Tag Archives: Jewish

Jacob and Israel

Posted on January 4, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I like sweet things too. Like chicken.”

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

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

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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?

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Cricket’s Yahrzeit

Posted on October 26, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

            In Jewish tradition, about eleven months after a funeral you have an unveiling, where you finally put up the permanent headstone at the gravesite, with a small ceremony to mark the end of the official mourning period. The unveiling is actually supposed to take place after thirty days (for most relatives) and after eleven months (for a parent), but in the United States most unveilings take place after eleven months no matter how close the relationship with the dead.

            We have two blue gift bags sitting on the low bookcase (where we used to keep the chicken treats), each holding a sympathy card from the vet’s office and a container of ashes: Cricket died in October 2023, and Ellie died in December, two very short months later. My hope was that, after eleven months, I would finally be ready to spread Cricket’s ashes around the base of the paw paw tree (which was born just a few months before Cricket herself), but I wasn’t ready. And even now, after the yahrzeit (literally “year time,” the anniversary of her death), I’m still not ready.

            The one thing I felt ready to do, though, was to mark Cricket’s yahrzeit with light. Of course, I didn’t think ahead and buy an official yahrzeit candle (a twenty-four-hour candle in protective glass), but Mom found two leftover beeswax candles from last Chanukah, and we placed them in a jar in front of Cricket’s picture and watched the flames burn down. I really wanted the two candles to intertwine in some way, to represent how Cricket is still so intertwined in our lives, but the way the two candles split apart and seemed to mimic her flying ears was a wonderful surprise.

            Maybe when we reach the anniversary of Ellie’s death, in December, I’ll feel more ready to let go of both of them, or maybe not. I’m trying to be patient with myself and to trust my feelings to tell me what I can handle and what I can’t, because I miss them both so much. I don’t just miss having “a dog” in my house, but these two particular dogs. They are still knotted up in my life and my thoughts, as if there’s more they need to teach me.

            In a strange symmetry, the pawpaw tree seems to also be in mourning this year. Early in the summer, we were thrilled to find out that, despite some of the lower branches being cut off by the gardeners (again!), we still had four pawpaws growing on our tree. We were hopeful that this year would yield the biggest, healthiest fruit yet, and so we decided to wait as long as possible before picking them, to give them time to fully ripen. But we waited too long. One day in September, when I looked up at the pawpaw tree, I couldn’t find any of the pawpaws. I was used to struggling to see one or two of them, behind those big green leaves, so I told myself I’d just try again later. But when I checked again, and then a third time, there were no pawpaws visible on the tree, and then I checked the ground and found what looked like two small carcasses with their guts spilling out. I looked away automatically, thinking some horrible death had come to two tiny birds, but when I forced myself to look back I realized they really were the pawpaws, or two of them anyway.

One of the pawpaws, in July

            I didn’t cry. I mean, they’re just fruit, right? Just because they are vivid symbols of love, and now of my dogs in particular, doesn’t mean they are, or were, truly alive. Right?

            I never found the other two pawpaws. My hope is that the squirrels (it’s always the squirrels) actually enjoyed the other two pieces of fruit and they didn’t all go to waste.

            In a way, having a fruitless year, or at least a year without pawpaws, is fitting. The loss of the dogs, and the grief and anger and fear and confusion around the war in Israel cries out for some kind of symbolism; some kind of acknowledgment that everything is not okay. Its kind of like when you’re feeling awful and the sky breaks open and the rain pours. It almost helps, in a way.

            Maybe next year, our pawpaw tree will be full of fruit and we will have more than enough to share with all of our woodland creatures. And, hopefully before then, we will also find a new dog ready to come home with us and start on a whole new adventure together. But in the meantime, the mourning cotinues.

