Tag Archives: dogs

My Passport Arrived

Posted on May 31, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            It took me three or four years from the first time I printed out a passport application until finally, a few months ago, I went to the post office with my pre-filled-out application, had my official picture taken, and paid all of the fees. The impetus that finally pushed me on my way was the possibility of going on my synagogue’s trip to Israel, and even though I realized that this particular trip was not for me, I realized it was time to apply for my passport anyway, just in case.

            And then, a couple of days after I posted about the-trip-I-couldn’t-take on the blog, my best friend from high school renewed her offer to host me at her home in Israel, and take time off from work to travel around the country with me, wherever I wanted to go. I’d actually forgotten that she’d suggested such a trip a few years ago. At the time, I don’t think I believed her offer was real, or I thought it shouldn’t be, because she has her own business, and family, and a full life of her own, and I just couldn’t imagine interrupting all of that. But looking back, I think the real reason I didn’t accept the offer was because I just wasn’t ready. I couldn’t have told you why I wasn’t ready, or what would have to change to make me more ready, but this time, when she offered, I believed her, and I said yes. And, when my passport arrived in the mail a few weeks ago, I realized that I am really, finally, going to Israel.

“You can’t have it, Mommy.”

            Of course, being me, now I’m thinking about all of the things that could go wrong on the trip. I printed out a pile of articles on what to pack, and where to go, and what to wear, and I filled my YouTube watchlist with videos on how to pack medications and what to put in your carry on and what to wear on the plane, and yet, I still haven’t scared myself out of going on the trip. It helps that I have some time to prepare. We chose November for my visit because that’s when she has a lighter workload, and the weather is more manageable for me, and flights are cheaper, and there are no big Jewish holidays to complicate things. I feel guilty for planning to go during the school year, and missing one or two classes with my students as a result, but even that guilt hasn’t been enough to derail me, so far.

            There’s still so much research to do, and so many decisions to make, and so many opportunities for the panic to overwhelm me. I worry that airport security will want to see all of the prescriptions for my meds, in case I’m hiding opiates in the midst of all of my other pills; and what if I can’t make sense of the Gett app (their version of uber), or the currency exchange rate, or public transportation, and I end up having a panic attack in the middle of the light rail in Jerusalem? And then I wonder if I should make the trip shorter, to reduce the potential causes of anxiety, or if it should be longer, so I can take more time to settle in before trying to do anything too exciting. And then I wonder what I should bring back for my students, and a little voice inside keeps asking, why can’t mommy come with me? And then I think, wouldn’t it be better to win the lottery first, or to wait for a group trip so that someone else can make all of the decisions for me?

            With all of my research, I now know that I will need flight insurance, and travel insurance, but I want to know where I can get mental health insurance, or better yet, an app that will figure out when I’m spiraling and send help when I fall apart in the middle of the Carmel market.

            I’m trying to keep my expectations for the trip low, so I won’t fall into a deep depression when I inevitably fail to make it the best experience of my entire life. I’d like to think of this more as the first in a series of trips, and a chance to acclimate to the country and plan future adventures. That way, as long as I get the chance to walk through one of the outdoor markets, and shop for new-to-me foods in the supermarket, and sit by the beach or in a café, listening to the different accents swirling all around me, everything beyond that will just feel like a bonus.

            The reality is, going on this trip with my good friend is the best part of the plan, because she won’t expect me to suddenly have the energy to climb Masada or swim in the Dead Sea. And if what I really want to do one day is go to the supermarket to search for new snacks and then watch Israeli TV all day, she’ll be right there with me. And, really, if I have a panic attack in the middle of Tel Aviv, I won’t need a mental health app to scoop me up, because she’ll be there to look me in the eye and remind me that the earth not going to swallow me up and with a few deep breaths, and maybe a nap, I really will be okay, and probably better than okay, even on my own power.

            Now, back to worrying about what to pack.

“Can I fit in the carry on?”

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 Lingering Smell of Pee

Posted on May 24, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            Though Tzipporah, my four-year-old Havanese rescue dog, has learned to pee on the wee wee pads, she often pees just off the edge (my feet are on the pad, though!), or she’ll pee on the rug by the front door, as a form of protest when we dare to go out and leave her behind for more than five seconds. I thought I was doing a good job of keeping up with all of the pee, sopping it up with paper towels and cleaning each spot as quickly as possible, but then came a week of wet weather and the pee smell seemed to rise up from the rugs to fill the air.

“You’re telling everyone?”

            I ordered some high-powered anti-pee carpet cleaner, because I can’t for the life of me remember how to use the carpet shampooer we bought ten years ago (and haven’t used since), but before it could even arrive, Mom agreed to get rid of the rugs in the hallway. We’re still crossing our fingers, and paws, that the living room rug is salvageable, but we’ll see.

