist, even before the deadline, so I can get back to watching MHZ, and maybe rewatching my latest favorite French murder mystery series, The Art of Crime.

            I am not an art historian. In fact, for my whole life I’ve suffered from some kind of learning disability that makes it impossible for me to focus on a painting for more than five seconds at a time, or to stay conscious and upright in a museum at all. And yet, this mystery series, set in the art crime unit of the Paris police, hooked me. I was surprised both by how many of the artists I was already familiar with, and how unfamiliar I was with the stories behind the paintings.

            The Art of Crime centers around a police officer named Antoine Verlay, who transfers into the art crime unit after being fired by his old boss for insubordination (I think he punched him, but don’t quote me), and he has no background at all (seemingly) in art so he needs help from Florence Chassagne, an art historian who works at the Louvre. Florence, or Mme. Chassagne as he continues to call her season after season, while she calls him Captain Verlay, is sort of flighty, literally falling to the ground with severe bouts of unexplained vertigo when the series begins. And her father, who is also an art history expert, is batty, and is one of the primary reasons why Florence is in psychoanalysis on a regular basis. Captain Verlay, on the other hand, has no interest in art, or therapy, and is impatient and very much the gritty cop, with no time for flights of fancy. Cue the fireworks. Except, their journey together is so much more nuanced than that, and sweet, and vulnerable.

            Along the way, I’ve been learning all kinds of interesting things about the art world that I would never have sought out on my own, and Florence’s childlike joy in art, and the artists who create it, has been making me think that a museum might not be the worst place in the world, though I’m still not convinced.

            One of my favorite parts of the show is when Florence has her gossipy chats with long dead painters, which could have just been a silly gimmick but has turned out to be deeply moving, and insightful, and, most of all allows me to see the artworks as an extension of the artist’s real world, rather than a pretentious gloss painted on top of it. There’s also the physical comedy in the show, and unrequited love and awkwardness, along with the satisfaction of solving puzzles and finding the bad guy. I’ve watched all seven current seasons of the show and am waiting impatiently for season eight, which can’t arrive soon enough.

While I’m waiting for season eight of The Art of Crime, though, I still have a ton of other MHZ shows to try out, and a blog reader shared a link to the first two seasons of The Paris Murders (in French, without subtitles), so I have plenty of shows to keep me, and my dictionary (and/or Google Translate) very busy, until I get to see Captain Verlay and Mme. Chassagne again.

“Je parle francais maintenant.”

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 Attic

Posted on January 25, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

I have a lot of dreams

that take place in the attic

of the house where I grew up.

Or rather, they start in the attic

and then I have to climb a steep ladder,

or crawl through a tiny hallway,

or walk a long distance

in the summer heat or the deep snow,

until I find myself in a bank

filled with endless corruption,

where no one listens to me,

no matter how long or loud I shout;

or I find myself in a three-story mall

filled with every possible thing,

except for the one thing I’m looking for;

or, most often, I’m in a school

inside an enormous castle made of stone,

and I am wearing the wrong clothes,

and I can’t find my classroom

or any of my friends.

In reality,

our attic was small,

with a slanted ceiling

and wood-paneled walls.

The stairs up to the attic were steep

and covered in the same orange and yellow plaid carpeting

as the rest of the attic floor.

To the left was the mismatched bathroom,

with a stand-alone bathtub,

and a toilet, up on a podium, in the eaves.

To the right was our playroom,

where we acted out stories

and played with friends.

There were birthday parties in the attic,

and we did arts and crafts,

and tried to make movies with an old film camera.

We travelled into space from the attic,

just me and my brother,

and visited every planet we could imagine.

The attic was also our guest room,

with sofa beds that squeaked when they were opened.

Our cousins lived in the attic, one summer,

and created the circus of Nimbus the rat.

And Grandma Ida,

my father’s mother,

lived there for a summer,

just before she died,

so that Mom could take care of her.

Eventually,

the attic became our storage room.

My old cradle stood in a corner,

and the wooden toy box

that was filled with everything but toys.

