Tag Archives: Hebrew

Purple

Posted on March 1, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I understand anxiety, new Mommy.”

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

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

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The Stranger or Sojourner or Neighbor

Posted on February 22, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Attic

Posted on January 25, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

I have a lot of dreams

that take place in the attic

of the house where I grew up.

Or rather, they start in the attic

and then I have to climb a steep ladder,

or crawl through a tiny hallway,

or walk a long distance

in the summer heat or the deep snow,

until I find myself in a bank

filled with endless corruption,

where no one listens to me,

no matter how long or loud I shout;

or I find myself in a three-story mall

filled with every possible thing,

except for the one thing I’m looking for;

or, most often, I’m in a school

inside an enormous castle made of stone,

and I am wearing the wrong clothes,

and I can’t find my classroom

or any of my friends.

In reality,

our attic was small,

with a slanted ceiling

and wood-paneled walls.

The stairs up to the attic were steep

and covered in the same orange and yellow plaid carpeting

as the rest of the attic floor.

To the left was the mismatched bathroom,

with a stand-alone bathtub,

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

To the right was our playroom,

where we acted out stories

and played with friends.

There were birthday parties in the attic,

and we did arts and crafts,

and tried to make movies with an old film camera.

We travelled into space from the attic,

just me and my brother,

and visited every planet we could imagine.

The attic was also our guest room,

with sofa beds that squeaked when they were opened.

Our cousins lived in the attic, one summer,

and created the circus of Nimbus the rat.

And Grandma Ida,

my father’s mother,

lived there for a summer,

just before she died,

so that Mom could take care of her.

Eventually,

the attic became our storage room.

My old cradle stood in a corner,

and the wooden toy box

that was filled with everything but toys.

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

and when I hid there,

among the soft bags of clothes,

I would fall asleep to the sound of mice

dancing on the floor around me.

One time, Dina,

our black Labrador mix,

found a bag of my old stuffed animals

and chewed through half of them,

and brought them down to my bedroom,

unstuffed, one by one.

Papa smurf was never the same.

My memories from the attic are haphazard

and come to me out of order

and outside of time.

We could hear squirrels and raccoons in the roof,

and we could see our pool in the backyard,

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

who threw rocks at our front door.

But more than all of that,

the attic was a place to hide.

After my father, with help, finished the attic,

putting in the carpet and the paneling

and the electricity and the plumbing,

he never returned,

as far as I know,

and that made the attic into my safe place.

In the end,

Dina, our black Labrador mix,

was the only one who used the attic,

long after the mauling of Papa Smurf was forgotten,

or at least forgiven.

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

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

She would lay out in the rays of sun,

as if she was on a beach somewhere,

imagining her own alternate worlds,

though probably not in banks or malls or schools.

In her imaginary worlds, I’m sure,

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

and maybe, sometimes, she even caught them.

My Dina

עליית הגג

יֵשׁ לִי הָרבֵּה חָלוֹמוֹת

שְׁמִתְרַחשִׁים בָּעַלִיָת הָגָג

בָּבַּיִת שְׁבּוֹ גָדָלתִי.

אוֹ, יוֹתֵר נָכוֹן, הֵם מָתחִילִים בָּעָלִיָית הָגָג

וְאַז אַנִי צרִיכָה לְטָפֵּס בְּסוֹלֵם תָלוּל,

אוֹ לִזחוֹל דֶרֶך מִסַדרוֹן קטָנטָן,

אוֹ לָלֶכֶת מָרחֵק רָב

בָּחוֹם הָקַיִץ אוֹ בָּשֶׁלֶג הָעָמוֹק,

עַד שְׁאַנִי מוֹצֵאת אֶת עָצמִי בְּבָּנק

מָלֵא בְּשׁחִיתוּת אֵינסוֹפִית,

אֵיפֹה אַף אֶחַד לֹא מָקשִׁיב לִי,

לֹא מֶשָׁנֶה כָּמָה זמָן אוֹ כָּמָה חָזָק אַנִי צוֹעֶקֶת;

אוֹ, אַנִי מוֹצֵאת אֶת עָצמִי בְּקֶניוֹן בְּשָׁלוֹשׁ קוֹמוֹת,

מָלֵא בְּכֹּל דָבָר אֶפשָׁרִי,

חוּץ מְהָדָבַר הָאֶחָד שֶׁאַנִי מְחָפֶּשֶׂת;

אוֹ, רוֹב הָזמָן, אַנִי בְּבֵּית סֵפֶר

בְּתוֹך טִירָה עָנָקִית, עַשׂוּיָה מֵאֶבֶן,

וְאַנִי לוֹבֶשֶׁת אֶת הָבְּגָדִים הָלֹא נְכוֹנִים

וְאַנִי לֹא יְכוֹלָה לִמצוֹא אֶת הָכִּיתָה שֶׁלִי,

אוֹ אַף אֶחַד מְהָחָבֵרִים שֶׁלִי.

בָּמְצִיאוּת,

עַלִיָית הָגָג שֶׁלָנוּ הָייתָה קָטָנָה,

עִם תִקרָה מְשׁוּפַּעַת

וְקִירוֹת ספוּנֵי עֵץ.

הָמָדרֵגוֹת לְעַלִיָית הָגָג הָיוּ תלוּלוֹת

וְמְכוּסוֹת בְּאוֹתוֹ שַׁטִיחַ מְשׁוּבָּץ בְּכָּתוֹם וְצָהוֹב

כּמוֹ בְּשְׁאָר עַלִיָית הָגָג.

