Tag Archives: Israel

Israeli Standup Comedy

Posted on September 13, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            One of the things I’ve been enjoying a lot lately in my online Hebrew classes is watching Israeli stand-up comedy routines. Even a year ago, I would have found it really difficult to follow what they were saying because they speak so quickly, but now, as long as the videos include subtitles in Hebrew, I can pretty much follow what’s going on. And I’ve found that I’m learning a lot about Israeli culture from these short videos on YouTube, because a comedian’s job is to comment on, and laugh at, all of pompous, ridiculous, or just plain wrong things the politicians, the media, and regular people are saying and doing every day.

“I prefer give-me-a-treat-comedy.”

            One of my favorite Israeli comedians is Giora Zinger. He and his family made Aliya (immigrated to Israel) from Ukraine when he was five or six years old (he has a whole bit about how he, and many other Jewish boys from the former Soviet Union, had to be circumcised when they arrived in Israel, and getting circumcised as a newborn is a completely different experience from getting circumcised when you are old enough to know what’s going on). A lot of his humor is about the cultural divide between his Ukrainian parents and the Israeli culture he grew up in. And his version of his mother’s accent, in Hebrew, is probably my favorite thing in his act, both because his version of his mother speaks much more slowly than most Israelis, so I can understand what she’s saying, and because his version of her says all of the things you’re not supposed to say out loud.

Giora Zinger

Israeli humor is, overall, less politically correct than American humor, so some comedians can come across as a little mean, but most of the time they are refreshingly honest and give me a lot of insight into how people in Israel really feel.

            Another comedian I started watching recently is Yuval HaGanan, which translates to Yuval the Nursery School Teacher, and his act comes straight out of his day job as a, yes, nursery school teacher. He does a lot of impressions of his three- and four-year-old students, sharing their responses to the war, or a death in the family, young love and, of course, poop. And, like Giora Zinger’s mother, they tend to tell it like it is. Yuval also talks about all of the times when he had no idea what he was supposed to say to the kids’ very direct questions and just went with whatever came out of his mouth, and I can relate.

Yuval HaGanan

            But my favorite Israeli comedian at the moment is Udi Kagan. His humor is often very silly, and filled with bodily noises, and jokes at his own expense, and at his failures as a husband and as a father and as an adult male in general. He is also a musician and often plays the piano and sings as part of his act. There was one video about re-hearing the Aerosmith song “I don’t want to miss a thing,” (from the movie Armageddon), years after it became a hit, and suddenly realizing how disturbing the lyrics are (I could stay awake just to hear you breathing…). He plays a lot with that space between Hebrew and English, where Israelis often find themselves, because they watch a lot of American TV, and listen to a lot of American music, and study English much more seriously in school than Americans study any second language.

Udi Kagan

            But the reason why he’s my favorite right now is because of a 20-minute clip that was recently posted on YouTube where he talked about suffering from PTSD after his army service, and how it came roaring back after the Hamas attacks on October seventh. In Israel they either say “PTSD,” in English, or they use the Hebrew translation of “Battle Shock,” which is an old term for PTSD, and maybe more to the point in this case. In the video, he talks about all of the ways he and his friends tried to ignore their symptoms, or mute them with drugs and alcohol, until he finally asked for help and started to get better. And something about his vulnerability, and silliness, and self-deprecating honesty, allowed the audience to really go there with him. And not just the in-person audience, because I’ve already seen a bunch of videos of young Israeli men responding to his performance and opening up about their own experiences with PTSD.

            I was getting frustrated that I couldn’t share these Israeli comedians with my friends and readers, because their acts are in Hebrew with only Hebrew subtitles, but when I went back to watch Udi Kagan’s “Battle Shock” video again, I found a version with English subtitles. None of his other videos, that I could find, had been translated, but maybe someone recognized that this one needed to be shared with as many people as possible.

            There are, of course, many other voices in Israeli comedy. There are even Israelis who perform in English, like Yohai Sponder, who has become a huge presence online (for the Jewish world at least) since October 7th. His broken English is a big part of his act, as is the giant star of David he wears around his neck. He’s not gentle and sweet like Udi or Yuval or Giora; he has the macho style that is more often identified with Israeli men. But a lot of Diaspora Jews have found comfort in his confidence, and his pride in being Jewish, in the face of the renewed wave of antisemitism.