Unfortunately, Tzipporah is still nowhere near ready to pee outdoors. We’ve been taking her outside a few times a week, to help her get used to the grass, and the leash, but it’s been slow going. I’ve also been taking her with me to therapy once a week, to acclimate her to travelling in the car, if nothing else, and, of course, my therapist decided that if Tzippy was going to come to therapy, she might as well do some therapy work. Her goals for Tzippy are to come when called, to walk on a leash, and to accept treats from a human hand (other than Grandma’s). I was pretty happy with Tzippy’s growing ability to sit calmly in the car, and then on my lap for forty-five minutes in the office, but what do I know.

            One very exciting development came when we took Tzipporah outside for one of her get-used-to-the-grass-adventures, and Kevin the mini-Goldendoodle came over and dropped his tennis ball at her feet, four times! Tzipporah had no idea what to do with the ball, but she seemed to recognize that he wasn’t a threat and allowed him to sit next to her on the grass for minutes at a time.

Kevin’s dad took this wonderful picture

            Tzipporah is decidedly different from any of the dogs we’ve had before, especially in her insistence on staying in her bed whenever we’re nearby, and never, ever, barking. And yet, I’ve caught myself almost calling her “Ellie” a number of times. It may just be that Ellie’s name comes to mind because she was our most recent dog before Tzipporah, or because Ellie was also a Havanese (though with different coloring). And it shouldn’t bother me so much, but it does. It’s not that I feel guilty for misnaming Tzippy, because I usually catch myself in time, it’s more that I’m afraid I’m forgetting Ellie too quickly, as if she’s so easily replaceable by someone else.

The problem is, while I can never forget Cricket, even for a moment, I sometimes struggle to remember stories and moments from Ellie’s life. My memories of Cricket are so full-bodied that it feels like Cricket is actually in the room with me when I think of her, as if I can summon her at will. Cricket was in my life for sixteen years, from puppyhood, and she imprinted herself deep into every cell of my body, but I only had Ellie for five years, and I’m afraid my memories of her, which are just whispers at this point, will soon disappear.

“Hey, I’m full bodied too.”

            But, now that I think about it, we had to get rid of our rugs after Ellie’s first few months with us too, and I took her with me to therapy for two years (more for my sake than for hers, to be honest, but the process seemed to help her relax and bond anyway). So Maybe Ellie’s name comes to mind because she is still here with us, and here with Tzipporah. Cricket was Ellie’s trainer, pushing her to bark and run and beg for treats like a “real” dog, and maybe Ellie is doing her own version of big-sister-ing with Tzipporah from the other side of the rainbow bridge, letting her know it’s okay for things to take time and that she will be loved no matter what.

“I’m still here, Mommy.”

Ellie never became a Velcro dog, like Cricket, but she knew she was loved and safe. So, if even an echo of her is still present in the apartment, whispering in Tzipporah’s ear, maybe everything really will be okay.

“I’m never alone.”

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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Reading Etgar Keret

Posted on May 17, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            I recently started to read a collection of short stories by Etgar Keret, in Hebrew, as a way to practice my Hebrew reading skills and build vocabulary. I’m generally not a short story reader, but my current Hebrew teacher suggested that short stories would be an easier lift than whole novels, and Etgar Keret is the best-known short-story writer in Hebrew today. The other benefit of reading an Israeli author (rather than an English language book translated into Hebrew, like my Harry Potter books, which I’ve been trying to read for many years now), is that I can learn more about life in Israel while improving my Hebrew. The fact that Keret is so popular in Israel suggests that his work resonates with many Israelis.

Suddenly a knock on the Door by Etgar Keret
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

            Of course, even though the first story in the book (the title story), “Suddenly a knock at the door,” is only 3 or 4 pages long, I managed to fill three pages with vocabulary words to look up on Google Translate; words like “holster,” and “butcher’s knife,” and “avalanche,” are probably not going to end up on my long-term vocabulary list, but “nerves,” and “politeness,” and “boiling,” might be helpful down the road.

The problem is that I found the first story in the collection painful to read, even after getting all of the vocabulary translated. The disconnect between Etgar Keret’s characters and reality, and between his characters and their own emotions and actions, makes it feel like we too, as readers, are in a dissociated state as we follow the story. A number of the stories I’d already read by him, in various classes, involved the need to go to extremes in order to “feel something,” as if his characters are all living their lives in an extended state of post-trauma. There’s also a lot of loneliness in his stories, and an inability for the protagonists to connect to the other people in the world of the story, despite increasingly desperate attempts to do so.