מִשׂמֹאל הָיָה חָדָר אָמבָּטיָה הָלֹא תוֹאֵם,

עִם אָמבָּטיָה עָצמָאִית,

וְשֵׁירוּתִים עָל דוֹכֵן, מִתַחַת לָמִרזָבִים.

מִיָמִין הָיָה חָדָר הָמִשׂחָקִים שֶׁלָנוּ,

שְׁבּוֹ הָצָגנוּ סִיפּוּרִים

וְשִׂיחָקנוּ עִם חָבֵרִים.

הָיוּ מְסִיבּוֹת יוֹם הוּלֶדֶת בָּעַלִיָית הָגָג,

וְעָשִׂינוּ אוֹמָנִיוֹת וְמָלָאכוֹת,

וְנִיסִינוּ לִיצוֹר סרָטִים עִם מַצלֵמַת סרָטִים יְשָׁנָה.

נָסַענוּ לְחָלָל מֵעַלִיָית הָגָג,

רָק אַנִי וְהָאַח שֶׁלִי,

וְבִּיקָרנוּ בְּכֹּל כּוֹכָב שֶׁיָכוֹלנוּ לְדָמיֵין.

עַלִיָית הָגָג גָם הָיָה חָדָר הָאוֹרחִים שֶׁלָנוּ,

עִם סָפּוֹת נִפתָחוֹת שְׁחוֹרקוּ כְּשְׁפָּתחוּ אוֹתָם.

בְּנֵי הָדוֹדִים שֶׁלָנוּ גָרוּ בָּעַלִיָת הָגָג, קַיִץ אֶחָד,

וְהֵם יִצרוּ אֶת הָקִרקָס שֶׁל נִימבּוּס הָחוּלדָה.

וְסָבתָא אַידָה,

אִמָא שֶׁל הָאָבָּא שֶׁלִי,

גָרָה שָׁם לְקַיִץ,

רֶגַע לִפנֵי שְׁהִיא מֵתָה,

כְּדֵי שְׁאִמַא תוּכָל לְטָפֵּל בָּה.

בְּסוֹפוֹ שֶׁל דָבָר,

עַלִיָית הָגָג הָפָך לִהִיוֹת הָמַחסָן שֶׁלָנוּ.

הָעַרִיסָה הָיְשָׁנָה שֶׁלִי עָמָד בָּפִּינָה,

וְקוּפסָת הָצָעַצוּעִים מְעֵץ,

מְלֵאָה בְּכֹּל דָבָר, מִלבַד צָעַצוּעִים.

שָׁמָרנוּ אֶת בִּגדֵי תִינוֹקוֹת הָיְשַׁנִים שֶׁלָנוּ בְּחָלָל הָזחִילָה,

וְכְּשְׁהִתחָבָּאתִי שָׁם,

בֵּין הָתִיקִים שֶׁל בְּגָדִים רָכִים,

נִרדָמתִי לְצְלִילֵי עָכבָּרִים

רוֹקדִים עַל הָרִצפָּה מִסבִיבִי. 

פָּעַם אַחַת, דִינָה,

הָכָּלבָּה הָלָבּרָדוֹר הָשׁחוֹרָה הָמְעוֹרֶבֶת שֶׁלָנוּ,

מָצאָה שָׂקִית הָפּוּחלָצִים הָיְשַׁנִים שֶׁלִי 

וְלָעָסַה חָצִי מִהֶם,

וְהוֹרִידָה אוֹתָם לַחַדַר הָשֵׁינָה שֶׁלִי,

לֹא מַמוּלאִים, בְּזוֹ אַחַר זוֹ.

אָבָּא דָרדָס מְעוֹלָם לֹא הָיָה אוֹתוֹ דָבַר.

הָזִיכרוֹנוֹת שֶׁלִי מְעַלִיָת הָגָג הֵם אִקרָאִיים

וְהֵם בָּאִים אֵלַיי לְלֹא סֵדֶר 

וְמִחוּץ לָזמָן.

מִשָׁם יָכוֹלנוּ לִשׁמוֹעַ אֶת הָסנָאִים וְהָדבִיבוֹנִים בָּגָג, 

וְיָכוֹלנוּ לִראוֹת אֶת הָבְּרֵיכָה שֶׁלָנוּ בָּחָצֵר הָאָחוֹרִית,

וְרָאִינוּ אֶת הָיְלָדִים שְׁהָלכוּ הָבַּיְתָה מִבֵּית הָסֵפֶר,

ושְׁזָרקוּ אָבָנִים עַל דֶלֶת הָכּנִיסָה שֶׁלָנוּ.

אָבַל יוֹתֵר מִכֹּל זֶה,

עָלִיָת הָגָג הָייתָה מָקוֹם לְהִסתָתֵר בּוֹ.

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

שָׂם אֶת הָשָׂטִיחַ וֹהָחִיפוּיִים

וְאֶת הָחָשׁמָל וְהָאִינסטָלָצִיָה,

הוּא מְעוֹלָם לֹא חָזָר לְשָׁם,

עַד כָּמָה שְׁאַנִי יוֹדַעַת,

וְזֶה הָפָך אֶת עַלִיָית הָגָג לָמָקוֹם הָבָּטוּחַ שֶׁלִי.

בָּסוֹף,

הָיְחִידָה שְׁהִשׁתָמשָׁה בָּעַלִיָית הָגָג

הָייתָה דִינָה, הָכָּלבָּה הָלָבּרָדוֹר הָשׁחוֹרָה הָמְעוֹרֶבֶת שֶׁלָנוּ,

הָרבֵּה אַחָרֵי הָהָרָס שֶׁל דָרדָס אָבָּא הָיָה נִשׁכַּח

אוֹ לְפָחוֹת נִסלַח.