We kept bags of our old baby clothes in the crawlspace,

and when I hid there,

among the soft bags of clothes,

I would fall asleep to the sound of mice

dancing on the floor around me.

One time, Dina,

our black Labrador mix,

found a bag of my old stuffed animals

and chewed through half of them,

and brought them down to my bedroom,

unstuffed, one by one.

Papa smurf was never the same.

My memories from the attic are haphazard

and come to me out of order

and outside of time.

We could hear squirrels and raccoons in the roof,

and we could see our pool in the backyard,

and we could see the kids who walked home from school,

who threw rocks at our front door.

But more than all of that,

the attic was a place to hide.

After my father, with help, finished the attic,

putting in the carpet and the paneling

and the electricity and the plumbing,

he never returned,

as far as I know,

and that made the attic into my safe place.

In the end,

Dina, our black Labrador mix,

was the only one who used the attic,

long after the mauling of Papa Smurf was forgotten,

or at least forgiven.

She didn’t seem to mind the heat in the attic

(unless she somehow learned how to turn on the air conditioner).

She would lay out in the rays of sun,

as if she was on a beach somewhere,

imagining her own alternate worlds,

though probably not in banks or malls or schools.

In her imaginary worlds, I’m sure,

she was chasing the squirrels she could hear in the roof,

and maybe, sometimes, she even caught them.

My Dina

עליית הגג

יֵשׁ לִי הָרבֵּה חָלוֹמוֹת

שְׁמִתְרַחשִׁים בָּעַלִיָת הָגָג

בָּבַּיִת שְׁבּוֹ גָדָלתִי.

אוֹ, יוֹתֵר נָכוֹן, הֵם מָתחִילִים בָּעָלִיָית הָגָג

וְאַז אַנִי צרִיכָה לְטָפֵּס בְּסוֹלֵם תָלוּל,

אוֹ לִזחוֹל דֶרֶך מִסַדרוֹן קטָנטָן,

אוֹ לָלֶכֶת מָרחֵק רָב

בָּחוֹם הָקַיִץ אוֹ בָּשֶׁלֶג הָעָמוֹק,

עַד שְׁאַנִי מוֹצֵאת אֶת עָצמִי בְּבָּנק

מָלֵא בְּשׁחִיתוּת אֵינסוֹפִית,

אֵיפֹה אַף אֶחַד לֹא מָקשִׁיב לִי,

לֹא מֶשָׁנֶה כָּמָה זמָן אוֹ כָּמָה חָזָק אַנִי צוֹעֶקֶת;

אוֹ, אַנִי מוֹצֵאת אֶת עָצמִי בְּקֶניוֹן בְּשָׁלוֹשׁ קוֹמוֹת,

מָלֵא בְּכֹּל דָבָר אֶפשָׁרִי,

חוּץ מְהָדָבַר הָאֶחָד שֶׁאַנִי מְחָפֶּשֶׂת;

אוֹ, רוֹב הָזמָן, אַנִי בְּבֵּית סֵפֶר

בְּתוֹך טִירָה עָנָקִית, עַשׂוּיָה מֵאֶבֶן,

וְאַנִי לוֹבֶשֶׁת אֶת הָבְּגָדִים הָלֹא נְכוֹנִים

וְאַנִי לֹא יְכוֹלָה לִמצוֹא אֶת הָכִּיתָה שֶׁלִי,

אוֹ אַף אֶחַד מְהָחָבֵרִים שֶׁלִי.

בָּמְצִיאוּת,

עַלִיָית הָגָג שֶׁלָנוּ הָייתָה קָטָנָה,

עִם תִקרָה מְשׁוּפַּעַת

וְקִירוֹת ספוּנֵי עֵץ.

הָמָדרֵגוֹת לְעַלִיָית הָגָג הָיוּ תלוּלוֹת

וְמְכוּסוֹת בְּאוֹתוֹ שַׁטִיחַ מְשׁוּבָּץ בְּכָּתוֹם וְצָהוֹב

כּמוֹ בְּשְׁאָר עַלִיָית הָגָג.