Miss Cricket
Miss Ellie

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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Our Imperfect Canopy of Peace

Posted on October 12, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

            After Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur – the big Jewish holidays where even unaffiliated Jews go to synagogue, or fast for a day, or at least eat brisket in a nod to tradition – comes Sukkot, the holiday where Jews build huts in their yards and eat under the stars for a week. This used to be the biggest Jewish holiday of the year, back in ancient Israel. It was a celebration of the harvest, with everyone traipsing to Jerusalem to see and be seen. Today, among liberal Jews in America, Sukkot doesn’t get much attention, coming as it does four days after Yom Kippur, when everyone is sick of being Jewish, or at least of going to synagogue. And that’s unfortunate, because Sukkot is meant to be a happy holiday, with Sukkah Hops (visiting everyone else’s sukkot/huts to eat cake and cookies and just hang out and gossip), and waving palm fronds, and sniffing citrons (etrogim), and all kinds of weird traditions that keep things interesting and happily silly.

            But a year after the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, which took place during the later days of the holiday of Sukkot, celebrations of the holiday are more complicated. It’s hard to celebrate when Israel is at war (with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and, ultimately, of course, with Iran), 101 hostages are still being held in Gaza, and antisemitism is rising around the world. But celebrating Sukkot is an obligation, and one of the other names for this holiday is Zman Simchateinu (the time of our happiness), so we are obligated not only to go through the motions of erecting a sukkah and saying the blessings over the Lulav and Etrog, but to find moments of true joy as well.

Lulav and etrog

            At my synagogue, we build a sukkah each year (well, someone builds it), and we try to have as many services and events and classes as possible in the sukkah, in order to give everyone a taste of the holiday, since most of us aren’t building our own sukkot at home. And at the synagogue school, we try to make a big deal out of the sukkah in the courtyard, and to engage the students in seeing the holiday through different perspectives. This year’s theme is looking at the connection between the sukkah we build for the holiday of Sukkot, and the more figurative Sukkat Shalom, or Canopy of Peace, that we sing about each week in the Hashkivenu prayer at Friday night services.   The most obvious connection is the word “sukkah,” which can be translated to mean booth or hut, as it is for the holiday of Sukkot, or canopy, as it is in the Hashkivenu prayer, where we ask God to cover us with a canopy of peace; but even more so this year, we are looking for a connection, or hoping for a connection, between these days of Sukkot and peace.

In Leviticus 23:41-43, we are told that living in a sukkah for a week each year is a reminder of the Exodus from Egypt, and the forty years our ancestors spent in the desert afterwards before entering the promised land. But, given that we remember the splitting of the Sea of Reeds in our daily prayers, and spend the whole week of Passover remembering the Exodus from Egypt, the fact that Sukkot is also a time for remembering the Exodus is often forgotten, in favor of the lulav and the etrog and the sukkah and all of the food. But this is a Jewish holiday, and there is no such thing as a simple Jewish holiday; even at a Jewish wedding we manage to remind ourselves of tragedy (stepping on the glass to remember the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and/or to scare away evil spirits). So, it’s not surprising that even during this holiday of happiness, even during a year when we’re not in mourning, we are still called to reexperience suffering.

The sukkah, which really looks ridiculous if you think about it, with its open door and barely covered roof, is a representation of the fragility of life and our imperfect safety in the world, and in both of those ways it is meant to remind us of our dependance on God. And yet, we are commanded to enjoy life in this sukkah, and invite friends and strangers inside to eat with us. We are called to practice creating joy even in the midst of difficulty, because that’s a time when it feels unnatural but is essential to remember that joy is possible.

a sukkah

And I think that may also be the lesson with our Sukkat Shalom, our figurative canopy of peace: that even with God’s protection our lives will be imperfect, and our experience of peace will be imperfect, and temporary.

            And that sucks. I have always wanted to believe in a future filled with an idyllic peace – a world full of comfort and kindness and all of our needs being met – despite never actually experiencing such a thing; even the hope of such peace in the future has been enough to keep me going. But what if this imperfect peace, filled with moments of suffering and fear and open doors and leaky roofs, is the only kind of peace that’s really possible? What if our prayers for peace have already been answered, but because we were looking for something more perfect we can’t recognize it?