נִראָה לִי שְׁלֹא אֶכפָּת לָה מֵהָחוֹם בָּעַלִיָית הָגָג

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

הִיא שָׁכבָה בְּקָרנֵי הָשֶׁמֶשׁ,

כְּאִילוּ הִיא הָייתָה עָל חוֹף אֵיפֹשְׁהוּ,

מְדָמיֶינֶת אֶת הָעוֹלָמוֹת הָחָלוּפִיִים שֶׁלָה,

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

בָּעוֹלָמוֹת הָדִמיוֹנִיִים שֶׁלָה, אַנִי בְּטוּחָה,

הִיא רָדפָה אַחַרֵי הָסנָאִים שְׁיָכלָה לִשׁמוֹעַ בָּגָג

וְאוּלַי, לִפְעַמִים, הִיא אָפִילוּ תָפסָה אוֹתָם.

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

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

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

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The Naming of Tzipporah

Posted on December 21, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

            The primary reasons why I chose the name Tzipporah for our new dog were the meaning of the name (bird), and the sound of it, but I was also thinking of Moses’s Wife Tzipporah in the Hebrew Bible. There was something about her that resonated for me, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was, so I decided to do a little bit of research.

“Why do I have to share a name? That doesn’t sound right.”

Tzipporah, in the Hebrew bible, was the daughter of a Midianite priest named Jethro (and Reuel and Hobab, for some reason). Jethro himself becomes important to the story after the Exodus from Egypt, when the Israelites are camped out at Mount Sinai and Moses needs help figuring out the nitty gritty of how to lead his new nation.

            But first, the beginning of the story: Moses runs away from Egypt (because he killed an Egyptian slave master who was striking a Jewish slave), and as he is passing through Midian he sits down to rest by a well. While there, he sees that Jethro’s daughters are being bullied by a group of shepherds. Moses steps in to help the girls get water for their flocks, and when they get home, Jethro tells them to invite Moses home for dinner, and then to stay, and then to marry his daughter Tzipporah.

The interesting bit comes later on, after Moses is called by God to save the Israelites from Egypt. Moses and Tzipporah and their sons are staying at a roadside inn, on their way to Egypt, when an angel of God comes to kill Moses (there’s no explanation in the text for why God wants to kill the man he just recruited, but, okay). Tzipporah decides that the only way to dissuade God from killing her husband is to circumcise her son Gershom, and then touch her husband’s leg with the bloody piece of skin (or to fling the foreskin at the angel, the text is unclear on this point). And, Moses is saved!

Putting aside the ick for a second, it’s fascinating to me that Tzipporah is the heroine of this story, rather than Moses. Moses does nothing to protect himself. Tzipporah, on the other hand, grabs a sharp stone and does precise surgery on her baby to save her husband. I read a commentary that says the reason God was so angry at Moses in the first place was because he had failed to circumcise his son by the 8th day, so Tzipporah was just doing the job Moses was supposed to have done earlier. But that seems like a lot of impatience, even for God. The interesting thing, to me, is that circumcising baby boys was seen as a way to protect them from evil spirits (blood in general is seen as a prophylactic against evil in the ancient world), so here’s Tzipporah using the same ritual as a way to protect her husband from God, as if God is playing the role of an evil spirit in this story.

The contradictions in the text, and the sense that we’re missing important details of the story, seem to be a feature rather than a bug in the Hebrew bible. A modern-day text would have had all of these contradictions edited away, and all of the missing details filled in, but instead we have this text that includes multiple versions of the same stories, with conflicting and confusing details that lead to wildly different interpretations; which, intentionally or not, allows each of us to reinterpret the text in our own way, and find layer upon layer of possible meanings.

            It’s this decidedly-lean-on-details aspect of the Hebrew bible that led the rabbis to write Midrash, or stories, to help us try to understand the lessons to be learned. That’s where we get some of the explanations for why Tzipporah was named Bird in the first place: maybe she was named after (or inspired by) the Egyptian Bird goddess, Isis, who also saved her husband’s life (in Egyptian mythology); or maybe she was named Bird simply because birds are beautiful and she is beautiful; or maybe she was named Bird because birds are the animal sacrifice used in the case of a house covered in leprosy, and Tzipporah cleansed her father’s house of idols, which is sort of like cleansing the house of leprosy (though I don’t remember anything in the story where Jethro gives up being a priest of Midian, or any of his idols, so…).

            Sometimes the commentators just come up with things because that’s the story they want to be true. Midrash was never added into the text of the Hebrew bible itself, and we are not supposed to confuse midrash with the text of the Hebrew bible, and yet, the way these stories are often taught to children, and remembered by adults like me, the line between what’s actually in the Hebrew bible itself and what was added by the rabbis in the midrash can become blurry.

            But, even with all of that, the text of the Hebrew bible seems pretty clear that Tzipporah is a fierce protector of her husband and children, and that she is very beautiful, and maybe that fierceness and beauty were what made the name seem right for my own Tzipporah. She survived four years in a puppy mill, and that alone takes a lot of grit, but then she came to a new home and was able to be curious and find new adventures, which suggests that she has a lot of spirit and bravery for such a little girl.

My hope for my own Tzipporah is that she continues to write her own midrash, her own fanciful stories, to create a new life, and that she never has to protect herself from an angel of God, or anyone else, so she can devote all of her fierceness to the goal of living a good life in her new home, and finding as much happiness as her little paws can hold.

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?