מִשׂמֹאל הָיָה חָדָר אָמבָּטיָה הָלֹא תוֹאֵם,

עִם אָמבָּטיָה עָצמָאִית,

וְשֵׁירוּתִים עָל דוֹכֵן, מִתַחַת לָמִרזָבִים.

מִיָמִין הָיָה חָדָר הָמִשׂחָקִים שֶׁלָנוּ,

שְׁבּוֹ הָצָגנוּ סִיפּוּרִים

וְשִׂיחָקנוּ עִם חָבֵרִים.

הָיוּ מְסִיבּוֹת יוֹם הוּלֶדֶת בָּעַלִיָית הָגָג,

וְעָשִׂינוּ אוֹמָנִיוֹת וְמָלָאכוֹת,

וְנִיסִינוּ לִיצוֹר סרָטִים עִם מַצלֵמַת סרָטִים יְשָׁנָה.

נָסַענוּ לְחָלָל מֵעַלִיָית הָגָג,

רָק אַנִי וְהָאַח שֶׁלִי,

וְבִּיקָרנוּ בְּכֹּל כּוֹכָב שֶׁיָכוֹלנוּ לְדָמיֵין.

עַלִיָית הָגָג גָם הָיָה חָדָר הָאוֹרחִים שֶׁלָנוּ,

עִם סָפּוֹת נִפתָחוֹת שְׁחוֹרקוּ כְּשְׁפָּתחוּ אוֹתָם.

בְּנֵי הָדוֹדִים שֶׁלָנוּ גָרוּ בָּעַלִיָת הָגָג, קַיִץ אֶחָד,

וְהֵם יִצרוּ אֶת הָקִרקָס שֶׁל נִימבּוּס הָחוּלדָה.

וְסָבתָא אַידָה,

אִמָא שֶׁל הָאָבָּא שֶׁלִי,

גָרָה שָׁם לְקַיִץ,

רֶגַע לִפנֵי שְׁהִיא מֵתָה,

כְּדֵי שְׁאִמַא תוּכָל לְטָפֵּל בָּה.

בְּסוֹפוֹ שֶׁל דָבָר,

עַלִיָית הָגָג הָפָך לִהִיוֹת הָמַחסָן שֶׁלָנוּ.

הָעַרִיסָה הָיְשָׁנָה שֶׁלִי עָמָד בָּפִּינָה,

וְקוּפסָת הָצָעַצוּעִים מְעֵץ,

מְלֵאָה בְּכֹּל דָבָר, מִלבַד צָעַצוּעִים.

שָׁמָרנוּ אֶת בִּגדֵי תִינוֹקוֹת הָיְשַׁנִים שֶׁלָנוּ בְּחָלָל הָזחִילָה,

וְכְּשְׁהִתחָבָּאתִי שָׁם,

בֵּין הָתִיקִים שֶׁל בְּגָדִים רָכִים,

נִרדָמתִי לְצְלִילֵי עָכבָּרִים

רוֹקדִים עַל הָרִצפָּה מִסבִיבִי. 

פָּעַם אַחַת, דִינָה,

הָכָּלבָּה הָלָבּרָדוֹר הָשׁחוֹרָה הָמְעוֹרֶבֶת שֶׁלָנוּ,

מָצאָה שָׂקִית הָפּוּחלָצִים הָיְשַׁנִים שֶׁלִי 

וְלָעָסַה חָצִי מִהֶם,

וְהוֹרִידָה אוֹתָם לַחַדַר הָשֵׁינָה שֶׁלִי,

לֹא מַמוּלאִים, בְּזוֹ אַחַר זוֹ.

אָבָּא דָרדָס מְעוֹלָם לֹא הָיָה אוֹתוֹ דָבַר.

הָזִיכרוֹנוֹת שֶׁלִי מְעַלִיָת הָגָג הֵם אִקרָאִיים

וְהֵם בָּאִים אֵלַיי לְלֹא סֵדֶר 

וְמִחוּץ לָזמָן.