We tend to think of peace as an absolute: we are either at peace or at war. But what if peace is complicated, or exists along a spectrum? American Jews are facing a dramatic rise in antisemitism, and grief and confusion and anger over what’s happening in Israel, but even before October 7th peace in Israel and for American Jews was never perfect (Israel was in the middle of yet another ceasefire with Hamas when the attack occurred, after all, and the past few years in America have not been free of antisemitic acts by any means). There is no time in history free of all difficulty. And maybe these holidays, which we are obliged to celebrate every year no matter what circumstances we are living through, are not about keeping us on our guard, or depressed about our lack of safety, but to teach us that even in an imperfect world we can, and must, live our lives as joyfully as possible, as fully as possible.

            It’s a hard lesson to learn, and even harder to teach, honestly. But Sukkot gives us a yearly opportunity to practice living in and appreciating an imperfect peace. We can sit in our fragile shelter and feel the chill in the air and watch our napkins fly off the table, and still eat good food and laugh with our friends and sing together, feeling gratitude for what we have, and grief for what we don’t have, at the same time.

Feeling multiple things at once isn’t the only lesson of Sukkot, but it might be the most useful one for this particular moment in Jewish history. And, it may actually be the key to all of the other life lessons we want our students to learn. We often think of resilience and mental health as the ability to focus only on the positive, but in reality, resilience is the ability to accept life as it is, and continue on. Like it says in Ecclesiastes, there’s a time for everything, a time to plant and time to uproot, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time for peace and a time for war. We are meant to live in all of it, eyes open, taking it in and seeing it for what it is. And even, or most importantly, saying a blessing over what we see.

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

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

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The Dreaded High Holidays

Posted on October 5, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

            I hate the high holidays. I hate the focus on repentance, and the large crowds at the synagogue, and all of the standing, and having to dress up, and the depressing Eastern European music, and the endless communal guilt. I would much rather spend the time watching a Father Brown marathon.

            But I pushed myself to join the choir anyway (which, at my synagogue, mostly sings during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and not much the rest of the year), and each year I push myself to go to as many of the rehearsals as possible, even though I’m tired by 8 pm (which is when choir rehearsals always start). And I push myself to get up early for the morning services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and wear something other than a t-shirt and jeans, and stand and sit and stand for hours. And, I resent it, every year. I especially hate the emphasis on all of the sins we are presumed to have committed over the past year, as if I wasn’t already spending many hours each day combing through my life for my actual sins and trying to correct them.

            So, why do I go? Because it’s an obligation; because of FOMO (fear of missing out); because this is the one time each year when I get to see all of the people who rarely come to Friday night services; because I’d be lonely sitting at home knowing everyone else is there.

            And, because I love to sing. Music is such a mystery to me, because even when it’s imperfect or depressing, it is still, also, transcendent. It connects me with other people; even with people I might otherwise have nothing in common.

            Do I believe, or agree with, every word in every prayer we sing over the high holy days? Not at all. Is it meaningful to me to think of God as a judge or a king, doling out forgiveness for sins I’ve never even committed? Nope. But when those words that mean so very little to me, and even piss me off, are put to music, they are transmogrified into something new and my body becomes one of the instruments producing and receiving and echoing sound. This imperfect body of mine, that feels so much pain and that I feel so self-conscious about, becomes a vessel for transcendent sound for a little while every year, and that only works if my body is in the room with all of the other bodies.

            I wish we could all come together for happier occasions, and sing Israeli pop songs, or  just tell stories and laugh together, but for some reason, when everyone sat down to decide which holidays were going to be the most important ones on the Jewish calendar, they chose Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (at least after the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE, before then the most important holidays were Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot, weeklong festivals to celebrate harvests – more about Sukkot next week). So, why did my ancestors decide that the most important days of the year were the ones where we have to pound our chests and asks for forgiveness and beg God for another chance? I have no idea. But most of the Jews who go to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and not once the rest of the year, pay expensive yearly dues for the privilege. And they seem to think it’s worth the cost.