After reading 1 ½ stories, I already needed a break, and I decided to go online to see what other readers had to say about Keret’s work, in English, in case I was missing something in the Hebrew. One reviewer called his stories “a blend of the mundane and the magical,” and many called his style “surreal,” but no one could really explain to me why his writing resonated with so many people, or why Keret himself felt compelled to write this way. And then I found an interview he’d given, where he said that whenever he feels angry with someone and he can’t get past it, he writes a story from their point of view, as a way to put himself in their shoes and try to humanize and understand them. He has, for example, written at least ten stories from the point of view of Benjamin Netanyahu, the seemingly-forever-Prime-Minister of Israel who has moved further and further to the right throughout his time in power. And hearing Keret’s real voice, as opposed to his fictional one, helped me to understand his stories a little bit better. They seem to be, at heart, Keret’s attempt to connect with and make sense of his fellow Israelis, and the disconnect I feel as a reader echoes his own frustration at not being able to do so.

Etgar Keret’s version of Israel is a world filled with missed connections, and deep wounds, and problems that can’t be solved, even though his characters want it to be otherwise; and it’s illuminating to know that many people in Israel find Etgar Keret’s version of their world familiar. Would I have gotten all of that from reading the stories only in English? I’m not sure. The fact is, it was only out of a desire to practice my Hebrew that I was even willing to make the effort to enter into Etgar Keret’s world in the first place. And there’s something to be said for that, for the value of investigating the world through another language and another point of view, in order to see and understand things that are usually out of reach.

One of my classmates in the online Hebrew language school is a native Arabic speaker from Jerusalem. He spent years working in the United States and becoming fluent in English, and now he is back in Israel, learning Hebrew and training to become an English teacher. His goal is to use his English to create a bridge between Hebrew and Arabic speakers, and between Jews and Arabs in Israel. And every time I listen to him talk about his work, I’m inspired to add Arabic to my Duolingo list, but I never do it. In a way, Arabic feels as distant and strange to me as Etgar Keret’s world, but the fact that Hebrew and Arabic come from the same language family and have both borrowed from each other at different points in their development, means there is a lot for me to discover about Hebrew by learning some Arabic. I actually know a bunch of words in Arabic already, because they’ve been borrowed into Hebrew, either with their original meaning intact or with some alterations, but I only know how to read or write them in Hebrew and to go any deeper into the language I’d really have to start with the alphabet, which is all new to me.

            I’ve heard from many people, recently, that they would love to be fluent in Hebrew, or any number of other languages, if they could only take a magic pill, or insert a chip into their brains, because the actual work of learning another language is too hard. I’ve always assumed that the reason it was taking me so long to become fluent in Hebrew (or French, or Spanish) was because I wasn’t working hard enough, or I was doing it wrong, but I’m finally starting to understand that while there are some people who are extraordinarily talented with languages, most of us have to work at it, and it takes a long time.

So, I’m continuing to read the Etgar Keret stories, and taking my Hebrew classes, and adding Arabic to my Duolingo list, because I’ve discovered that even if I never become fluent in another language, I’m still learning more than I ever expected to learn along the way, and it’s making my life and my understanding richer, no matter how long the journey takes.

A review: Etgar Keret’s “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door” – Words Without Borders

An interview: Etgar Keret: “When you say Israel is committing genocide, it means you don’t want to have any conversation.” – Jews, Europe, the XXIst century

“Is there a Duolingo for reading pee messages?”

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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Sending Out the New Novel

Posted on May 10, 2025 by rachelmankowitz
“What are you doing now, Miss Mommy?”

            So, I finished writing a novel. It’s called Hebrew Lessons, and it’s a love story between an American Jew and an Israeli Jew, including all of the cultural divides that have to be overcome, or can’t be overcome. I’m really happy with the story, and my Beta readers gave it a thumbs up, but now that means I have to go on the agent search again, and I’m dragging my feet. The publishing world has not been an especially welcoming place for me, and I’m dreading the rejection, and the critiques, and the roller coaster of hope and disappointment that I went through last time, with Yeshiva Girl.

            But before I can even get to all of that, I have to sit down and write a query letter, and a plot summary, and research potential agents, and my brain is not letting me go there. I’ve come so close to acceptance by the literary world, but never close enough, and there’s no guarantee that this time will be any different. Part of me wants to just self-publish the novel and maybe get a few nice responses and leave it at that. Another part wishes I could hand the book off to someone else – to query agents and write a synopsis and copy edit, etc. – and move on to writing the next novel. But I’ve worked hard on this novel, and I want to give it the best chance to be read, and loved, if at all possible.

            I wish I had the self-confidence to send my work out as consistently as other people seem to be able to do, but it takes me a long time to recover between bouts, and each small step feels like hiking a mountain range. Even the tiny steps I’ve already taken to research the changes in the marketplace have been overwhelming; there has been an explosion of critiquing sites, and self-publishing companies, and writing and publishing blogs with wildly contradictory advice that have appeared since the last time I investigated all of this, and it feels impossible to figure out what’s legitimate and what’s a scam, what’s necessary and what’s irrelevant.