מִשָׁם יָכוֹלנוּ לִשׁמוֹעַ אֶת הָסנָאִים וְהָדבִיבוֹנִים בָּגָג, 

וְיָכוֹלנוּ לִראוֹת אֶת הָבְּרֵיכָה שֶׁלָנוּ בָּחָצֵר הָאָחוֹרִית,

וְרָאִינוּ אֶת הָיְלָדִים שְׁהָלכוּ הָבַּיְתָה מִבֵּית הָסֵפֶר,

ושְׁזָרקוּ אָבָנִים עַל דֶלֶת הָכּנִיסָה שֶׁלָנוּ.

אָבַל יוֹתֵר מִכֹּל זֶה,

עָלִיָת הָגָג הָייתָה מָקוֹם לְהִסתָתֵר בּוֹ.

אַחַרֵי שְׁאָבָּא שֶׁלִי, עִם עֶזרַה, סִיֵים אֶת עַלִיָית הָגָג,

שָׂם אֶת הָשָׂטִיחַ וֹהָחִיפוּיִים

וְאֶת הָחָשׁמָל וְהָאִינסטָלָצִיָה,

הוּא מְעוֹלָם לֹא חָזָר לְשָׁם,

עַד כָּמָה שְׁאַנִי יוֹדַעַת,

וְזֶה הָפָך אֶת עַלִיָית הָגָג לָמָקוֹם הָבָּטוּחַ שֶׁלִי.

בָּסוֹף,

הָיְחִידָה שְׁהִשׁתָמשָׁה בָּעַלִיָית הָגָג

הָייתָה דִינָה, הָכָּלבָּה הָלָבּרָדוֹר הָשׁחוֹרָה הָמְעוֹרֶבֶת שֶׁלָנוּ,

הָרבֵּה אַחָרֵי הָהָרָס שֶׁל דָרדָס אָבָּא הָיָה נִשׁכַּח

אוֹ לְפָחוֹת נִסלַח.

נִראָה לִי שְׁלֹא אֶכפָּת לָה מֵהָחוֹם בָּעַלִיָית הָגָג

(אֶלָא אִם כֵּן שְׁהִיא לָמדָה אֵיך לְהָדלִיק אֶת הָמָזגָן).

הִיא שָׁכבָה בְּקָרנֵי הָשֶׁמֶשׁ,

כְּאִילוּ הִיא הָייתָה עָל חוֹף אֵיפֹשְׁהוּ,

מְדָמיֶינֶת אֶת הָעוֹלָמוֹת הָחָלוּפִיִים שֶׁלָה,

אַבַל, כָּנִראֶה, לֹא בְּבָּנקִים אוֹ בְּקֶניוֹנִים אוֹ בְּבָּתֵי סֵפֶר.

בָּעוֹלָמוֹת הָדִמיוֹנִיִים שֶׁלָה, אַנִי בְּטוּחָה,

הִיא רָדפָה אַחַרֵי הָסנָאִים שְׁיָכלָה לִשׁמוֹעַ בָּגָג

וְאוּלַי, לִפְעַמִים, הִיא אָפִילוּ תָפסָה אוֹתָם.

“In my dreams, all my stuffies are real, but they never steal my chicken treats.”

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?

42 Comments

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Tzipporah Loves her Bed

Posted on January 18, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            For Tzipporah, it seems, bed is life. When we come back to the apartment, from a visit to the vet or a visit to the backyard, she tries desperately to jump out of my arms, and once she hits the ground she runs straight to her bed. Safe. Once she’s recovered from her outing, though, she relaxes: stretching out, rolling on her back, sticking out her tongue, and dangling her head over the side of the bed.  

But now, seven or eight weeks into having her with us, we’re getting worried that she only feels safe in her bed, and everything else is lava. When we are all together in the living room, she rarely leaves her bed; it’s only when the humans leave the room that Tzipporah is willing to walk away from her safe place for more than a second. There have been times when, seemingly, she hasn’t left her bed for half the day, not even to pee or get a drink of water from the kitchen. At night, though, she tends to wander around the apartment, investigating her new home, but when she sees any movement from the supposed-to-be-sleeping humans, she runs back to the living room and straight to her bed.