There is still something amazing to me about the existence of a country, however small, where being Jewish is the norm, and therefore where the music and the art and the drama and the comedy all either come from a Jewish perspective or are in conversation with Jewish history, without apology. My hope is that this war will end soon, and the hostages are returned, and a road to peace with the Palestinians can be found, and that peace will make it possible for the lighter, softer side of Israelis to become more visible, both so people can see them more fully, and because I think Israelis have wisdom to share about resilience and how to find humor and love and hope even under difficult circumstances. 

Yohai Sponder (English): https://www.facebook.com/share/v/12Mb6a9ffdC/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Udi Kagan, “Battle Shock” (Hebrew with English subtitles): (previous link didn’t work, hopefully this one will) https://open.substack.com/pub/danielgordis/p/body-and-soul-remarkable-stories?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Another link from Sam256 (here’s a link to my translation that should work)

https://www.kapwing.com/videos/68b0dddfc7c3f67997512635

“Can you find me a version with bark-titles?”

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?

44 Comments

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

The 18Forty Podcast

Posted on August 30, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            Over the past year or so, I’ve been listening to an English language podcast by Sruli Fruchter (formerly the editor of The Commentator at Yeshiva University, now a rabbinical student in Jerusalem) as part of an educational platform called the 18Forty Project, which asks the same 18 questions (basically) of forty diverse Israeli thinkers. The goal of the podcast is to give the English-speaking world a wide and thorough understanding of where different groups in Israel stand on the issues of the day (politically, ethically, religiously), and it is a potent reminder that Israel is a democracy, rather than an autocracy; which means that all of the people have a voice, as opposed to most countries in the Middle East, where the leadership of a country (like, say, Iran) can be laser focused on one goal for 40 years (like, say, destroying Israel). These interviews also make it clear that democracy is messy, and full of compromises and disagreement, and it isn’t always rational, or linear, as we have clearly experienced in America’s democracy as well.

            The first few interviews I watched/listened to on YouTube were with Israeli journalists I knew from other venues (Haviv Rettig Gur and Yossi Klein Halevi), and I found the questions interesting, even if the answers were familiar, so I decided to look for more interviews with less well-known (to me) figures. The interviews don’t exist in a time vacuum, so an interview that took place early in the war with Hamas will have a different vibe than one that happened after the 12-day war with Iran, but because of the consistent format (those eighteen questions) you can get a pretty solid idea of where each of these thinkers would land, independent of when you meet them. Some of the 18 questions include: Is Zionism still necessary now that the state of Israel exists? Which is more important for Israel: Judaism or democracy? And, how have your views on politics and religion changed, if at all, since October 7th?

             What happened for me, over time, was that I came to trust the format, and the interviewer, despite the fact that he looks a lot like my oldest nephew (aka very young), or maybe because he seemed so familiar, which allowed me to go with him in his curiosity as he interviewed Israeli voices further and further from the center. There was one interview that stood out for me, with Rabbanit Shani Taragin, who is part of the settler movement. This woman, voicing her sincere hope that as a result of the current war she and her family will be able to return to Gaza, is far outside my comfort zone as a progressive American Jew. She and her family lived in Gaza before the disengagement in 2005, when the prime minister at that time, Ariel Sharon, following the advice of Israel’s international friends (especially The United States) ordered the Israeli army to remove all Jewish presence from Gaza, from the Israeli army bases down to the Jewish bodies buried in the ground. The goal of the disengagement was to hand over control of the Gaza strip to the Palestinians, in the hope that creating distance between the two communities would lead to peace. Unfortunately, Hamas quickly took over (through a combination of elections and killing of the opposition) which has led, clearly, to the opposite of peace.

It is practically dogma that the biggest obstacle to a two-state solution, and therefore to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, is the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories (in Gaza, before 2005, and in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria still today). This has been accepted wisdom for a very long time, even though the first small settlements only started after Israel won the 1967 war and the hoped-for land for peace deals with the surrounding Arab countries failed to take place (the answer from every Arab country at that time was a firm no, to any deal, of any kind).  Because of the lack of a peace deal, Israel remained in control of the land, and allowed some Jewish people to settle there; some wanted to return to the property they owned before the 1948 war, and some wanted to create settlements to reinforce security for the borders of official Israel, and some saw the land as an essential part of greater Israel as described in the Hebrew Bible and believed that it was God’s will that they should live there.

“Oy.”