52 Comments

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Little Miss Someone Came Home

Posted on December 7, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

            She doesn’t love me, yet. I remember this feeling from when Ellie first came home, worried that she would never love me and I would never love her. I’m also having flashbacks to the night Ellie died, when she was struggling to breathe and asked to be put down on the floor, and so I did as she asked, and the next time I saw her she was dead. I worry that the new baby could be sick in some unforeseen way, and that I will wake up in the morning to find her dead. In a way, I think I’m feeling the parts of the grief I couldn’t stand feeling before. It’s not really a coincidence, but more of a blessing, that “someone” arrived a few days before the year anniversary (the Yahrzeit) of Ellie’s death.

            “Someone” is a four-year-old Havanese, former breeding mama, just like Ellie, though with her black and white coloring, she doesn’t remind me of Ellie too much, thank God. She hasn’t barked at all yet, and for the first few days the only thing I could see in her eyes was fear. But as time has passed, I’ve seen more and more curiosity. She’s eating well, and pooping in all the wrong places, but they are healthy poops. She spends most of her time sleeping, as if she is beyond exhausted and needs to fill up a tank that has never really been filled before.

            Two weeks before we adopted her, she was driven up from a puppy mill in Missouri that had decided to “retire” a bunch of mamma dogs (I assume all of the puppies had already been sold). Mom had been calling the shelter (North Shore Animal League America, of Late Show with Stephen Colbert fame) for months, and then daily since news of the rescue of the little dogs. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Mom was told that the dogs wouldn’t be ready for adoption until after Thanksgiving, but by Wednesday, adoption day was scheduled for Friday morning at ten (technically after Thanksgiving, but just barely). My brother and one of my nephews came along with us, because it was the only time they could come for a Thanksgiving visit, and because, you know, dogs. We weren’t the first ones online, but we weren’t the last either. For our entertainment, or just because, the shelter workers kept walking past the line of potential adopters with different dogs, including two Shiba Inu puppies who seemed to be dancing and doing a comedy act. At some point, one of the shelter workers came out to tell us to make two lines, one for dogs and one for cats, and no one moved. We were clearly all there waiting for the small dogs, and I was convinced that there would be no dogs left by the time we got inside.

            But thankfully, I was wrong.

            The way the shelter is set up, you have to walk through the long hallway of big dogs in order to get to the small dogs, in the hopes that someone will fall in love along the way and forget that they live in an apartment. 

When we got to the small dog room, the first dog I noticed was a ten-year-old miniature poodle who was standing on her back legs and demanding attention from everyone who walked by. The dogs were kept in little glass-fronted apartments, with description cards on each door describing the dog or dogs inside: age, breed, gender, health issues, and any specifications (good with kids, needs to be with other dogs, needs to be an only dog, etc.). There were already a bunch of adorable little dogs being held by various humans, seemingly claimed. Then we saw the two Shiba Inu puppies, playing and laughing together, and my nephew said he’d want one of them, if only he wasn’t still living in a college dorm. The two five-month-old Shiba Inu brothers were the exception, though, because most of the dogs were former breeding mamas, from age four to age twelve (I can’t even fathom why a puppy mill still had a twelve-year-old breeding dog). I felt dizzy and overwhelmed by the noise and chaos, but then I saw a six-year-old apricot and white miniature poodle, who looked way too much like Cricket for my comfort, and just behind her, in the same little apartment, was a black and white Havanese. The card said she was four years old and that her name was “Bandita.” Both of the dogs were sleeping, but I asked to see “Bandita” anyway.

            The reason for her name became clear right away, with her raccoon-like eye markings, and she looked terrified, but as soon as she was in my arms I was not willing to give her back. I was still curious about the other dogs in the room, of course, and started wondering if I could adopt two or three dogs at once, or if that would be selfish, given all of the other people still waiting in line. It took me just a minute or two to get the volunteer’s attention and tell her that we had chosen our new dog.

            And then came the paperwork. They had to take “Bandita” from me and put her in another room, so she wouldn’t be claimed by anyone else, and then we waited on line and were given a three-page form to fill out in pencil, and then we waited on line again to review it all with one of the shelter workers, in pen. They needed names and phone numbers for three references, and our vet, and the manager of the co-op where we live. They also wanted information about our previous dogs: health, training habits, living conditions, etc. The shelter worker passed over the fenced-in yard requirement quickly, thank God, and told us that at four years old, “Bandita” qualified for the same senior to senior program under which we’d adopted Butterfly ten years earlier, which meant that the already low adoption fee would be reduced again, down to $25, and any health care provided by the clinic at the shelter would be subsidized. And then we were sent away while they checked through all of our information, in order to decide if we were qualified to adopt a puppy mill survivor.

Miss Butterfly

            We sat at home for two hours waiting for the phone call, trying to distract ourselves, worried they’d find a reason to deny the adoption. In the meantime, I started thinking about names. I had promised myself I would give our next dog a Hebrew name, and my first thought was Tikvah, which means “hope.” But I was worried that calling her “hope” would put too much weight on her tiny shoulders, so I started researching Hebrew girl names: Aviva (spring), Ilana (young tree), Tzipporah (bird), Shir (song or poem), Yaffa (beautiful), Yofi (beauty), Dvash (honey), Rina (singing and joy), Osher (happiness), Adina (gentle), Dafna, Dahlia, Tiferet, Hadassah, and on and on.

            When we finally got the call that “Bandita” was ours, I was thrilled! I didn’t expect to be so happy. I thought I would only feel relieved, or even trepidatious, but I was giddy. It was puppy time!!!

            When we got back to the shelter, all of the parking spots within six blocks were taken by other potential adopters, so I dropped Mom at the front door and drove up the hill to find a spot on a side street.