When she first came home, it wasn’t like this, she would sleep on the rug in her grandma’s room, or on the cushions in my room, or in her bed in the kitchen, or in either one of the dog beds in the living room, moving from one sleepy place to another throughout the day and night. So, I put wee wee pads in every room, and the hallway, to give her the best chance to learn that pee goes on the wee wee pad and not the rugs. When she peed near any of the wee wee pads, I would sop up the pee, place the wet paper towels on the wee wee pad, and then move the wee wee pad closer to the spot where she’d peed. And she would then, maybe half the time, start peeing on the wee wee pad instead. But as the weeks have passed, she has gradually decided on the living room as her home base, and on the one dog bed she likes best, and I’ve been able to remove the other wee wee pads one by one, and focus more on rewarding her for peeing and pooping on the wee wee pad in the living room, with some success.

Basically, she was doing well, but I started to get anxious about her bed-o-philia and worried I wasn’t doing enough to help her make progress, leaving her to calcify in her bed.

            So, given her only-dog status, and my fears about her fears, I ordered a heartbeat puppy (a stuffed animal with an insert in the belly that mimics a heartbeat), and Tzipporah took to it right away, snuggling with it in her bed. When Mom wanted to see if Tzipporah could sit on the couch with us, to watch TV, I brought her and her heartbeat puppy (in her bed) to the couch, so she could feel as safe as possible in the new location. I tried to give her a treat while her bed was on the couch, but she was too anxious to eat it. After a little while, I returned her bed to its regular spot, and suddenly she noticed the chicken treat and ate it happily.

            She’s made a lot of progress, when I look back at where we started. She’s now willing to stay in the dog bed next to me when I sit at my computer, instead of running away to escape the scary human monster, the way she used to. And she’s been getting used to being petted, and even having her hair combed, as long as there are treats involved.

She surprised us by doing well when her first “strangers” (aka my aunt and cousin) visited the apartment, in large part because my cousin brought a bag of freshly cut cheese and chicken cubes for the occasion (there were also salami slices, but even though Tzipporah gave them a lick, she wasn’t sure how to eat them).

Tzipporah also, finally, had her second visit with Kevin, the mini golden doodle, after weeks of everyone hiding inside because of the cold weather. She was still terrified of being on the ground outside, but she tolerated being sniffed by Kevin, and then she sat on my lap while Kevin sat quietly next to us, and I petted him, and then let Tzipporah smell my hand, and then petted her. Over and over. It’s hard to know if my completely scientific experiment worked, but Kevin certainly enjoyed it.

She still doesn’t talk much; she only cries at night when she thinks she’s alone, and she has only barked once in her sleep, but it was a very light bark, more like a yip. On the other hand, she has become more and more expressive with her eyes, staring at us as dramatically as possible to let us know she could use more treats.

            The fact is, she is healing as fast as she can and becoming more herself every day. Really, it’s miraculous that Tzipporah feels safe anywhere, after four years in a cage in a puppy mill; that she can stretch out in her bed and show her belly, and not worry about being hurt, is a testament to how much she trusts us already. The only real problem here is my need for her to be all better right away. I have the same impatience with myself. I forget how much progress I’ve (we’ve) made, always focusing on how things should be, instead of recognizing the effort it took to get where we are. Maybe Tzipporah will be the one who finally teaches me how to celebrate how things really are, instead of always worrying about how things are supposed to be. Or maybe we’ll just bond over our shared love of treats (chicken for her and chocolate chip cookies for me) and be satisfied with that. We’ll see.

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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Russian Nesting Dolls

Posted on January 11, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            I don’t remember if I ever had a set of Matryoshka dolls (Russian nesting dolls) of my own when I was younger, but I definitely saw them and played with them somewhere along the way. There was something magical about how each doll hid another doll, and another, and another, except, there wasn’t much to do with these “dolls.” You couldn’t dress them up, or hug them, and none of them had roller skates (like my Ginny doll). And they were so static: their eyelids didn’t open and close, and their arms and legs didn’t move. And yet, they still drew my attention. I haven’t thought about those dolls very much over the years, but recently I saw a set of them on TV, and my first thought was that they would be a very helpful metaphor for the way we carry our old stories within us, even as we try to grow beyond them.