            Maybe they’re there for the music too, and how it feels to be in a room full of people singing together, no matter what they happen to be singing. Or maybe they don’t realize that there are (much) happier holidays on the Jewish calendar that they could be celebrating with their congregation. Or maybe my people just really love repentance. It doesn’t matter. The decision has already been made, and I can either be there with them, or stay home alone. So, I go. Every year. And I sing, every year. And I whine and complain and need long naps to recover afterwards every year. And I wouldn’t miss it for the 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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Back to School

Posted on September 28, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

            For my first day back teaching, I was a whirling dervish of energy. I followed along with the Israeli teenager who led us in a TikTok style dance; I taught Hebrew through Movement, which involved a lot of standing up and sitting down and walking, walking, walking; and then I taught my two classes and met (most of) my new students, which meant a lot more standing and dancing and crazy hand gestures and funny breathing exercises. At the time, I was sure I was going to be fine. I mean, it’s not like I was running around the building, or doing pratfalls for laughs (like my students).

            But a couple of hours after I got home, my body started to stiffen and the pain began to set in. By the next morning, I could barely move.

“Hey! I can’t move either!”

            It took me a few days to recover. And, if possible, the second day of teaching was even more challenging. So now, I’m scared. I’m not sure if this physical response is worse than last year’s, or if I just got out of the habit of feeling like I’d been run over by a truck a few times a week. And I’m frustrated, because I spent the whole summer trying to build up strength and endurance in the hopes that I would start the new school year feeling more resilient, and, at the very least, it didn’t work.

            It was wonderful to see my students from last year, and to meet the new kids and hear their unique stories and start to untangle all of the drama among them (this will clearly take all year). And I can see a lot of interesting discussions and tons of silliness in my future, but there’s a voice in the back of my head warning me, you may not last the whole year.

            The fact is, I know I will do everything I can to be there for my students and to live up to all of my commitments – but it’s going to be harder, and it’s going to hurt.

            A few weeks ago, my therapist said, in passing, that my disease/disorder/undiagnosed chronic illness, is degenerative. She didn’t say, “it may be degenerative,” she said “it is.” For many years, she didn’t even believe that there was anything physically wrong with me. She was convinced that all of the pain and exhaustion was psychological, and therefore hard work in therapy would fix everything. But after decades of intensive therapy, and obvious progress in my mental and emotional heath, my physical issues have only worsened, and, finally, her theory of the case had to change.

            But there are so many things I still want to do! I want to teach more, not less. I want to write more, and meet more people, and travel, and dance, and sing. I was really hoping that this summer’s home-made physical therapy regimen was going to make a difference, and I’m so disappointed that it hasn’t helped. To be fair, it’s possible that without all of that work over the summer I would have been in even worse shape for the start of the school year. But for many years now, I’ve been trying everything I could think of: every medication and supplement doctors have suggested, and every exercise and treatment and strategy I could find. But I’m going to have to accept that it’s possible that this is as good as my health is going to get, and find a way to deal with that.

            But really, I don’t wanna. I want to throw a tantrum and scream and kick the floor and just cry. It seems to make my students feel a whole lot better, so, maybe it’s the next thing I should try. It couldn’t hurt! Much.

” I love a good tantrum!”

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?

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Two More Poems

Posted on August 24, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

            I recently went to a zoom presentation on Modern Israeli poetry, and both the presentation and the poetry were down to earth and unpretentious and grounded in daily life in a way that made me think, hmm, maybe I am writing real poetry after all, and not just noodling around. I was even more encouraged to find out that, for poetry as opposed to for everything else, Israelis use the vowels under the letters (Nikud in Hebrew) to make sure each word is read correctly, and because it looks cool. The thing is, I grew up learning Hebrew with the vowels intact, and trying to get used to Israeli newspapers and blog posts and books, where there is no Nikud and you have to guess at the pronunciation of new words, has been breaking my brain.

            I gave up on writing poetry in English a long time ago, after a lot of rejection, mostly from classmates who thought I was crap at it. But writing poetry in Hebrew seems to bypass a lot of that noise in my head. I’m still self-conscious, of course, and I worry that I’m going to depress people, or that my Hebrew is less real Hebrew than my own invention. But whereas when I try to write poetry in English the words just drip drip like a leaky faucet, in Hebrew they come out with more force, as if they actually have something they want to say.

            I’m not sure if these two poems are finished. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re not, despite many edits, but I wanted to reward myself a little bit for trying to write them at all, so I’m sharing them here. And then sharing links to some actual Israeli poetry, in English Translation.

