Tag Archives: family

Tzippy Loves to Walk Home

Posted on May 9, 2026 by rachelmankowitz

            Tzippy was making so much progress! We’d gotten to the point where she was able to walk up and down the two steps in front of our building, and even to follow me down the walkway to the parking lot, reluctantly. But her favorite thing, by far, was the return trip home. Each week, when we came back from therapy, she’d wait impatiently in my arms as I carried her up the steps from the parking lot to the walkway, and as soon as she was able to put her paws on solid ground she started to pull me towards home, smiling and looking back at me every once in a while as if to ask what was taking me so long. I was feeling so good about her progress that I’d even started my next experiment, expanding the trail of chicken treats in my room all the way to Butterfly’s old doggy steps, to try to convince her that stairs aren’t so scary.

“Almost home!”

But the process was interrupted when Tzipporah got sick for a few days and needed three separate baths to get clean and had to avoid all treats until her stomach settled down. For a while there I was too busy scrubbing every square inch of carpet to focus on anything like training. As a result of all of those baths, Tzipporah developed a strong antipathy to being in the same room with me for the next few days, and then continued to watch me carefully for any sign that I was about to dognap her back to the bathroom sink. Part of the problem was that she was at full fluff, just days away from her grooming appointment, so there was a lot of hair to clean, and part of the problem was that she already hated bathtime before any of this happened. I had to wash her bed and blankets a few times too, because she kept racing back to her safe place to hide from the hated baths.

“Oy vey.”

Once her stomach had settled down, though, and she could stand to be in the same room with me again, we took her out for a walk, past the parking lot, around the corner, and up the street to the Seven Eleven. Tzippy was not at all sure about this new adventure and needed a lot of reassurance to keep going up the hill, stopping to check on Grandma every few seconds and then standing and shivering to let me know that I was asking way too much of her. But, again, as soon as we turned back towards home, she ran ahead gleefully leading the family along the right path. She was even willing to walk on the grass in the backyard in order to visit Grandma’s vegetable garden at the far end of the yard.

We celebrated these great accomplishments by sitting on Grandma’s bench for a rest and almost as soon as we sat down, Kevin the mini-goldendoodle came running out for a visit. We hadn’t seen him and his parents in forever, so we all caught up while Tzipporah sat on my lap and Kevin sat politely in front of my legs, catching up on all of the petting he had missed.

When it was time to go back into our building, I tried, valiantly, to encourage her to walk up the stairs to our apartment, but Tzipporah seems to think the stairway looks like Kilimanjaro and refuses to even lift a paw towards the lowest step (you would not believe the crazy eyes and flying paws that greet me when I attempt to lead her forward). But she has conquered so many other challenges this year that I’m hoping those stairs will eventually look less like a mountain and more like a manageable molehill. Though it will probably be a long time before she can see a bottle of doggy shampoo and a bath towel without flinching. Me too, baby girl. Me too.

Tzippy, fresh from the groomer.

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?

40 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

This Passover

Posted on April 4, 2026 by rachelmankowitz

I only noticed that Passover was coming because I had to teach The Four Questions (Mah Nishtanah) to my students to get them ready for their family Seders. Other than that, I let all of the signs pass me by, like the shelves of Passover food at the local grocery store and the cloud-like “Mannah from Heaven” dangling from the ceiling of the social hall at the synagogue. I was not in the mood for any of it this year, honestly, with all of the doctors’ appointments (mine and Mom’s), and all of the news. I felt like my brain was already full and could not take in one more thing.

Given that, by the time the first Seder came around, and I realized that I had nowhere to go, I wasn’t really upset. I hadn’t downloaded a new Hagaddah, or planned new recipes, or found new songs to sing. I was just waiting for it to be over. Unfortunately, both synagogue school and my Hebrew classes took Passover off, so I went from feeling like I was too busy to breathe to being surrounded by silence.

“What’s wrong with silence?”

We are always invited to a Seder at my brother’s in New Jersey, but it’s a long drive back and forth and neither Mom nor I were up to making the trip, though I really like the way he hands out different Haggadot (The Harry Potter Hagaddah, a cartoon Hagaddah, a Haggadah with ten commentaries on each page, etc.) so that everyone at the table has a different way of seeing the Seder, and the arguments commence. My ideal Passover celebration would probably be a model Seder with the synagogue school kids, so we could walk them through all of the props on the Seder plate in real time, like the shank bone and the roasted egg and the Matzah and the horseradish (Maror), and find new ways to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt that really speak to them.