Traditional Russian nesting dolls (not my picture)
My Ginny doll is a reader.

            I was sure that everyone must see the same thing in them as I did, but when I went looking for more background on the dolls, I found out that everyone sees something a little different, depending on where they are in their lives and what lens they are looking through.

            Originally, the dolls were made as a children’s toy, in 1890, possibly inspired by a nesting doll from Japan, and they were meant to highlight Russian femininity, with the dolls wearing a sarafan, a long, shapeless traditional Russian peasant dress, and the figures inside representing her children, of both genders, with the smallest being a baby, made of a single piece of wood.

A smaller set (not my picture)

But somewhere along the way the dolls became a favorite souvenir for tourists, and then a way to represent famous Russian politicians, and how each generation of politicians was influenced by the ones who came before. Some people have even repurposed the dolls to represent complicated corporate structures used to avoid paying taxes, like shell companies.

Political Russian nesting dolls (not my picture)

But when I look at these dolls, I see myself, and the way each of my previous selves stays inside of me. My layers don’t peel off, like an onion, or slough off, like the skin of a snake; I hold onto everything, whether I want to or not. I would have thought, given all of that, that I would feel some relief at seeing each doll standing separately on its own “feet,” but instead, the separated dolls seem hollow to me, even forlorn. Despite the pain of holding onto the past, I feel stronger, and more fully myself, with all of my selves held together.

            And there’s something powerful about having a metaphor that I can see and touch and move around in space; because when all I have are words to help me organize my thoughts, the chaos can become overwhelming.

            When I went looking for images of Matryoshka dolls, I found all kinds of different sets – five doll sets and ten doll sets, people and animals, dolls that look exactly the same at each size, and dolls that are completely different from one another – but the most intriguing thing I found were blank sets of dolls that you can paint however you like. And it occurred to me that, if I had any artistic talent at all, which I don’t, it would be really meaningful to create the figures to represent my own layers, or the important people who have influenced me over time, to help me really see all of my pieces.

Animal nesting dolls (not my picture)
Blank nesting dolls (not my picture)

And then I thought about how I could use those blank doll sets with my students, to help them visualize how each generation influences the next, and how who they are today is connected to everyone who came before. And then I thought about the costs of all of the materials involved, and the difficulty of getting my boss on board, and then the work of explaining to the kids exactly what I was looking for, so they wouldn’t just paint all of the dolls as different sized poops; and then I fell into a black hole of self-recriminations about all of the ways I suck as a teacher, and a therapist, and a person overall.

And yet, despite the waterfall of thoughts and worries and self-loathing that washed over me, I still think the Matryoshka dolls have a lot to offer, though maybe they should come with a warning label: open at your own risk, objects inside may be a lot more complicated than you expect.

“Just like me!”

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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Jacob and Israel

Posted on January 4, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            At a recent Friday night service, because the Torah portion for the week was about our forefather Jacob wrestling with an angel of God, our rabbi told us that Jacob is renamed Israel because Israel means “to struggle with God and to prevail.” And my inner voice woke up and said, huh?

            My whole life I’d been taught that the name Israel means “to struggle with God.” Period. No prevailing included. The idea that to be Jewish means to welcome the struggle with God, and to always ask questions, without ever knowing if you will succeed or fail, or even focusing on success as a goal, has been essential to my sense of self as a Jew, and as a person overall. I don’t have to win, or be successful, in order to have a meaningful life; I just have to be willing to engage in the struggle.

            But here was the rabbi saying that, no, we struggle and we prevail, and that’s what makes us the People of Israel.

            So, of course, I had to look into this, and it turned out that we were both right. The traditional translation for the name Israel is “to struggle with God,” but when the angel tells Jacob about his new name, he says that Jacob is given this name because “he struggled with God and he prevailed.” So, the “prevailed” part of the name is silent, but implied.

            I still couldn’t wrap my head around this sea change in what it might mean to be part of the nation of Israel, aka Jewish. Aren’t we supposed to be the underdogs? Hasn’t that been our identity and our history for, I don’t know, two millennia? What would it mean to suddenly see myself as a member of a group that, supposedly, always prevails? And why do I find that idea so incredibly uncomfortable?