I don’t understand how other authors make their way through all of this chaos, but then again, the publishing world has never really made sense to me. I’ve never been able to understand the rules of the business of writing: the very specific categories each book needs to fit into, or why one author gets lauded and another can’t even get published. Despite years of effort, the mysteries of the publishing world are still mysteries to me, and yet, I can’t stop being a writer and I can’t stop wanting people to read my work. Believe me, I’ve tried. So, I guess I’m diving back into the deep, dark, possibly shark-infested waters.

Wish me luck!

“Did you say sharks?!”

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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You Can’t Do What You Can’t Do

Posted on May 3, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            Sometime over the winter, one of the rabbis at my synagogue announced that there would be a week-long volunteer trip to Israel in August, for teenagers and adults, and, oh yeah, they were applying for a grant to subsidize half the cost of the trip.

            That was all the information available at the time, but I already knew I wanted to go, desperately. I fought against the loud voice in my head telling me that going to Israel during the hottest month of the year, and volunteering, most likely outdoors, would be impossible for me, because the idea of going to Israel with people I knew, and being able to learn more about the situation on the ground, and to be of use, at an affordable price, just seemed like the answer to a lot of my prayers.

            So, I started to prepare myself. I wrote out a long list of what I’d need to bring with me (meds, sunblock, water bottle, adapters for the electricity, sim card for the phone, a week’s worth of clothes, Icy Hot patches, extra pain meds, etc.), and I wrote through all of the reasons not to go (fear of the effect of the heat on my autoimmune symptoms, fear of being lonely, fear of pain and exhaustion, fear that something would happen to Mom or Tzipporah while I was gone, fear that I would be too shy to use my Hebrew, fear of feeling bored, or trapped, or disappointed, or confused, etc.). And then I wrote out as many ideas as I could think of for how to deal with those fears.

“Wait, what’s going to happen to ME?!

But despite all of my efforts, I couldn’t plan for the trip until I knew exactly what the trip would entail. So, I reached out to the rabbi with my concerns (how much time would be spent outdoors, would the volunteering activities be things I could actually do, would there be rest periods for recovery, etc.), and she sent me the planned itinerary, with the proviso that, because all of the volunteering locations were small and relatively new, there wouldn’t be any room for adaptations.

And it looked amazing! They would barely be staying in one place for more than a day, traveling to the north and the south and in between, meeting people who were rebuilding in the north after a year of bombing from Hezbollah, and meeting Israelis of all religious backgrounds working to help each other, and meeting families of those who were killed on October seventh, and families of hostages, and Palestinian citizens of Israel, and helping rebuild the agriculture sector in the south that was impacted both by October seventh and by so many men being pulled into the army reserves and out of the fields. There was one afternoon set aside for potential beach time, but other than that, free time didn’t exist.

            I was in awe of the opportunity to meet so many different people working in so many different parts of Israeli society, and the more I read, the more I wanted to go. But no matter how I tried to move things around in my mind, and research all of the sites and turn the pages this way and that, it became clear that I would barely survive day one, let alone a whole week. Except, a big part of me was still in denial, imagining that if I just spent the next few months in physical therapy, and had a miraculous recovery from all of my health issues before August, and maybe found myself a full-body airconditioned suit to wear, I’d be okay.

            The tour guide who would be leading the trip (and who had been leading bi-weekly zooms for us since October seventh, to help us understand how Israelis were reacting to the Hamas attack and the ensuing war), came to the synagogue for an in-person visit leading up to  registration for the trip. I sat in the sanctuary and listened to his impassioned thoughts on the current political turmoil in Israel, and the moral quandaries of the war, and the grief and anger around the hostages still trapped in Gaza, and the communal efforts to support those who were struggling, and I could envision myself in Israel, marching for the hostages, and marching for democracy. In my imagination I could walk for miles, in the heat, singing and calling out at the top of my lungs, even though I’ve never been able to do anything like that here at home.

At one point in the evening, when I was sitting next to the older rabbi from our congregation, who had either led or participated in every previous synagogue trip to Israel, and who had marched in many protests over the years, I told him how much I wanted to go on this trip, and he told me that he would not be going because it would be too much for him. “But, but doesn’t it look amazing?!” I asked, and he shrugged and said, “You can’t do what you can’t do. There will be other trips.”

            And the bubble burst. I knew he was right, and that he was speaking as much to my situation as to his, whether he meant to or not. Of course I couldn’t go on this trip, and it felt awful to have to know that; just like it feels awful every time I have to accept a reality I don’t like. You would think I’d be more practiced at handling disappointment by now, but I suck at it every single time.

            I still made a point of applying for a new passport though (after years of putting it off), just in case, and I kept my packing list and my research on the different volunteering sites, and I continued to add hundreds of Israel-related videos to my YouTube watchlist to fill out my understanding of the culture and the people. One day, hopefully not too far in the future, the right opportunity to go to Israel will come up, and in the meantime I will keep doing the work I am capable of doing so that I’m ready to go when the time comes.