Just a note, by the way: on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, they made a joke about how Christians get to eat chocolate eggs for Easter and Jews are stuck with a shank bone – and it was a funny bit, but misleading. The shank bone is a prop on the Seder plate; you are not supposed to eat it. If someone at your table, other than the dog, has been gnawing on the shank bone, something has gone very wrong.

I grew up in a house that took Passover very seriously. We spent weeks preparing: cleaning the whole house, removing all signs of leavened bread, changing the dishes for the week, and filling three shopping carts with food. If you spend any time with religious (or even not that religious) Jews during the week of Passover, you’ll notice a heavy emphasis on eating – both because people get bored spending a week at home with their families and because trying to avoid any particular food can make you obsessive about the food you are still allowed to eat – as any dieter will to tell you.

            The fact is, I really like the idea of Passover, with the emphasis on storytelling and music and food and the symbolism of freedom and slavery. I could spend my whole life learning about the Exodous story and never be finished, so it bothers me that I don’t have time to teach my students all of the things I know about the holiday so far. I’m lucky if I can teach them how to sing the Four Questions and throw in some tidbits about the Ten Plagues and a little something about matza ball soup. This year I made them a Passover Madlibs to try and get as much of the story in as possible and maybe get them curious to learn more. In their rewritten version of Passover, they would have us drink 72 glasses of wine (instead of 4), and eat McDonald’s (instead of Matzah), and our ancestors would have faced landslides and tornadoes and chicken pox instead of the usual ten plagues.

            The emphasis on teaching children The Four questions is just because that’s the one thing the kids are supposed to know about Passover ahead of time, and it’s a way to encourage them to ask more questions as the Seder goes on. So they start with the most obvious question – why is it that on every other night we eat mac and cheese or pizza for dinner but tonight you’re giving us a bland cracker and a knob of horseradish? – and that gets them thinking of the next set of questions they might have, like: why were there ten plagues? Did the plagues really happen or are they a metaphor? Why would God allow regular Egyptians to suffer in order to convince Pharoah to let the Israelites go? Why is this holiday celebrating freedom so bittersweet? Where are the happily-ever-after stories we’re used to from Disney?

The goal of the Passover Seder isn’t to come up with definitive answers, it’s to make space for questions, and to slowly help us get used to the idea that life will be filled with a lot of questions that don’t have simple answers; and if you can drink some grape juice and jump around like a frog or spray your parents with salt water along the way, it goes down a little bit easier.

And now that I think of it, maybe this is my Seder this year, this essay. It’s not the traditional format, and there’s no shank bone or horseradish (Thank God), but it’s full of the things Passover is about: questions, complaints, stories, and food. Next year in Jerusalem!

“Where’s that bone you keep talking about?”

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?

37 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Tzipporah’s First Official Walk

Posted on February 28, 2026 by rachelmankowitz

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

83 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Under the Weather

Posted on January 31, 2026 by rachelmankowitz

            A few weeks ago, Mom was struggling. Her blood pressure kept dropping too low, even when she forced herself to drink the liquids the nurse at the cardiologist’s office had recommended; and instead of needing one nap, or two, she could barely get out of bed. And then, even a sip of coffee was too much to swallow. But she didn’t want to wake me up to tell me she was in trouble, so she waited until I woke up on my own, looked in on her, and freaked out.

We arrived at the Emergency Room around Noon and there was a line to check in, so after making sure she had a place to sit and nurses nearby, I went back to park the car – which I’d left running, with the doors open, because I wasn’t panicking at all. By the time I got back, she was doing her intake interview, and another member of the staff took me aside to sign a few papers – including one that said I promised not to be physically or verbally abusive to the hospital staff (it’s kind of scary that such a document needs to exist, but I watched season one of The Pitt, so I get it). Then they gave Mom a gown, did an EKG, and led her to a stretcher in the hallway, because all of the actual rooms were full; most of the stretcher spots were filled as well, even though it was the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, in the middle of winter.

I stood aside while a nurse took blood and a tech did a portable chest x-ray, and in the meantime, a woman nearby (who was there with her own mother) told me how amazing Mom is, because while they were waiting in line to check in, Mom calmly told the intake nurse that she was having a heart attack. I turned to stare at my mother and she looked sheepish. She hadn’t said a word to me about a heart attack.