            While I was parking, Mom signed us up for pet insurance that would cover 80% of her health care, no matter where we chose to take her, and by the time I arrived it was time to read and sign a ton more paperwork, and visit with the vet tech to make sure we understood her health situation (spayed, still has a small scar, had a dental and would need one every year, would need two more vaccinations in two weeks), and then we were loaded up with gifts from the shelter’s corporate sponsors (a Swiffer wet jet, a bag of Rachel Rae dog food, and a dog toy from Subaru and one from a coffee company I didn’t recognize).

            There was so much to carry that I left Mom with the baby, to take an adoption picture and buy some wet dog food, while I dragged all of the loot back to the car. Mom and puppy were waiting for me when I returned, and then they were safely ensconced next to the Swiffer box in the back seat, and we made our way home.

            The first person we met in the back yard at the co-op was Kevin, the mini-goldendoodle who loved (and was very much loved by) Cricket, and he was very enthusiastic about sniffing the new dog and telling her all the news. She was, of course, terrified, of him, and of the grass, and of the leash, and of me, but she made a point of sniffing Kevin’s butt anyway.

            As soon as we got into the apartment, I sat down on the couch, still wearing my winter jacket, and held her on my chest for the next few hours, afraid to move. When I finally put her down on the floor (because I really had to go to the bathroom), she ran for the smallest hiding spot she could find, which turned out to be Mom’s garden kneeler, which was sitting on its side in a corner of the dining room. She peeked out from behind the bench of the kneeler and then curled up behind it, using it as a shield.

We’d thought we still had a pet gate in storage, and had planned to put her and her food and bed and wee wee pad in the kitchen, but without the pet gate we couldn’t reinforce the boundary, so even though she started her first night in her bed in the kitchen, she quickly found her way down the hall to a little round rug on Grandma’s bedroom floor, where she spent the rest of the first night.

Without the pet gate, trying to explain to her where to pee and poop has been difficult (or impossible), but she’s been making progress anyway. We take her outside a few times a day, even though she has no idea what to do out there and just sits on the grass, waiting to be picked up and brought back inside.

By Sunday morning, we’d narrowed the name choices down to Tzipporah, Tikvah and Shir (or Shira or Shiri), but I still couldn’t quite figure out who she was, and I was afraid of getting her name wrong, forever and ever amen.

            By Monday afternoon, she wasn’t shaking anymore, though she was still skittish when the humans came too close. Pretty quickly, she found the two dog beds, filled with Cricket and Ellie’s toys and blankets, and spent many hours making herself cozy in the midst of her sisters’ smells. We set up a cushion and blanket for her in my room., so she could feel safe and welcome there too, and she was beginning to venture further into the corners of the apartment, examining all of the smells and sounds and textures of her new world. She was starting to stretch out and try different sleeping spots and positions, instead of always being curled in a ball on the round rug in Mom’s room. She even started to look at us, and to continue eating while we were in the room. By then, I had narrowed the choices to Tikvah and Tzipporah. I was leaning more towards Tzipporah (bird), because the sound of it seemed to fit her, and because I could already see her yearning to fly. But I was still holding onto the idea of “hope,” for myself, and wasn’t quite ready to let it go.

            By midweek, when we lit the (vanilla scented) candle for Ellie’s Yahrzeit, and sat with that grief again, something had shifted inside of me and I decided that I was ready to let go of my expectations, and hopes, and “someone” finally became Tzipporah (Tzippy for short).      

Ellie’s Yahrzeit

Her fears are still prominent. She had an encounter with the vacuum cleaner the other day, a previously unknown evil, that sent her back to bed for half a day. She refused to crawl out from under her blankets for anything, even dinner. But we can already see a glimmer of her adventurous spirit hidden underneath the fear. Step by step, chicken treat by chicken treat, I hope that she will eventually decide that she was adopted by the right family, and she’ll discover that good things really are possible, especially love.

Tzipporah

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?

133 Comments

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The Choir

Posted on November 23, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

In my head there is a large choir

full of cacophony

and also harmony, sometimes.

I have all kinds of voices in my choir,

from too high to too low,

from too loud to too quiet,

from chaotic to orderly,

and everything in between.

I’m still not used to singing with my choir.

I don’t know how to train it

or coordinate it

or control it the way it needs.

There is no one conductor.

There is no one composer.

And there is no silence.

But there are moments

that sound beautiful to me.

And there are notes that I am happy to hear,

even just once in my life.

Maybe one day,

soon or in the future,

my choir will be able to create the beauty

and the complexity

and the hope

that lives in my imagination.

That is my prayer.

המקהלה

בָּרֹאשׁ שֶׁלִי יֵשׁ מַקְהֵלָה

מְלֵאָה בְּקָקוֹפוֹנִיָה

וְגָם הַרמוֹנִיָה, לִפְעָמִים.

יֵשׁ לִי כֹּל מִינֵי קוֹלוֹת בָּמַקְהֵלָה שֶׁלִי,

מְגבוֹהוֹת מִדַי לְנְמוּכוֹת מִדַי,

מְחָזָק מִדַי עַד שָׁקֶט מִדַי,

מְכֵּאוֹטִי לְמְסוּדָר,

וְכֹּל מָה שְׁבֵּינֵיהֶם.

עוֹד לֹא הִתרָגָלתִי לָשִׁיר עִם הָמַקְהֵלָה שֶׁלִי.

אַנִי לֹא יוֹדַעַת אֵיך לְהִתאָמֵן אוֹתָה

אוֹ לְתָאֵם אוֹתָה

אוֹ לִשׁלוֹט בָּה כּמוֹ שְׁצָרִיך.