“Puppy, cover my ears!”

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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Improvisation

Posted on April 26, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            One of the things I have had to learn how to do since I started teaching in the synagogue school is how to improvise. You never know what mood the kids will be in after a long day at public school, or what changes will come up in the outside world, or in our own worlds, and really, there has been a lot of change in the Jewish world over the past six years. Each year, there’s also the reality that a different group of kids will have different interests and different abilities and limitations, and I have to adapt my plans to fit what works best for them.

“Do you know what works for me? Chicken.”

            It has turned out that, this year, the one thing all of my students seem to love is performing; and while some of them like to sing, or dance, or tell jokes, they all like to act. I discovered this mostly by accident one Sunday morning, when one of my most energetic and curious students looked at the day’s quote from Leviticus, and dropped her head onto her desk and asked, “Why are there so many words in this book? What happened to all of the stories?”

            And she was absolutely right. Other than an interlude wherein two of Aaron’s priestly sons are killed for, um, inappropriate practices in front of God (which I did not share with my students, for obvious reasons), most of Leviticus is made up of a list of laws: fascinating and complex laws, divisive and bizarre laws, laws that only applied in the past and laws that can still serve us well today. And all of that can definitely lead to interesting discussions and many stories shared from their own lives, but it’s true, there aren’t many good stories in the text itself. So I, literally, tossed my lesson plan aside and asked her and her classmates which stories they remembered learning the year before, when they studied the book of Exodus, or the year before that, from Genesis. It became clear that though they remembered a lot of details, they tended to assign them to the wrong stories and often had no idea of the order of events (was it Moses who put all of the animals in the ark? And then he split the sea and ate an apple, right?). Instead of correcting them, I thought it would be more fun to have them act out the stories, one scene at a time, from the beginning.

            By the time the bell rang for the end of class, we were halfway across the sea of reeds (with Moses) and each student had played at least three roles (God, Isaac, and the dove, or Noah and God and Leah, for example). And it was fantastic! And exhausting. We had to drag ourselves through the rest of the activities of the morning. But the following week, they begged to do more of Genesis or Exodus, which was, as you can imagine, unusual. I did my best to add more acting into my lesson plans after that, though I had to argue for the value of singing, dancing, drawing, and writing, as well.

            And then, as a gift to the synagogue school from a generous congregant, we had a visit from a Jewish improv group, called The Bible Players (https://www.thebibleplayers.com/). They came for our last school day before Passover and worked with every possible age group. First they worked with the teachers, so we could learn how to lead some of the improvisations ourselves and adapt them for different holidays and lessons (they also gave us a packet full of every activity they’d done with us, and plenty more that we didn’t have time to try), and then they worked directly with the kids – getting them to play different characters, and mirror each other, and laugh and imagine and be brave and play. By the end of their time with The Bible Players, my otherwise sarcastic, eye-rolling students were glossy-eyed with joy and asking when they would be able to do it all again. How about tomorrow? Could we come back to synagogue school tomorrow and do it again?!

            And, of course, part of me was sitting back and saying, hey, what about me? Am I not fun? Didn’t I come up with exciting, enlightening, and innovative activities all year long? But a larger part of me was already looking through the packet of activities and planning how to add them into my lesson plans. They had taught us an especially effective clapping game to get the kids to quiet down that I intended to practice right away.

            The reality is, my next class of students may not love acting in the same way, and not every activity will work out, nor will I be able to match the level of enthusiasm and buy-in of the Bible Players, but they taught me something I’ve been struggling to embrace on my own: not only are we always improvising, but as teachers, we are at our best when we are improvising. In fact, if we know 100% what we’re going to do next, in class or in life, we are going to be bored, or bore everyone else. Learning needs to be exciting, and engaging, and interactive in order to work.

            I wish I could say that I am always ready to try something new, and always eager and open to new challenges, but I am really not. I move towards change reluctantly, and with as much side-eye as any of my students. I was exhausted the day the Bible Players came to teach us, and annoyed, and shy, and wishing I could just go home and take a nap. It wasn’t until I saw how much my students loved what they were doing that I started to open up and embrace the possibilities. Though, of course, when I tried the really effective clapping game, after the Passover break, it did not work at all, and a couple of the girls made sure to tell me that, “that was so two weeks ago.”

            To be honest, I am really ready for summer break. I am exhausted in every way. I have a lot of students this year, and they are all challenging and fascinating and full of energy and full of piss and vinegar, and they take pretty much all of my energy in every class. My one week off for Passover did not even begin to remedy the bone-deep fatigue that has set in, and yet, I’m still revising lesson plans to finish out the school year, and I’m still excited to try new things and see how they go over, and I’m still looking for new skills to learn so I can give my next batch of students more of what they need. It’s intoxicating to always be learning, and growing; and being in the classroom is like a whirlwind that I get caught up in every time, whether I mean to or not, and whether my body can sustain the effort or not.