Luckily, the EKG and chest x-ray and blood tests all came back clear for any signs of cardiac distress. What they did find, though, was low hemoglobin levels, A.K.A. Anemia. And the doctor seemed to think that all of her symptoms could be explained by that diagnosis: the low blood pressure, the exhaustion, the nausea, even the tightness in her chest and shortness of breath. Her hypothesis was that the Anemia was caused by internal bleeding, because of an ulcer, because of the Ibuprofen Mom’s been taking for pain in her leg and feet, but they would need to do more blood tests and a CT scan, and have her checked out by a cardiologist, just in case.

            Mom kicked me out of the ER just before dark, because I hadn’t eaten or taken my meds before driving her there in the first place, and because I was distracting her from her phone. My hope was that I would be able to rest for a few hours, and then she’d call me to pick her up before bedtime. I stopped at the supermarket to stock up, making sure we had enough coconut water and grape juice to keep Mom’s fluids high, and when I got back to the apartment I found out that Tzippy had thrown up on the floor, right next to Mom’s side of the couch.

            I put the groceries away, cleaned up the floor, and the wee wee pads, and Tzippy’s bed, and then we sat together in the living room, watching TV and waiting for news about Mom. I spoke to my brother, and my aunt, updating them on the situation, and texted constantly with Mom to keep up with the latest events at the hospital. By 8 or 9 o’clock, the nurses told her that she’d have to stay overnight so they could do an endoscopy in the morning, and I finally changed into my pajamas and gave Tzippy her last treat of the day, but neither of us got much sleep that night.

“Only one treat?”

            The endoscopy didn’t end up taking place until early afternoon the next day, and then they found Mom a hospital room and told her she’d be staying for a few days. I packed her a bag (she wanted her weaving supplies, and I had to remind her that she might also need some clothes), and drove back to the hospital, carrying her loom through the metal detector. She was clear eyed, if exhausted, and relieved that she’d finally been allowed to eat, now that the endoscopy was over. The nurses were wonderful, as usual, but they’d had to poke her multiple times before getting the IV in the right spot, so her arms were black and blue. Thankfully, now that the IV was in a good place, they could administer medications without re-poking her, and the stomach protectant and IV Tylenol seemed to be helping.

But there were still more tests to do, and more doctors to see, and Mom and I were both anxious and confused about what was going to happen next. My brother was able to speak to the doctor over the phone and then visit in person to explain some of the things the doctors were leaving out. They ended up giving her a transfusion, because her hemoglobin levels were still low, and more fluids, and then they did more tests and checks and, finally, on day five, they let me take her home.

She already looked better than she had in months, so the Anemia must have been going on for quite a while before it became acute, but Mom was just happy to be home again, to see Tzipporah, and me, but even more so to be free to leave her bed without an alarm going off each time her foot touched the floor. She even committed to her new bland diet, to manage the ulcer, and was inspired to find a similar diet for Tzipporah, to see if that would help her too, and to have a diet buddy, of course.

“I like this diet.”

            Each day since then, Mom has been looking a little bit better and more like herself, though she still thinks she’s resting too much and getting too little done. And Tzippy seems to be feeling better too. They’ve both happily returned to their regular routine of arguing at bedtime: when Tzippy gets three treats and demands a fourth, and Mom tries to hold her ground, and then sprinkles cheese on the kibble, and Tzippy cries because what she really wanted was another chicken treat and why doesn’t her grandma understand?

As I listen to their duet from my room, I am relieved to be surrounded by family noise again. While Mom was in the hospital, I was in a state of suspended animation, checking my phone constantly and feeling like my whole world depended on the next piece of information. And it’s such a relief not to be so anxious anymore, though I’m much more aware now of which doctors Mom needs to see, and how much liquid she’s consuming and which foods she’s not supposed to eat. I’m also much more aware of how annoying it is to have to shovel the car out every time you need to go to a doctor or hospital or pharmacy (or work), when all you really want to do is hibernate under the covers and never see a snowflake again.

“Why would anyone want to go outside?”

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?

85 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

The Pitt

Posted on January 10, 2026 by rachelmankowitz

            On the 12-hour flight back from Israel, I managed to watch 14 of the 15 episodes of the Pitt, a medical show starring Noah Wyle. My brother is an emergency room doctor, and he was actually in medical school back when Noah Wyle played a medical student on ER, so I spent many years following Noah Wyle’s storylines to try to understand what my brother was going through. And now, here’s Noah Wyle again, many years later, running an ER, just like my brother.