אֵין מְנָצָחָת אָחַת.

אֵין מָלחִינָה אָחָת.

וְאֵין שֶׁקֶט.

אָבָל יֵשׁ רְגָעִים

שְׁנִשׁמָעִים לִי יָפִים.

וְיֵשׁ צלִילִים שְׁטוֹבִים לִי לִשׁמוֹעַ,

אָפִילוּ רָק פָּעָם בָּחַיִים.

אוּלַי יוֹם אֶחָד,

בְּקָרוֹב אוֹ בָּעָתִיד,

הָמָקהֵלָה שֶׁלִי תוּכָל לִיצוֹר אֶת הָיוֹפִי

וְהָמוּרכַּבוּת

וְהָתִקוָוה

שְׁחַי עָכשַׁיו רָק בָּדִמיוֹן שֶׁלִי.

זוֹ הָתפִילָה שֶׁלִי.

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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Dominos

Posted on November 9, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

Everything seems like a game of dominos to me.

One mistake leads to another,

and mistakes lead to intentional responses,

and one thing causes another and another,

but when we see the dominos fall

we can never remember the domino that started it all,

and that it was a mistake,

and that there were many choices throughout this process.

We only remember the last thing,

the crisis,

the violence,

or even the death,

and we are sure we know who is to blame,

the only one,

who is responsible for all of it.

No one believes it starts with them.

And no one wants to be

the only domino to fall.

When all the damage is done,

and the accidents are forgotten

and the responsibility is assigned

and the punishment given,

the story ends.

But only until the story begins again.

דוֹמִינוֹס

הָכֹּל נִראָה לִי כְּמוֹ מִשׂחָק דוֹמִינוֹס.

טָעוּת אַחַת מוֹבִילָה לְאַחֶרֶת

וְטָעוּיוֹת מוֹבִילוֹת לְתגוּבוֹת מְכָוָונוֹת,

וְדָבָר אֶחָד גוֹרֵם לְאַחֵר וְאַחֵר.

אַבַל, כְּשְׁאַנָחנוּ רוֹאִים אֶת הָדוֹמִינוֹס נוֹפלִים

אָנַחנוּ אָף פָּעַם לֹא זוֹכרִים אֶת הָדומִינוֹ שְׁהִתחִיל אֶת הָכֹּל,

וְשְׁזֶה הָיָה טָעוּת,

וְשְׁיֵשׁ בָּתָהָלִיך הָזֶה הָרבֵּה בְּרֵירוֹת.

אַנָחנוּ רָק זוֹכרִים אֶת הָדָבָר הָאָחָרוֹן,

הָמָשְׁבֵּר,

הָאָלִימוּת,

אוֹ אָפִילוּ הָמָוֶות,

וְאַנָחנוּ בְּטוּחִים שְׁאַנָחנוּ יוֹדעִים מִי הָאָשָׁם,

הָיְחִיד,

שְׁיֵשׁ לוֹ אַחְרַיוּת עַל הָכֹּל.

אַף אֶחָד לֹא מָאָמִין שְׁזֶה הִתחִיל אִיתָם.

וְאַף אֶחָד לֹא רוֹצֶה לִהִיוֹת

הָדוֹמִינוֹ הָיְחִיד שְׁלִיפּוֹל.

כָּאָשֶׁר כֹּל הָנֶזֶק נָעַשֶׂה,

וְהָתְאוּנוֹת נִשׁכָּחוֹת

וְהָאַחרַיוּת מוֹקצִית

וְהָעוֹנֶשׁ נִיתֵן,

הָסִיפּוּר הִסתָיֵים.

אָבָל, רָק עַד שְׁהָסִיפּוֹר מָתחִיל מְחָדָשׁ.

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 Basement

Posted on October 19, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

In the basement

In the green house

There were all kinds of tools.

My father collected them.

He taught Industrial Arts to teenagers,

And he loved to build things,

And fix things,

And take things apart,

With his own hands.

Sometimes,

We would go down to the basement to visit our father

On the steep staircase,

Stairs that always creaked.

It seemed like the stairs were warning of something.

The smell in the basement was, in large part, sawdust.

There was sawdust in every corner, and in the air.

The table saw was in the middle of the room,

And the jigsaw,

And all of the handsaws in a line hanging from the ceiling.

The floor of the basement was made of concrete

And the walls were painted grey

And it all looked like a bomb shelter.

There were metal exit doors parallel to the floor

At the end of a set of additional steps

And I always thought that these doors were there to let us out

After the dust settled, after the end of the world.

There was a darkroom in the basement, to develop photos,

In black and white and color.

I didn’t like the red light in the darkroom,

Even more so the darkness itself.

And there was a corner of the basement for making bullets

With gun powder and casings.

My father had more than one gun.

Everywhere, my father had Philips head screwdrivers and

Flat head screwdrivers and wrenches and drills in every size.

He had a wood lathe and a metal lathe

And hammers and nails and an anvil screwed to the floor.

There was also a ceramics kiln and a jewelry kiln.

There were clay molds

And a printing press that had to be used carefully,

One letter at a time.

There were all kinds of things in my father’s basement,

Loud noises

And smells that burned the inside of my nose,

Smells like turpentine and sawdust and metal,

And maybe blood, or maybe that was just in my imagination.

not my pictures, but very familiar

בָּמָרתֵף

בָּבַּיִת הָיָרוֹק

הָיוּ כֹּל מִינֵי כְּלֵי עָבוֹדָה.

אָבָּא שֶׁלִי אָסָף אוֹתָם.