            So, I will gratefully take my summer to recover and recharge, and then I will try it all over again next year, with the next class, improvising every step of the way, and hoping to get things right at least as often as I get them wrong.

“Is it nap time?”

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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Passover Week

Posted on April 19, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            I don’t understand all of the people who were able to clean their houses top to bottom, switch over to Passover dishes, AND cook for 18 to 20 people, all before vacation even started. It makes no sense to have vacation during Passover if the house needs to be cleaned for Passover. There was no way I was going to have the energy to do spring cleaning (going through every cabinet, vacuuming every corner and under every piece of furniture, etc., etc.) when I was also working and trying to live up to my regular commitments. It was only when I got a week off – during Passover – that I had the time and energy to even start cleaning.

            This is clearly a holiday for people who are more organized, and more energetic than I have ever been, or for people who can afford to go to specially prepared Passover hotels, where families can spend the whole week away and never have to clean their houses for Passover in the first place.

            Having a week off from teaching allowed me to notice all of the things I had left undone during the school year, of course. And I finally forced myself to go through my drawer-of-papers, and realized that I hadn’t opened the damned thing since before Covid, except to shove more papers into it. Tzipporah stayed in her bed in the living room to avoid all of the chaos, and dust, and grumbling noises.

“Puppy, save me!”

            I managed to look through all of the clothes in my closet that don’t fit, but might someday, and the medical test results that were supposed to be edifying but weren’t, and all of the lesson plans that I didn’t have a chance to try for one reason or another, and it has been exhausting to look through all of the work I’ve done over the past few years, without much sense of accomplishment or progress to show for it. I tend to think of myself as lazy, because I haven’t reached the goals I’ve set for myself (successful author, diagnosis and treatment for medical issues, overcoming mental health difficulties, etc.), but the piles and piles of evidence tell me that I’ve worked very hard, no matter how little it shows in the outside world.

The heavy emphasis placed on Passover cleaning, or more specifically, cleaning out all of the random crumbs of bread and other leavening that have landed in the corners of our homes, belies the fact that the real purpose of Passover is to celebrate the exodus of the ancient Israelites from Egyptian slavery. The goal is to tell the story, in detail, and thereby to remember that it is possible to get out of the narrow places we are trapped in today and find true freedom. This is always a meaningful lesson, but especially right now in the United States, where our promised land is starting to feel a lot more like ancient Egypt. But even before this particular moment in history, I felt like even though I had escaped the narrow place of my childhood, my own personal Egypt, I am still wandering in the desert; and if God plans for this wandering stage to last forty years, like it did for my ancestors, then I still have a lot of wandering left to do.

            Unfortunately, as my rabbi often tells us, the reason for the forty years in the desert was for the generation who had experienced slavery to die out, so that only those who had been born into freedom would enter the promised land. I worry that maybe that will be the case for me too, that the closest I will get to the promised land is these years of wandering and seeing that hope just over the hill, out of reach.

            I look at Tzipporah, named after Moses’s wife in the Passover story, not incidentally, and I think she is in the same place as me; she is no longer in the narrow place (the puppy mill), but it seems to me that she is still wandering through the desert, trying to figure out how to feel free.

            But now that I think about it, the story we read at the Passover seder each year isn’t really about entering the Promised land. In fact, we end each seder hoping to be in Jerusalem next year; meaning that, no matter where we are in our lives, or in the world, we have not yet reached the promised land. Maybe the real lesson is that everyone will find themselves in a narrow place, at some point in their life, and will need hope and help in order to escape, and even then, that exodus will feel much more like wandering in a desert than like reaching a promised land. And that’s okay. Because the process of standing up for our rights, and believing that we deserve better, and then wandering in the desert, in confusion, trying to figure out how to be free, is the point of the journey. And we go through the Passover seder every year as a way to teach ourselves that the wandering itself is meaningful, and worth all of the effort. No matter how much we might wish for an easier ending to the story.

“And they lived happily ever after…”

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 Purple Life

Posted on April 12, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            I’m loving my new Hebrew class! The Purple level is much more challenging than the previous levels, but in a great way, with more interesting content and vocabulary and homework and conversations. The teacher is fantastic, not just because he knows how to do weird tech stuff like broadcasting announcements to all of the breakout rooms at once, but also because he’s able to keep track of all of our stories and quirks and make sure we are all seen and heard and made part of the flow of the class.

“But what about me?”

            The only problem, if there is one, is that I am surrounded by classmates with much more Hebrew fluency than I have. But surprisingly, I don’t really mind. I thought I would prefer being at the top of a lower-level class, but instead I feel energized by how much more there is to learn, and how much more there is to look forward to.