The Pitt is set in a trauma center in Pittsburgh (hence the name of the show, referencing both the city and the feeling of being in the pit of hell). The show is set in real time, with each episode covering an hour of a 12-hour shift (spoiler, there are 15 episodes, so, this doesn’t end up being such a normal shift), which allows us to sit with each decision the doctors have to make: when can I pee? Do I believe what the patient is telling me? What do I say to a grieving parent? How do I convince someone to follow my medical advice against their own instincts? What do I do when a colleague disagrees with my decisions?

The show uses a lot of medical jargon that I don’t understand, but the emotional situations are clear and overwhelming, and I sat there wondering how these doctors were still working after two or three hours, when I already needed a nap. The only time we spend outside of the hospital, in the whole series, is at the beginning and the end of the shift, as Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle’s character) listens to music to help him transition from one part of his life to the other; the claustrophobia we feel from staying closed up in the hospital helps us to understand the all-consuming nature of the job.

My brother has never talked much about his work, even though he’s a natural storyteller (with a very dark sense of humor). In fact, he’s always seemed kind of confused by my interest, even suspicious about why I would ask him so many questions (it has been my lot in life, as a little sister, to be told again and again how very annoying I am). So, this marathon viewing of The Pitt felt like a chance to catch up with my brother, and have some conversations with him in my imagination that would never happen in real life.

The little sister I remember being
The little sister he remembers

My flight ended about forty-five minutes too soon, and I didn’t get to see the final episode of the 15, but when I got home, I found out that TNT, one of the basic cable channels, was showing The Pitt in three-episode installments, each Monday night. I spent the next few weeks rewatching all of the episodes I’d seen on the plane, with mom this time, leading up to the final episode neither of us had seen yet.

When I told my brother about my watch party, he didn’t seem as annoyed as usual. He said he’d seen the show, and actually liked it, certainly more than most of the other medical shows on TV. He even told me about a contest at one of his medical conferences, where the winner got the chance to spend a day with Noah Wyle (sadly, he didn’t win). Back when he was in medical school, and I was watching episodes of ER to try to understand him, there was more of a disjunct – yes, Dr. Carter was at a similar point in his career, and the show did a lot of realistic medical stories, with all of the jargon and the latest technology, but there was also a lot of soap opera (not as soapy as Grey’s Anatomy, but enough), so when I’d try to identify my brother in those storylines, and figure out what he would have been thinking, and where he would have struggled, there weren’t a ton of parallels. But with The Pitt, it’s different. 

            The emotions in the Pitt are kept, almost aggressively, under control. It takes until the 13th hour for Dr. Robby to break, and even then he manages to pull himself back from the brink and get back to work quickly – not because he’s all better, or because he’s learned something, but just because he has to, because it’s his job and people are relying on him. There’s no attempt by the writers to pretend that this kind of resilience is a good thing, just that it’s what he has to do.

            The show does an incredible job of showing how impossible these jobs are (doctors, nurses, social workers, EMTs, administrators, and pretty much everyone else in the hospital), and the amount of guessing they have to do, and the lack of adequate resources, and the lack of perfect answers to many of the problems that come up. There’s a sense that the doctors are expected to do the impossible, and not be impacted by the anger or grief or pain of their patients. And they make a point of showing the doctors disagreeing on what to do, on medical interventions and on ethical problems, so that we have to sit with the reality that it isn’t always clear who’s right and what the best course of action might be.

            There’s something profound, for me, in the fact that Noah Wyle is now playing a Jewish character, and (spoiler) actually recites the Shma to himself at one point. It’s a small thing – and it’s not like they’re celebrating Chanukah in the middle of the ER – but it makes the show feel that much more connected to my brother, and to me.

            Of course, TNT decided to air the first season of The Pitt in November and December for a reason: the second season is now airing on HBO Max (a paid streaming service). It’s a very good marketing technique, because I’m actually considering a subscription, just to see the show’s second season without having to wait for my next trip to Israel.

            One reassuring thing has been that, while my brother works in emergency medicine, he doesn’t tend to work in trauma centers like the Pitt, so even if he faces a lot of the same issues as Noah Wyle’s character, it’s not at the same unrelenting pace, or with the same level of chaos. At least, that’s what my mom was telling herself, and me, as we watched the series week by week, and that helped both of us sleep a little easier at night.

“How can you sleep?! Where are 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?