הוּא לִימֵד אָמַנוּיוֹת תָעָשִׂייתִיוֹת לְבּנֵי נוֹעָר,

וְהוּא אָהָב לִבנוֹת דְבָרִים,

וְלְתָקֵן דְבָרִים,

וְלְפָרֵק דְבָרִים,

עִם הָיָדַיִים שֶׁלוֹ.

לִפְעָמִים

יָרָדנוּ לָמָרתֵף לְבָקֵר אֶת אָבָּא

בְּמָדרֵגוֹת הָתלוּלוֹת,

מָדרֵגוֹת שְׁכֹּל פָּעַם חָרקוּ.

נִרְאָה שְׁהָמָדרֵגוֹת הִזהִירוּ מִמָשְׁהוּ.

הָרֵיחַ בָּמָרתֵף הָיָה, בְּגָדוֹל, נָסוֹרֶת.

הָייתָה נְסוֹרֶת בְּכֹּל פִּינָה, וְבָּאָוִויר.

הָמָסוֹר שׁוּלחָן הָיָה בְּאֶמצַע הָחֶדֶר,

וְהָמָסוֹר פָּאזֶל,

וְכֹּל מסוֹרֵי הָיָדנַיִים בְּשׁוּרָה וְתָלוּי מְהָתִקרָה.

הָרִצפָּה שֶׁל הָמָרתֵף הָייתָה עָשׂוּיָה מִמֶלֶט

וְהָקִירוֹת נִצבְּעוּ בְּאָפוֹר,

וְהָכֹּל נִראָה כּמוֹ מִקלָט.

הָיוּ דלָתוֹת יְצִיאָה מִמָתֶכֶת מָקבִילִם לָרִצפָּה

בְּסוֹף סֶט מָדרֵגוֹת נוֹסָף

וְכֹּל הָזמָן חָשָׁבתִי שְׁהָדלָתוֹת הָאֵלֶה הָיוּ שָׁם לְשָׁחרֵר אוֹתָנוּ

אַחָרֵי שְׁהָאַבָק שָׁקָע, אָחַרֵי סוֹף הָעוֹלָם.

הָיָה חֶדֶר חוֹשֶׁך בָּמָרתֵף, לִפִיתוֹחַ תְמוּנוֹת,

בְּשָׁחוֹר לָבָן וְגָם בְּצֶבָע.

לֹא אָהָבתִי אֶת הָאוֹר הָאָדוֹם בָּחָדָר הָחוֹשֶׁך,

עוֹד לֹא אֶת הָחוֹשֶׁך עָצמוֹ.

וְהָייתָה פִּינָה בָּמָרתֵף לְהָכָנָת כָדוּרִים

עִם אָבָקָת רוֹבָה וְתָרמִילִים.

הָיוּ לְאָבָּא יוֹתֵר מְאֶקדַח אֶחָד.

בּכֹל מָקוֹם, הָיוּ לְאָבָּא מִבגָרִים בְּרֹאשׁ פִילִפּס וְבְּרֹאשׁ שָׁטוּחַ

וְמִפתַחֵי בָּרגִים וְמָקדָחִים בְּכֹּל מִידָה.

הָיָה לוֹ מְחַרטֵת עֵץ וְמְחַרטֵת מַתֶכֶת,

וְפְּטִישִׁים וְמָסמָרִים וְסָדָן מוּברָג לָרִצפָּה.

גָם הָיָה כָּבשָׁן קָרָמִיקָה וְכָּבשָׁן תָכשִׁיטִים.

הָיוּ לוֹ תָבנִיוֹת חִמֵר

וְבֵית דְפוּס שְׁצרִיכִים לְהִשׁתָמֵשׁ בָּה בְּזְהִירוּת,

אוֹת אַחַת בְּכֹּל פָּעָם.

הָיוּ כֹּל מִינֵי דבָרִים בָּמָרתֵף שֶׁל אָבָּא,

רָעָשִׁים חָזָקִים

וְרֵיחוֹת שְׁצָרבּוּ אֶת הָחֵלֶק הָפְּנִימִי שֶׁל הָאָף שֶׁלִי,

רֵיחוֹת כְּמוֹ טֶרפַּנטִין וְנְסוֹרֶת וְמָתֶכֶת,

וְאוּלַי דָם, אוֹ אוּלַי זֶה הָיָה רַק בָּדִמיוֹן שֶׁלִי.

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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Hebrew Practice Groups

Posted on September 21, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

            At our first professional development of the year, we were asked which sound most characterized our summer, and I realized that mine was laughter, because the laughter in my online Hebrew class this summer was constant, even when we were on mute and could only see each other’s laughing faces. We became a tight knit group, with our young Israeli teacher, able to cover all of the emotional ground that came our way, without ever getting too depressed, because we knew we would be laughing again soon.

            But actually, I spent even more time in Hebrew practice groups this summer than in the class itself, because I had the time and because I finally felt like I could handle the social anxiety that comes with meeting so many strangers and making mistakes in front of them. It was all under the safe canopy of the same online Hebrew language program as my class, but in the practice groups I was meeting dozens of people from different Hebrew levels, and time zones, and ages and cultures.

            There are so many strange topics for discussion in the practice groups. Of course there are the standards: favorite food, favorite movie, what would you bring to a desert island. But then they start to get creative: what’s the weirdest food you’ve ever eaten (Ptcha – calf’s foot jelly); how would you solve global warming? (teach everyone how to fly: Laoof, like a bird, instead of Latoos, on a plane); how many languages can you speak (this one gets very competitive, and more than a few people have tried to count Spanish because they know how to say “Hola.”)

“I can teach you how to fly, if you want.”