            I kept researching and was able to find an alternate translation for the name Israel: instead of “struggles with God” it could also mean “empowered by God.” But that translation felt even worse, because I’ve never felt empowered, by God or anyone else, and if my people is identified as those guys who are empowered by God, and I feel distinctly unempowered by God, doesn’t that make me an outsider even to my own group?

            Of course, it’s a tiny bit silly to get so caught up in an argument about the meaning of a name given to one of my ancestors three millennia in the past. But I think we all do this. Whether it’s identifying with a bible story, or with a more recent ancestor, or with the stories our families have told us about ourselves, we find our identities in the stories we are told and we are often reassured by the shape they give to our lives.

            I’m also thinking about this in relation to the current situation in the Middle East (if current implies the last century or so), where the stories of the Hebrew bible resonate not only with the Jews, and the Christians, but with the Muslims as well, who read their own retellings of stories from the Hebrew Bible in the Koran. It’s significant that Muslims traditionally see themselves as the descendants of Ishmael, the first-born son of Abraham in the Hebrew Bible, who is disinherited in favor of Isaac, his younger half-brother. In fact, this pattern of the older brother being disinherited in favor of the younger brother happens two times in a row, so it’s clearly a story that has resonated for a lot of people for a very long time. And in the second iteration, with the twins, Jacob and Esau, Jacob steals the blessing from his older brother, through trickery, rather than just benefiting from the prejudices of his parents, the way Isaac does.

            It is not a coincidence, then, that given events that could have been interpreted in multiple different ways, many Muslims interpreted the return of the Jews to the land of Israel, and the decision of the United Nations in 1948 to divide the land of Palestine between the Jews and the Arabs, as the Jews receiving a blessing they did not deserve, whether through trickery or prejudice. And the Jews, viewing history through the lens of Jacob, continue to see ourselves as the underdogs, fighting for our small share against a stronger brother, despite having grown in strength and influence along the way. Obviously, this isn’t the only lens through which we all see these conflicts; it’s much more like a kaleidoscope where our lens keeps changing every moment and any one perspective is hard to hold onto for long. But breaking out of our old biblical roles, in order to see each other as we actually are in the present, becomes even more difficult when we are obligated to read and re-read these same stories on a regular basis.

            It’s significant that, in those same stories, Esau becomes a successful landowner, despite seemingly losing his birthright to Jacob. In fact, when the brothers meet again, years later, Esau forgives his little brother, who is still struggling to forgive himself. That story is in there too, and could be a model for how to create a road towards peace. But for some reason, we remain stuck in the first half of the story. Or worse, we fall back into the earlier story, where neither Ishmael nor Isaac have much agency at all in creating their own life stories.

            It interests me that even though Jews see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, equally, as our forefathers, it’s only the children of Jacob (the Israelites, or the children of Israel) who eventually become the Jews. Why doesn’t Jewishness extend to both sons of Abraham? Why aren’t we all called Abrahamites? Why does the Hebrew Bible insist on telling us about these stories of family ruptures to help us understand who we are?

            There’s one more lesson in this story that seems relevant to me: when Abram and Sarai’s names are changed by God (each getting an H added, to symbolize the addition of God into their lives and selves), they become Abraham and Sarah, and their old names are never used again in the text. But after Jacob wrestles with the angel, and is renamed Israel, he is still called both Jacob and Israel in the text; both Jacob and Israel continue to exist, with neither one canceling out the other. And I can relate to that; I can relate to having internal conflicts, and being different at different times, and sometimes feeling empowered or imbued with God, and other times, not so much.

            I think these stories stay with us because we are never finished struggling with God, or with ourselves. We are never done with our past, or with the parts of ourselves who have struggled and failed in one way or another. The hope is that we can also make room for newer parts of ourselves, parts who have wrestled with God and prevailed, and found that there is something better, stronger, and sweeter on the other side.

“I like sweet things too. Like chicken.”

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?

28 Comments

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