60 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

The Trail of Treats

Posted on July 26, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            The latest experiment in my journey to convince Tzipporah that I’m not so bad, has been to place chicken treats at the entrance to my room at bedtime, trying to catch her attention while she’s on her way to or from her Midnight Snack with Grandma. It is an attempt at bribery, pure and simple, but so is most of the clicker training I learned back when we were trying to convince Cricket that she was not the boss of everyone (unsuccessfully, of course).

            There is an old Jewish tradition of giving honey to young students when they first start studying the Hebrew Bible, so that they’ll pair study with sweetness forever after (though the version I heard had the rabbis putting honey on the student’s slates, and the student would lick off the honey with the chalk of the Hebrew letters, which does not sound delicious, or sanitary, so I tend to give my students lollipops instead), and since Tzipporah is much more of a savory girl than a sweets aficionado, I have built my current experiment on the treats she most craves – chicken jerky.

            Each night, I break one piece of chicken jerky into smaller and smaller pieces, and spread them further apart so she has to actually walk into my room to find them all. And since she believes in only taking one treat at a time, no matter how small they may be, she now comes in at least five times to get through the whole trail, usually more than five, because she’s ever hopeful that more will appear. She’s still not looking up and acknowledging my presence, but we both know I’m there.

The trail of treats
The elusive Tzippy, caught on camera

            There may need to be a second part to this experiment, because getting her into the room doesn’t equal coming directly to me for treats, or thinking of me as a safe person, but I haven’t thought that far ahead.

            But at least now, she has learned to stop and check my doorway as she passes by, and even to linger and check more carefully in case she missed something, rather than just taking a cursory sniff and moving on. She does this at least once at night and once during the day (if I’m in my room instead of sitting in the living room with her). Not only do the chicken treats draw her attention, but they also seem to help mute her anxiety at entering my room while I am present. In the past (last week), Tzipporah would come to my door, see me seeing her, and immediately bolt; but with her nose to the ground searching for treats, she’s less concerned, or at least less aware, of where I am and what I’m doing (I am, of course,  watching her and trying to get pictures).

            It’s hard not to compare how much farther along Tzipporah has gotten in her relationship with my mom (her grandma) than in her relationship with me. Mom can even hold out a treat, sometimes, and Tzipporah will gently take it from her hand. But, I figure, why not learn the lesson, and tap into the thing that has been working for them all along (being super generous with treats) and see if I can catch up. So far, Tzipporah doesn’t seem to mind.

“Where are the rest of my 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?

40 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

She Barked!

Posted on July 5, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            At long last, after a series of singing cries (because Grandma had run out of treats), Tzipporah barked! She surprised us, but even more than that she surprised herself, and ran back to her bed in the living room empty-pawed. Even the next day, she still seemed exhausted by the whole experience. What was that noise? Did it really come from me? And how is it possible for Grandma to run out of treats?!

            It was a lone bark, at least so far, and even her cries have been muted in the aftermath (it’s possible that Grandma has been handing out extra treats without telling me), but it’s good to know that her barking machinery works, should she want to use it at some point.

            But I keep getting impatient. She still has no idea why I sometimes pick her up just to hold her for a little while (we watched an episode of a crime drama set among puppy mills in France and it almost broke me, and I needed a hug). But I can hold her for just a little while before she starts looking for any possible escape route. And then, when she finally gets free, she starts running back to her bed, stops and turns around to give me a dirty look, and then continues on her way.

            I got a little bit desperate at one point and picked up her stuffed puppy to hold it on my lap for a while. I gave the stuffed puppy some ear-scratches and head pats, and then set it down in the second doggy bed and gently covered it with one of the doggy blankets. Tzipporah found the whole drama fascinating, but I’m not sure what she learned from it, except that her mommy is weird, which she already knew.

            I have to keep reminding myself that any progress Tzipporah makes is miraculous and we’re not on a clock here, but I still have no idea what she’s thinking when she stares at me endlessly. Is she watching me so closely because she likes me and wants to know me better? Or because she’s wary of me and needs to be on her guard? Or because I’m just that fascinating? She sees me staring at the TV quite a lot, though, so maybe she’s just mimicking me.