            But we are always free to talk about something else in the breakout rooms, as long as we say it in Hebrew, so I’ve had long conversations about my dogs, or teaching, or growing up Jewish on Long Island. And if we’re pretty sure the teacher isn’t about to pop into the breakout room, we can discuss our favorite and least favorite teachers. You’d be amazed how diligently we can stick to Hebrew in the midst of a good gossip session. Because, you know, we’re studying here. We take it very seriously.

            The way the teachers lurk in the breakout rooms is always a topic of conversation. First of all, because they just appear and disappear without warning, like spies. But also, they keep their cameras off, as if we’re supposed to pretend they’re not really there. So, if I make a point of saying hello to the other students in the breakout room and don’t specifically say hello to the teacher, a disembodied voice might say, “Whatever, I’m not here, just ignore me,” which means, Hey, how dare you ignore me!

            Sometimes we’ll talk directly to the teacher – or to the box on the screen with the school logo on it – and ask for the Hebrew word for this or that, and the teacher will pop up on screen to answer “in person.” One time, a friend of mine asked her question, got her answer, and then said, “okay, you can go back into your little box now.”

            We get to meet a lot of teachers in the practice groups and see what their styles are – how they do corrections, how rigidly (or not) they follow their lesson plans, whether or not they have a sense of humor – and I’ve been able to get a much better idea of what works for me and what doesn’t, so that when a teacher’s style starts to get on my nerves, or leaves me feeling stupid, I’m less likely to assume it’s my fault (but only a little less likely).

            Our young Israeli teachers have also introduced us to something called pitzuchim – which literally translates to cracking nuts or seeds, but is used in Hebrew to refer to the way Israelis are always trying to figure out where they might know each other from (among American Jews this is called Jewish geography). It turns out that a lot of the teachers and students in the program have connections, through second cousins or long lost neighbors or who knows what else. So far, though, I have cracked no nuts or seeds on these zooms, which is kind of disappointing. Getting to Israel would be so much easier if I discovered a long lost wealthy relative with an empty apartment by the beach.

(Not my picture)

            This time spent in breakout rooms used to be the most stressful part of practice groups for me, and the reason why I avoided them so assiduously for years, but now, after the first few twinges of anxiety, I’ve come to really enjoy hearing everyone’s stories, and I’m less self-conscious about my broken Hebrew (though I still feel grumpy each time I make a mistake, which happens often).

            The most stressful part for me now is when we have to translate sentences from English to Hebrew, often using words I haven’t practiced recently (because I’m visiting practice groups at different levels from my own); but I’m getting used to laughing at my mistakes, and I’ve noticed that when I screw up, and laugh at myself, other people start to relax about their own mistakes. It’s almost like I’m doing a service.

            In some of the practice groups, after we go over some grammar from previous levels, we’ll read short articles together, or even just headlines, from online Hebrew language newspapers – often about food or travel or popular culture, so we can learn words we wouldn’t come across in class, like how to say “laundering money” in Hebrew. The words that are hardest to read in these articles are often borrowed from other languages. So, more often than not, our Israeli teachers will start to giggle when we can’t figure out how to pronounce “Mexico,”when it’s written in Hebrew letters.   

One of the lowest stress exercises that we do in practice group – though I can make anything feel stressful without really trying – is when the teacher puts an article on the screen and instead of asking us to read, and, God forbid, translate it, we just have to find one word at a time. It reminds me of being in first grade or so and realizing that there were English words I could just recognize on the page, without needing to sound them out, because they had become so familiar to me just by their shape.

            As a result of all of this time in the practice groups, I sometimes hear myself speaking in Hebrew, without having planned what to say ahead of time; the words just come out of my mouth, and I kind of look around the room, wondering who said that.

            And, really, during a summer where, aside from Mom, most of my in-person human interactions were at supermarkets or doctors’ offices, these practice groups gave me the chance to meet and chat with and learn from dozens of real people, who are fascinating and funny and weird and challenging. It’s still strange to me how real a community can feel, even when it only exists online; but in a way, the boundaries created by the computer (of time, and purpose, and mute buttons) creates a sense of safety that allows me to say what I really mean more often. Now, if only I could translate those safe boundaries into the real world…

“Pfft. Who needs the real world?”

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 End of Summer

Posted on August 31, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

I’m not ready for the summer to end. I still have writing to do, and doctors’ appointments to go to, and lesson plans to revise. I still want to go to every online Hebrew practice group I possibly can, and see if more poems arrive (I have no idea what makes them bubble up, though there may be storks involved). I tried to get so much done this summer: rebuilding my exercise practice, working on nutrition, changing medications, taking continuing education social work classes, working on therapy, and writing, and Hebrew, and social skills, and on and on. But it’s not enough. I still don’t have a dog. The novel still isn’t finished. My health is still whatever it is. There are still tons of movies I want to see, and issues I wish I could resolve. I’m not ready to go back to work, and choir practice, and trying to find time for my writing in the spaces in between.

This is not my picture, but this is how I picture the poetry stork.

            I’m pretty sure I feel this way at the end of every summer, wishing for another month of “vacation” in order to get more of my work done, before the new school year can make me feel like I’m being tied to the back of a speeding train.

            I know I will enjoy getting back to the kids, and singing with the choir, but I also know that I will miss this feeling of open time, where I can do things at my own pace and give myself enough time to recover from one panic attack before embarking on the next one.

            Here’s hoping that all of the work I’ve done this summer will have shifted something inside of me, creating more space for my summer self to exist during the school year. Because I really want to feel more like myself all year, and not just for a few months at a time.

            Fingers crossed.

“Um, I don’t think I have fingers.”

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

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

48 Comments

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