הכאבים שלי

כּוֹאֶבֶת לִי הַבֶּטֶן.

אוּלַי זֶה נִגְרָם מְהַתרוּפוֹת

נֶגֶד הַחָרָדָה, נֶגֶד הַדִיכָּאוֹן,

נֶגֶד כֹּל הַכְּאֵבִים הַאַחֵרִים,

אוֹ אוּלַי זֶה נִגְרָם מְהַפָּסטָה שְׁאַכַלתִי בַּצַהַרַיִים.

כּוֹאֵב לִי הַגַב

כּאִילוּ מִישׁהוּ בַּעַט בִּי,

אַבַל אַנִי לֹא זוֹכֶרֶת אֶת הַמָכּוֹת,

אוֹ לָמָה מִישֶׁהוּ הָיָה רוֹצֶה לִפגוֹעַ בִּי.

כּוֹאַבוֹת לִי גַם הַכּתֵפַיִים וְהַמוֹתְנַיִים

וְהַבִּרכַּיִים וְהַקַרסוֹלַיִים

כּאִילוּ מִישׁהוּ מְנָסֶה לְפָרֵק אוֹתִי

כּמוֹ עוֹף מְבוּשָׁל.

כּוֹאֶבֶת לִי הָנְשָׁמָה

אַבַל עַל זֶה אֵין לִי מִילִים.

אַנִי מְפַחֶדֶת שְׁאִם כֹּל הַכְּאֵבִים הַיוּ מִתְרַחְשִׁים בְּבַת אַחַת

לֹא הַיִיתִי מְסוּגֶלֶת לִשׂרוֹד.

מָזָל שְׁכֹּל יוֹם יֵשׁ לִי רַק חֵלֶק מִכֹּל הַכְּאֵבִים

וְאַנִי יְכוֹלָה לִקְפּוֹץ מִכּאֵב לְכּאֵב

כְּמוֹ צפַרְדֵעַ שְׁמְדַלֶגֶת עַל פּנֵי הַמַיִם

וְלְעוֹלָם לֹא נוֹפֶלֶת פְּנִימָה.

אוּלַי יוֹם אֶחַד אַנִי אַרגִישׁ אֶת כֹּל הַכְּאֵבִים בְּאוֹתוֹ זמַן,

וְבַּיוֹם הַהוּא,

אַנִי מְקַוָוה,

שְׁאִם הַיִיתִי נוֹפֶלֶת לְתוֹך הַמַיִם

בָּסוֹף, הַיִיתִי מְסוּגֶלֶת לִשְׂחוֹת.

My Pains

My stomach hurts,

maybe from the medications

against anxiety, against depression

against all the other pains,

or maybe from the pasta I ate in the afternoon.

My back hurts,

as if someone kicked me.

But I don’t remember the beating,

or why someone would want to hurt me.

My shoulders and hips and knees and ankles

also hurt,

as if someone is trying to take me apart

like a cooked chicken.

My soul hurts,

but about that I have no words.

I’m afraid that if all of these pains

took place at the same time,

I wouldn’t be able to survive.

Thank God, each day I only feel some of the pain,

and I can jump from pain to pain,

like a frog skipping over the surface of the water,

and never falling in.

Maybe one day I will feel all of the pain

all at once.

And on that day,

I hope,

if I fell into the water,

in the end I would be able to swim.

אני כמו אבן

לִפְעַמִים,

אַנִי מָרגִישָׁה כּמוֹ אֶבֶן כִּי אַנִי לֹא יָכוֹלָה לָצוּף.

נִראָה לִי שְׁהָאַוִויר סבִיבִי מָלֵא

בְּמָחשַׁבוֹת וְכּאֵבִים וְחַרַדוֹת,

שְׁיוֹצְרִים חוֹמָה שׁקוּפָה

מָחזִיקָה אוֹתִי בָּמָקוֹם.

לִפְעַמִים,

אַנִי מָרגִישָׁה כּמוֹ אֶבֶן

שְׁתָמִיד נוֹפֶלֶת עָמוֹק יוֹתֵר

לְתוֹך הָמַיִם הָשׁחוֹרִים.