            The thing is, Tzipporah really does keep making progress, even if the pace feels slow to me. During her first visit to the groomer, back in the winter, she panicked when they tried to trim the hair on her front paws, so we were told to give her some ACE (doggy Xanax) before her next visit. So this time, before we brought her for her second visit to the groomer last week, Mom broke an ACE in half and stuffed it into a piece of chicken, which Tzipporah ate with gusto. When we went to pick Tzipporah up later in the day, the groomer said everything went well, even though Tzipporah needed a “summer cut” to deal with the knots (I haven’t wanted to bother her with too much combing), which meant she was mostly shaved down to the nubs. And then, instead of handing her directly to us, the groomer put Tzippy on the floor. I was about to say, no, don’t do it, she’ll never come to me and we’ll have to chase her around the room, but Tzippy walked straight over to me without hesitation. I almost cried, because she never does that in real life! She doesn’t respond to her name, or to any other command, but there, given the choice to roam free or find one of her people, she chose a people. Which means she knows who I am, and at least prefers me to the person wielding the scissors. She even showed signs of trying to climb into the front seat of the car on the way home (her doggy seatbelt stopped her from getting too far).

When we got home, I found the half pill of ACE sitting next to her bed, untouched. So, next time we can go with peanut butter, or maybe she doesn’t need the ACE at all. In just those few months, she’s made so much progress that she managed her haircut completely unmedicated, and without panic.

            And, since she has very little hair right now, I decided to add hair combing to her daily routine, along with the tooth brushing. She still thinks the toothbrush is a chicken paste delivery system and doesn’t understand why I insist on rubbing it into her teeth, but even combing the hair on her ears made her look at me like I was Cruella Deville. And yet I persisted.

            Oh, and there was another big step forward! One night when we had chicken for dinner, I saved some for her, but instead of just handing it all to her at once, I gave her a small piece of chicken in her bed, to hook her, and then I scattered pieces at various distances from her bed. It took her a little while to gather her courage, but eventually she found the pieces of chicken that were within two feet of her bed (three feet away was still too far), and just seeing her get out of bed while I was still sitting there in front of her was exhilarating.

I have to keep reminding myself that all of this effort is worth it, because even if I’m feeling impatient or grumpy, as long as I keep trying, progress keeps happening. For both of us.

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?

79 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Tzipporah is Dancing Behind my Back

Posted on June 14, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            For the most part, when I walk into the living room, anytime during the day or night, Tzipporah is sitting up in her bed, head tilted, watching me carefully. I knew that she was getting out of her bed when she was alone, to eat and drink and pee, and I knew that she left her bed at night to explore the apartment and to beg for chicken treats from her grandma (I love to hear the tippy tappy sound of her paws dancing down the hallway to get her midnight snacks, and sometimes I get to hear her sing the song of her people when her grandma runs out of treats). But, I thought, as long as there was a human in the living room with her, Tzipporah stayed glued to her bed.

            But then Mom started to tell me stories about Tzipporah stretching and running around the living room in the morning, as soon as she heard me getting up. At first, I was skeptical about those reports, thinking Mom must be exaggerating as a way to get me to believe Tzipporah was excited to see me. But then I was hurt. Why was Tzipporah willing to get out of her bed and stretch and relax only when I wasn’t in the room? What’s so great about Mom that she can be trusted and I can’t? (Okay, I know what’s so great about my mom. I’m just jealous.)

            After a few days of trying to describe the whole routine to me, while Tzipporah sat staring at me from her bed, Mom was finally able to get some pictures, and even a video; and I was able to see my quiet, solemn little dog dancing and wagging her tail and hopping around, impatiently staring towards the hallway, waiting for me. And yet, as soon as I actually walked into the living room, she would rush back to her bed as if the floor had suddenly turned to lava, and then she would sit in her bed and stare at me again.

I’d like to believe that the new dance is a sign that Tzipporah loves me, since she’s acting the same way I tend to act when I really like someone (desperate to see them and then tongue-tied when I actually get the chance), but I worry that she’s just taking her last opportunity to stretch her legs before I appear. I mean, if I can turn a previously safe and comfortable living room floor into lava, I must be pretty scary.

            Honesty, it’s a relief to know that Tzipporah isn’t just staying in her bed all day, though now I feel guilty for ever hanging out in the living room, because it forces her to stay in her bed and not to pee or drink or eat until I leave. My hope is that Tzipporah’s prolonged dance routine each morning is the beginning of a new phase, wherein she is eventually willing to leave her bed while I am still in the room. But, if she decides that only Grandma is allowed to see her dance, at least I’ll know that she has these wonderful moments of joy, and I’ll have the pictures to prove it.

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?

64 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

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?

67 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

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

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
← Older Posts
→