Eventually, after the peace deal with Egypt, which traded the Sinai desert for peace (and specifically did not include the Gaza strip, at Egypt’s request, even though Gaza had been under Egyptian control from 1948 to 1967), when negotiations began with the Palestinians themselves (rather than with the surrounding Arab countries), the Jewish settlements in the territories became a sticking point, among others, in the discussions of a two-state solution. The other big obstacle to peace was the fact that Hamas, and other Palestinian groups, refused any offer of peace that allowed Israel to continue to exist, and used terrorism to disrupt the attempts of more moderate Palestinians to make peace with Israel. Hamas is not alone in its belief that Israel shouldn’t exist, and that the land from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea belongs to the Arabs; it’s one of the slogans repeated often at pro-Palestinian demonstrations, though when translated into English it changes to “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

So, is it terrorism, or is it the settlements that prevented peace? Or something else? There is so much history here, and so much dogma, and so much misinformation and confusion, that it is all very difficult to untangle and absorb. And given all of the bad feelings about the role of the settlements in preventing peace, the idea that I would have been willing to sit down and listen to someone from the settler movement, for more than an hour, with an open mind and even compassion, was hard to imagine. But Sruli Fruchter’s gentle style, and his patience and respect, in this interview as with all of the others, allowed me to hear this woman’s often thoughtful and surprising answers. And listening to her opened a door for me, to read more articles and listen to more interviews, from Israel Unpacked and The Times of Israel and Haviv Rettig Gur, that went into more depth on the settlements and helped me to understand that there are many different groups under the umbrella of “settlers,” most of whom are non-violent, and many of whom are left wing and even secular, often living in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) because property is more affordable there than elsewhere in Israel. The more violent segment of the settler movement, sometimes known as The Hilltop Youth, many of whom are part of the community that was forcibly removed from Gaza by Israeli soldiers 20 years ago, aim their anger and violence not only at the Palestinians but also at the Israeli soldiers who come to intervene. It gets even more complicated, because sometimes the settlers are responding to genuine acts of terror by Hamas or Islamic Jihad, and sometimes they are punishing whole villages for the acts of a few, and sometimes they are just attacking for what looks like no good reason (I’m sure they have their own reasons for who they target, but it looks chaotic from the outside). And, some Israeli soldiers sympathize with the Hilltop Youth and take the side of the settlers instead of protecting the Palestinian civilians, even when the settlers are clearly in the wrong.

Suffice it to say, the gap between the Hilltop Youth and this woman being interviewed by Sruli Fruchter, is vast, and yet, before listening to her, I would have assumed they were one and the same. And even though listening to her didn’t change my opinion about the danger of allowing Jews to resettle in Gaza, it helped me to have more compassion for the people who hope for that with all their hearts, and to have more understanding of why this conflict is as complicated and intractable as it has become.

            These interviews also allowed me to hear from Arab Israeli thinkers and activists, and far left Jewish voices, and right-wing rabbis, and historians, and former peaceniks who are now hawks, all of whom disagree with each other, vehemently, about what constitutes reality and what Israel needs to do to reach peace. I think these voices were chosen because they could do the best job of advocating (in English) for their particular points of view, so that we could have a better idea of what the war of ideas in Israel actually looks like, rather than hearing from people who just scream epithets at each other (which is as large a feature of Israeli politics as it is in America), which would set up each argument as a straw man that could easily be knocked down.

I am still confused, for myself, about what’s true, and what will or won’t work, and what’s fair, but I feel like I have a much better grasp on the range of opinions involved, and the actions that have been tried and have failed, and the hopes and prejudices that keep people engaged in the fight, than I ever had before.

            I’m not imagining that many people who read this blog post are going to watch or listen to all forty hour-plus-long interviews, but maybe one or two of them could spark someone’s curiosity and create a little more bandwidth for the understanding that this conflict cannot be solved, or judged, in a hashtag.

            I’m also hoping that the 18Forty Project decides to keep going with these interviews, maybe reaching even farther afield to the non-Israeli figures who are intimately involved in the discussions and would play a role in any potential resolution of the conflict (though I feel pretty protective of this nephew-look-a-like, so I don’t want anyone sending him to places where his safety would be at risk). For now, since the forty planned interviews have been completed, Sruli and his team have been creating something like mixtapes, a collection of a tapas platters of different voices on specific questions, cut and pasted from the already existing interviews. It’s yet another way of opening a door, so that if you watch one of the collections and hear a voice that captures your attention, you can then go and watch the whole interview and learn more.