יוֹם אַחַרֵי יוֹם,

אַנִי מְנָסָה לְהַפסִיק לִיפּוֹל

וְלִמתוֹחַ מֵעֵבֶר לָחוֹמָה הַשׁקוּפָה.

הַעָבוֹדָה הַזֹאת מְתִישָׁה

וְבִּלתִי נִראֵית מִכּוּלָם מִלְבַדִי.

אוּלַי בְּקָרוֹב,

אוֹ בַּסוֹף,

אַנִי אַצלִיחַ בָּעָבוֹדָה הַקָשָׁה שֶׁלִי

וְאִנִי אוּכַל לְהַרגִישׁ יוֹתֵר כְּמוֹ צִיפּוּר

שְׁעוֹמֶדֶת גַבוֹהַה

עִם כְּנָפַיִים פּרוּשׁוֹת

מוּכן לַעוּף.

I am like a Stone

Sometimes,

I feel like a stone because I cannot float.

It seems like the air is full

of thoughts and pain and anxieties

that create a transparent wall around me

that keeps me in place.

Sometimes,

I feel like a stone that is always falling deeper

into the black water.

Day after day,

I try to stop falling,

and to stretch beyond the transparent wall.

This work is exhausting

and invisible to everyone but me.

Maybe soon,

or in the end,

I will succeed in my difficult task,

and I will be able to feel more like a bird

who stands tall

with wings outstretched,

ready to fly.

Some Israeli poetry to try:

Yehuda Amichai – https://allpoetry.com/An-Arab-Shepherd-Is-Searching-For-His-Goat-On-Mount-Zion, https://allpoetry.com/poem/8513161-Jerusalem-by-Yehuda-Amichai, https://allpoetry.com/The-Diameter-Of-The-Bomb

Maya Tevet Dayan – https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2021/winter/land-maya-tevet-dayan

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?

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Srugim, or The Modern Orthodox Singles Scene in Jerusalem

Posted on August 17, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

            There’s an Israeli TV show from about ten or fifteen years ago called Srugim that I’d been avoiding for quite a while. Srugim means “knitted,” or “crocheted” and it refers to the kippot (skullcaps) worn by the modern orthodox men featured in the series (I learned how to crochet kippot in Junior high, because girls were supposed to know how to make these for boys. No, really.) Especially in Israel, but also in the United States, you can tell which particular division of Judaism a man belongs to based on whether he’s wearing a crocheted kippah, a black suede or black velvet kippah, a Sephardi kippah (these are actually more like hats and are incredibly beautiful), or a large white kippah, and, of course, if you wear a black hat over your black kippah you are probably ultra-orthodox, but the style of hat will differ depending on which group you belong to. These careful decisions about what to wear on your head allow people to know who’s in the group and who’s an outsider, kind of like how high school students can tell from across a crowded lunchroom who’s in drama club, who’s a jock, and who wants to be the next Mark Zuckerberg.

I’d watched the first episode of Srugim a few years ago, on the recommendation of my best friend from high school who moved to Israel many years ago. We like a lot of the same things, so it surprised me how much I hated this show, or at least that first episode. It wasn’t actually the show overall so much as this one character who just made me angry, and I wasn’t sure if the writers of the show wanted me to like him and tolerate his obnoxious behavior or if they recognized how much of a jerk he was. And, really, I didn’t have the patience to deal with him either way.

            When we got our Chaiflicks subscription (a Jewish streaming service) last winter, I tried to watch that first episode again, because, really, how could my friend love this show and I couldn’t even watch more than one episode? But I still couldn’t tolerate that one guy.

            I kept seeing the show on my watchlist, though, each time I jumped over it to watch something else, and I kept wanting to erase it, but I couldn’t. Finally, a few weeks ago, I decided to try again, this time starting with episode two. And I was hooked! It turned out that the writers absolutely knew this guy was an asshole, and wanted to show how his behavior impacted the people around him, especially the woman who was falling in love with him.  As I watched episode after episode, I realized that the whole point of the show was that these young modern orthodox Jewish singles in Jerusalem are as complex and confused as everyone else, even if their lives looked very buttoned up from the outside.