The homework at the purple level is also a lot more fun. We used to just translate sentences, from Hebrew to English or English to Hebrew, to practice our new vocabulary, but in Purple we do something called Field Research, where we take three of the words we learned in class that day and look up blog posts or articles or memes using those new words, then screenshot and post them to our class WhatsApp group. Being me, I spend a lot of time searching, reading dozens of posts until I find something that makes me laugh, or cry, so not only is it fun, but it also forces me to read a lot more Hebrew than I otherwise would have.

My favorite homework, though, and the one that challenges me the most, is when we are given a random topic and told to record ourselves speaking off the cuff in a short voice note, no editing allowed. For now, I tend to talk around the holes in my vocabulary, as if I’m avoiding land mines, but my braver classmates jump right in and bring up new words for us to learn in the next class. We also get to know each other really well, from family stories, pet peeves, and random trivia that would never come up in the course of normal conversations.

Possibly because of the voice note practice, or maybe because I’m just like this anyway, I’ve been talking to myself a lot in Hebrew lately, telling myself stories from my day and then rushing to Google Translate with a list of words that I now need to know how to say in Hebrew. I am, at least, willing to be more adventurous in my Hebrew speaking when I am only talking to myself. Hopefully, one day, I will have the confidence to just start speaking in public, with no plan for where I will end up.

Somehow, we’re already halfway through this semester, and I am not happy about that at all. We have a short break for Passover, and then Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israeli Memorial Day, and Israeli Independence Day, which all come in a clump, and that will give me an opportunity to feel some of the impending grief at the loss of the class and then dive back in for relief. But I know that when this class really ends, I’m going to resent it. I already feel bad for our next teacher (of course, I’ve already signed up for the next class), because there will be a lot for them to live up to.

“I’d be a great teacher! You’d be barking in no time!”

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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Tzipporah Has Eyes Again

Posted on April 5, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            We finally took Tzipporah to our groomer for the first time, a few weeks ago. I was nervous about how she would manage being with strangers, but other than a small panic attack when the groomer got to her front paws (she told us to pre-medicate Tzipporah with doggy Xanax next time), she did surprisingly well. The best part is that I can see her eyes again, and that means I can see how much her facial expressions have changed since she first came home. She looks curious and interested now, instead of frightened and exhausted.

“I see you. Mommy!”

I was so inspired by how well Tzipporah did at the groomer, that I brought her to therapy with me the next day, to show off her new haircut and to test her ability to sit in the car by herself (instead of with Grandma holding her). She survived the short trip by flattening herself on the backseat, totally unlike Cricket’s habit of climbing every which way while I was driving (though I’m still planning to get a car harness for her, just in case), and then she sat on my lap during therapy, and listened intently to what ended up being a long conversation about how freakin’ cute she is.

And, yes, she is still spending most of her time marinating in her bed, but she’s usually awake now and looking around intently for clues about her new world. She even twists around in her bed to watch me when I leave the room, or, God forbid, leave the apartment altogether. She still hasn’t barked, but she makes the most of her soft voice, waking us up in the morning with her persistent cry, like a tiny car alarm. She’s usually looking for Grandma, to give her breakfast or a treat, but sometimes she even comes looking for me, and then she waits until she’s made eye contact and then runs back to the living room, expecting me to follow. 

After her success with the groomer, I decided to move her food and water bowls halfway to the kitchen, rather than near her bed, to encourage her to walk around more often. And I even added toothbrushing into her daily routine (she loves the chicken flavored toothpaste!), and she seems to be tolerating the indignity quite well.

“Wait, that was toothpaste?!”

            As the weather warms up, the next big challenge will be teaching her how to tolerate walks. She still looks at the leash like it’s a boa constrictor about to strangle her, and when I try to put her on the ground out in the yard, she shakes, so there’s a lot of work ahead. Maybe she’ll have to take some doggy Xanax for walks, as well as for the groomer. In my imagination, I see her running along the beach in the wind, and playing with Kevin-the-Golden-Doodle in the backyard, the way Cricket used to do (except without the violence), but that might be asking too much. We’ll see.

I’m trying to moderate my expectations and just be happy whenever she makes progress, but then I worry that I haven’t challenged her enough or given her enough opportunities for growth. With that in mind, I brought one of Kevin’s squeaky tennis balls into the apartment one day, hoping the smell of him would interest her. I threw the ball a few times, and squeezed it to make it squeak, but Tzipporah just watched intently, with no signs of wanting to participate. She hasn’t quite figured out that life is supposed to be interactive, instead of a movie to be watched from the cozy seats, but I have the same problem, so really, who am I to criticize?

“These are the best seats in the house!”