            There are a bunch of interviews that I want to go back and listen to again myself, either because I fell asleep halfway through (don’t judge, I usually listen to these at bedtime when I can’t keep my eyes open but still need something to crowd out the silence), or because there was so much to take in that I couldn’t absorb it all in one session. There were also a few interviews that I gave up on halfway through, for any number of reasons, and I may have to push myself to sit through those again as well, just to be fair. We’ll see.

“Oy. Again.”

Some links from the series, if you’re interested in dipping a toe in:

5 Israeli Thinkers on the divides in Israeli society: https://youtu.be/_oLPQJSl49k?si=lr08TMqjvvHtEOGJ

5 Israeli thinkers on the current Israeli government: https://youtu.be/Fti-Ld6ejy4?si=QTkBHJ3n1lOlL5sL

Rabbanit Shani Taragin: https://youtu.be/p6EA8pGK3EI?si=fZbCGfR-KPX9dn7e

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?

23 Comments

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

The Hope Muscle

Posted on August 2, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            A few weeks ago, I was talking to my rabbi about the High Holiday readings (because I spell check/copy edit every year), and he told me that the clergy team at our synagogue has decided to focus on hope and comfort for this year’s high holiday services (in late September), rather than the usual emphasis on what we could be doing better, or what’s going on in the world that we need to pay more attention to. The decision was made a few months ago, when it had already become clear that people had hit their limit on pain and suffering and couldn’t take much more, and the news has only gotten worse since then.

There’s some relief in knowing that I am not alone in needing more hope, but that conversation made me realize that, actually, I still have a pretty big reservoir of hope to rely on. I’ve spent a lifetime learning how to find hope where it shouldn’t exist, and to build it up out of almost nothing. It’s like strengthening any other muscle, just that this one creates a spiritual ache from the effort, rather than a physical one. But even before I began the daily work of lifting myself up out of despair, I had a foundation of hope that came from years of being taught to think in terms of millennia, rather than centuries or decades. From lessons in Jewish history and the Hebrew Bible, I was taught to see people who lived 3,000 years ago as my family, and to see their life experiences as my own, and the lesson I learned from all of those family stories is that there is always a way forward, even if it’s difficult and messy and confusing, there is always a next step.

“I’m ready.”

            The Hebrew Bible is not full of success stories, where the heroes are perfect and everything goes their way, not at all, these are people who try, and make mistakes, and suffer from their own bad choices, and suffer from other people’s bad choices, but find a way to keep going anyway. In fact, they are always doing Teshuva (repentance or return), making amends for the stupid or selfish decisions of the past, because they believe it is possible to repair the damage you’ve done, and the damage that has been done to you.

The ancient Israelites became slaves, and spent generations in slavery, and even resisted freedom out of fear of the unknown; and they fought wars and lost a lot of them; and they worshiped other gods and got punished for it over, and over again. They lived on their own land, and lived in exile; they survived by devotion to the old traditions and by seeking out new ones. There has been no generation of Jews that got everything right, or that got to live in a world full of only light and love, and the lesson I’ve learned from all of this, is that you need hope in order to take those next steps out of despair. You need hope to continue going through the knee-deep swampy water, or to drag yourself through the desert in the blazing heat. It’s not about certainty. My ancestors rarely knew the right thing to do at every moment and never followed the recipe (or the Torah) to the letter, but they held onto the hope that if they made the wrong choice or did the wrong thing, they could always try again.

            Even though my ancient ancestors taught me all of this, my more recent ones, like my father, believed that there was a right way to do everything, and that if I was smart enough, and worthy enough, I’d just figure it out on my own. My teachers also held onto this one-right-answer idea, writing every test with the assumption that there was only one right answer to every question, and that most of my ideas were wrong. Having faith that there is one-right-answer, and that you already know what it is, meant that they didn’t need hope. They had certainty. But for me, who never seemed to know what that one right thing might be, I had to rely on the hope that something I would do, anything I would do, would turn out to be right.

At times, I’ve had to build my hope muscle out of magical thinking and imagination, and out of whatever leaves and twigs and feathers I could find; and along the way, I’ve discovered that it doesn’t matter where the hope comes from, or what it’s made of, as long as it’s there when you need it. But pick a day, for example a day when there are pictures everywhere of starving children in Gaza and it feels like everyone is lying about the situation on the ground – Hamas, Israel, the UN, the journalists – and the despair makes it hard to breathe. And even in these impossible moments, the only way I know to keep moving forward is to rely on hope, even unreasonable and unfounded hope, that somewhere up ahead there will be an oasis of peace. I just have to keep going and I will get there, someday.

Tzipporah is waiting impatiently.

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.

War

Posted on June 21, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            During my online Hebrew class last Sunday afternoon, my new teacher had to leave class to go to the safe room in her parents’ house in Haifa. She was given a ten-minute warning on her phone, to let her know that a siren might be coming, and then when the siren actually came her screen went black. She was gone for more than half an hour, waiting in the shelter for the all clear. In the meantime, we kept the class going, reading the article she’d given us and trying to help each other through the Hebrew words we didn’t understand. And when she came back, a little discombobulated (though more worried about her dog, who was very confused), we just went back to reading the article together, which was about the world of doggy fashion, including Dolce and Gabbana, and Versace, and Dolly Parton (according to the article we read, she has a line for dogs called Doggy Parton). It’s not that life continues uninterrupted in a time of war, and under the threat of ballistic missiles, it’s that Israelis have learned that in order to survive you have to find distraction, and joy, wherever you can. And in a way, our class of Hebrew language students from around the world was able to hold the world together for our teacher, so that she had something to come back to when the emergency was over.

“The safest place in the whole world is a doggy bed.”

There were signs ahead of time that this war (on top of a war on top of a war) was coming. First there was the report from the IAEA (The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog) that declared Iran non-compliant with their inspectors. Iran maintains that its nuclear program is peaceful, but it has enriched uranium to levels far beyond any civilian application, and the IAEA has repeatedly warned that Iran has enough highly enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs, should it choose to do so. Then there were the warnings to American diplomats and their families to leave the Middle East. But most of us were focused on other things: in Israel, there was the immediate threat that the Haredi parties would bring down the government (for not permanently protecting their men from having to serve in the military); and in Gaza, Israeli soldiers were still dying in booby-trapped buildings and Palestinian civilians were still starving, because neither the UN nor the new Israeli/American aid group have been able to figure out how to get aid to the people without causing panic and without being attacked by Hamas; and in the United States, we were thinking about the coming military parade in Washington, DC, and the planned “No Kings” rallies across the country, and the protests against ICE raids in Los Angeles, and the calling in of the National Guard in response, against the governor’s wishes, and then the calling in of the marines; and Jews in the United States were still reeling from the killing of two Israeli embassy workers in DC, and the firebombing of senior citizens at a small weekly march in Colorado meant to remind people of the hostages trapped in Gaza, both seemingly related to the calls to “Globalize the Intifada” that have become a staple at Pro-Palestinian rallies over the past year and a half.

For myself, I was focused on starting my new online Hebrew class, and mourning the end of my previous class (because most of my classmates went off in different directions after our perfect class ended and I felt like I was starting over from scratch, at least socially), and my boss and I went to a Jewish Education Project conference on Israel education, where we spent half a day discussing the best ways to teach young children about Israel, without whitewashing the conflicts or angering parents.

So that’s where things stood for me on Thursday night, June 12th, when I saw a news item that said a siren had gone out across Israel at 3 AM to let people know that the Israeli Air Force had started an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and return fire was inevitable. I wrote to my high school friend in Isreal on WhatsApp, to let her know I was thinking of her, and then I sat in front of the television and stared at my phone waiting for more details. From what I could understand early on, Israel didn’t pick this exact moment because the nuclear bombs were imminent but because the Israeli military was ready with a plan of attack and saw a small window of opportunity, having degraded the danger of Hezbollah and Hamas as much as possible.

At first, there were denials that the United States was involved, from Marco Rubio, but it became clear quickly that Donald Trump was proud of his role in “greenlighting” the operation. He was going into his sixth round of talks with Iran and frustrated at the unchanging position of the Iranians on nuclear enrichment and okayed the attack that Irael had been planning ever since their success at decapitating Hezbollah last year, but really since October 7th, when they re-learned the lesson that when people say they are going to kill you, believe them.