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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Reading the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew

Posted on March 22, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

Starting in elementary school, and now in my online Hebrew classes from Tel Aviv, I’ve been learning Modern Hebrew, the version of the language spoken in Israel today, and it is much more my speed than Biblical Hebrew. The last time I studied Biblical Hebrew, if I ever really studied it, was back in high school, and for the most part I found it impenetrable. The text was most often translated by our teachers, including the six or seven commentaries we would read for each sentence. I mean, sure, if we’d had mysteries written in Biblical Hebrew, I might have paid more attention, but reading through the laws in Leviticus word by word, a sentence or two per day, did not capture my attention.

“Oy. Leviticus.”

But recently, I’ve been making a point of reading along in Hebrew, during Bible study sessions at my synagogue, as someone else reads the English translation out loud, and I’ve started to notice some of the differences between Modern Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew, and to understand why it was all so hard to understand when I was a kid. I’ll find myself reading along, mostly understanding the Hebrew words and feeling pretty good about myself, and then suddenly a word that is clearly in the future tense in the Hebrew will be translated into the past tense in the English, or a word that I was sure I understood from Modern Hebrew will be given an entirely different connotation, and I’ll be lost all over again.

Even though it’s all Hebrew, the gap between Biblical and Modern Hebrew is at least as wide as the gap between today’s English and Shakespeare’s, but probably wider. There were only 8,000 or so attested Hebrew words in the Bible, including words borrowed from Akkadian (used by the Assyrians and Babylonians) and Egyptian and Greek. Today, there are over 100,000 words in Modern Hebrew, including loan words from all of the different cultures Jews have lived in for millennia, including Arabic and English and German and Spanish and Russian and Persian and on and on. In the interim, along with the added vocabulary, the grammar, and syntax, and even pronunciation have also changed, by a lot.

Actually, Hebrew was only the spoken language spoken in ancient Israel until sometime before the Common Era, when Aramaic took over. And then, after the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem, in 70 CE, most of the Jewish population was scattered around the world, and each community spoke the language of their new homes. Biblical Hebrew was still used by the rabbis in their commentaries on the Hebrew Bible, though, and by Jews in general during prayer and study, and as a result, the word count of written Hebrew grew to 20,000 or so, including many words borrowed from Aramaic and other neighboring languages. And then the Medieval sages added another 6,500 words, while writing their own commentaries and sacred poetry.

Eventually, in the 1800’s, a movement to revive spoken Hebrew began, with some Jewish writers using Hebrew to write secular literature, instead of just keeping Hebrew in the study hall or the synagogue anymore. Eliezer Ben Yehuda codified this new version of Hebrew in the early 1900’s, and when the Modern State of Israel was created, Hebrew was chosen as the national language. And today, Modern Hebrew is evolving much more quickly, but it is still the same language. Some words that were used in Biblical Hebrew have been replaced in daily usage with new words in Modern Hebrew, but they still exist. You can even use the older words in your everyday life and be understood, but you will sound kind of like an English speaker reciting Shakespeare as you order your coffee.

The most important discovery, for me, in researching Biblical Hebrew, was the Conversive Vav. This was the mystery that started the whole thing: how are verbs that are written in the future tense in Biblical Hebrew suddenly transformed into the past tense in the English. I found a bunch of long, drawn out, incomprehensible explanations for how the Conversive Vav is used, but suffice it to say that when it shows up it can change future tense into past tense and past tense into future tense. Like magic. In Modern Hebrew, if you find the letter Vav in front of a Hebrew word, it usually means “and,” and if you see something written in the future tense, it remains in the future tense, no hocus pocus allowed.

            You can, of course, go much deeper into studying Biblical Hebrew, to the point where you can even date when the different books of the Hebrew Bible may have been written, or figure out which parts of each story may have come from a previous era and were then added into a more recent re-telling of the story. My rabbi is fascinated by all of this stuff, and I’m happy to let him do the work of figuring it out so I don’t have to.

            I am not a linguist, or a grammarian, or even a very good speller, but I am fascinated by the idea that a language is a living thing, that changes as the people who speak it change. I still much prefer Modern Hebrew to the Biblical version, but I love that I get to visit my ancestors and hear their particular dialect each time I open the Hebrew Bible. Who knows what future generations will be able to learn about us when they read through our writings? A lot depends on what they will have access to: they could be reading non-fiction histories, or true crime, or young adult science fiction, or page after page of shopping lists from the height of the egg-price crisis. And what they read, and the way they interpret it, will determine who they think we were and what they learn from us.

I often wonder what the rabbis chose to edit out of the Hebrew Bible along the way, and why. I bet my ancestors wrote their own version of shopping lists, and wrote all kinds of other things the rabbis didn’t think we needed to know, for one reason or another. Just imagine, there could be a treasure trove of ancient Biblical fan fiction, or diaries of young girls complaining about the horror of animal sacrifices and all of the chores they had to do around the farm, all buried in a cave somewhere in Israel, waiting to be discovered. If anything like that comes up, I may have to rethink my resistance to learning Biblical Hebrew. Only time will tell.

“How many languages do I have to learn to live in this house?!”

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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