            Israel has been living under the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon for a very long time now, but more than that, Iran has been overtly stating that it’s goal is the destruction of Israel, however possible. While they’ve been steadily building their nuclear program, they have also built a ballistic missile arsenal and put their financial and military support behind proxies surrounding Israel (including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis). There’s a large billboard in Palestine Square in Tehran (where there used to be an Israeli embassy, before the Islamic revolution) that counts down to “the demise of the Zionist regime,” randomly set for 2040.

            It’s important to understand that, given the same conditions and opportunities, almost any Israeli government would have greenlit this attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities (as they have done in the past in Iraq and Syria). This is not just about Netanyahu and his quest to stay in power (though, granted, if he could successfully neutralize the Iranian threat, he could sway a lot of voters to his side).

            And then, on Saturday, in the midst of everything, came the killing of a Minnesota state representative and her husband, and the shooting of another representative and his wife, plus more protests and more ICE raids and more and more and more. And it seemed as if Trump was taking advantage of the Irael/Iran war to help distract from all of the rest of it, making himself central to the discussion of what would happen next. So now we are waiting for Donald Turmp to decide if the United States will play a more active role in the war, by using the Mother of All Bombs/Bunker Buster to destroy Iran’s nuclear facility in Fordo (or Fordow, I’ve seen it spelled both ways), which is built into a mountain and deep underground. It has been suggested that Israel may have other ways of disabling Fordo, in case America decides not to get involved, but the world seems to be waiting on Trump anyway.

            And here I sit in New York, worrying about my friends and teachers in Israel, but also worrying about all of us here in the United States and what will happen with the ICE raids and the national guard and the political violence and the huge bill sitting in the senate right now, that, if passed, will take money and care away from the poorest of us to give more money to the wealthiest. And I have no control. All I can do is continue to educate myself, and try to understand what’s happening, and why, if possible. And then I have to go back to my own life and the things that are actually within my own power, like practicing Hebrew, and writing, and lesson planning for next fall, and reaching out to friends and family, and doing my best to find some solid ground underneath my feet. 

            Meanwhile, Iran is firing ballistic missiles at Israel, in response to the Israeli attack, and most Israelis are spending their nights in safe rooms and underground shelters, if they have them, or in parking garages, or stairwells. The final week of Israeli school for the year was done on zoom, and parents stayed home and tried to work and watch their kids and function on little to no sleep. And people are dying. While Israel’s stated targets in Iran are military ones (though I’m sure the attack also puts civilians near those targets at risk), Iran is hitting residential areas. Israelis had become used to the rockets coming from Hamas and Hezbollah, but the missiles from Iran are loaded with much more explosive material, and there are so many more missiles being fired at once, so even with a very good rate of interception the missiles that get through are doing a lot more damage, to apartment buildings and schools and even a hospital, and all I can do is watch.

            This past Monday evening, in the midst of all of this, I went to my favorite weekly online Hebrew practice group, with an Israeli teacher living in Canada, and he decided that instead of reading an article together (since he couldn’t find any articles in Hebrew online that weren’t about the war), he would play us a song called Yihiye Tov by David Broza (translated roughly it means, “It will be good” or “It will get better”). And we all sat in our little zoom boxes and sang along on mute to the endless refrain of Israeli life: that someday, things will be better. And for now, we just have to keep going until we get there.

For an American perspective: https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/june-19-2025?r=2flv9t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

For an Israeli perspective: https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-close-was-iran-to-the-bomb-and-how-far-has-israel-pushed-it-back/

Yihiye tov, by David Broza: https://youtu.be/qtI7h5A9eEQ?si=kyb4xyOIUltVFUW4

“I’m waiting 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?

32 Comments

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

My Passport Arrived

Posted on May 31, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

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

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

“You can’t have it, Mommy.”

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

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

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

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

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

            Now, back to worrying about what to pack.

“Can I fit in the carry on?”

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

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

107 Comments

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

Reading Etgar Keret

Posted on May 17, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Is there a Duolingo for reading pee messages?”

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

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

45 Comments

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

Sending Out the New Novel

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

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

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

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

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

Wish me luck!

“Did you say sharks?!”

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

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

96 Comments

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

You Can’t Do What You Can’t Do

Posted on May 3, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

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

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

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

“Wait, what’s going to happen to ME?!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Puppy, cover my ears!”

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

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

74 Comments

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

The Purple Life

Posted on April 12, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

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

“But what about me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

53 Comments

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

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?

45 Comments

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