            Of course, the show is in Hebrew (with English subtitles – before being on Chaiflicks it was on more mainstream American streaming services), so I can tell myself that I’m watching it as homework to help build my Hebrew listening skills.

            The show starts when the main characters are on the brink of being “too old” at age thirty to make good matches in the modern orthodox world (though the age for a good match seems to be rising as women have been going to school and starting professions before marriage).

            Other popular shows recently have focused more on the ultra-orthodox Jewish world (though there are many ultra-orthodox communities and they are not all the same), rather than the modern orthodox, because they live more isolated lives, avoiding popular culture, including television and smartphones. I’m fascinated by those closed worlds too, but the modern orthodox Jewish singles portrayed in Srugim are trying to straddle two worlds, engaging in the modern world of culture and technology and feminism and professional lives, while also trying to maintain religious laws and traditions, and, for me, that’s much more interesting.

            I went to an orthodox Jewish day school (in New York) for Junior high and high school, and I felt like an outsider the whole time, because I could never master all of the rules, let alone believe in them. I kept being overwhelmed by how perfect everyone else seemed to be, on the surface, and how simple and clear their lives looked, with all of their choices made for them.

            It took me a long time to understand that my classmates were struggling just as much as I was, and if anything, they felt more pressure to hide their struggles than I did, and to avoid being judged by their community for the ways they inevitably fell short. Something about watching these characters on Srugim, who are like adult versions of my old classmates, has made me see my old friends (and enemies) more clearly and with more compassion. They get embarrassed too, and feel not good enough sometimes, and get lonely, and struggle to keep all of the rules, or struggle to want to. They can fall for the wrong guy, or be the wrong guy, while still wearing a kippah or keeping kosher and following all of the obvious rules. Being religious doesn’t protect them from life, though for some it is able to offer guidance and comfort along the way.  

            My high school best friend (the one who recommended Srugim) lived in Jerusalem during her twenties, and though she’d told me some of the highs and lows of those years along the way, I didn’t really get it. Her life seemed so clear and straightforward compared to the incoherent chaos and fear I lived with at that time. I took a lot of comfort in the idea that at least she was doing okay. But now I’m getting a fuller picture of what she lived through, with all of the blind dates and coffee meetups and the endless pressure to find “the one” in order to start her real life (aka, having children). I should have known better, given how well I knew her, but at the time I wasn’t up to understanding that everyone’s life is complicated.

            Often, when I only see the Facebook or Instagram versions of orthodox lives (the beautifully baked challah on the perfectly set Shabbat table, all seven kids lined up in age order and well-behaved), I forget that behind those images are real lives, with temper tantrums and burned meals and lost jobs and grief and betrayals.

            There’s something about being a religious Jew that moves me, though Not the way the rabbis are in charge of everything and the rules are so strict, but the way that every event of the day, every simple handwashing or meal or walk, takes on meaning, because it is acknowledged by a ritual or a blessing. I love the way life is meant to be something to treasure: even when you are bored or confused or angry, there’s a prayer or a lesson from the Talmud to help you through it and to acknowledge that this is life and every moment of it, however painful, has value. It’s like a complex piece of music, where each note matters: each pause, each cacophony, each harmony, each predictable scale or unexpected resolution, is an important part of the whole.

            One of the main characters on Srugim goes through her own crisis of faith, partially because she falls in love with a non-religious man, but mostly because she realizes that even though she grew up in the religious world, it doesn’t really fit her, or at least it doesn’t allow for all of who she is. And watching her gradually find her own way forward, while still holding onto the friends who remain in that world, without the show ever judging which way is right or wrong, was really validating. It reminded me of something I’ve known for a long time, but always need to re-learn: being religious isn’t supposed to be a way to hide from the difficulties of life, even if many people try to use it that way, like my father did. Being religious is meant to be a way to help you get through it, and to remember what’s important to you when you are overwhelmed with all of the chaos that keeps pulling you off track.

Friday Night Dinner

Even among the religious characters on the show, each one has their own relationship with the laws they follow, and how deeply they think about their choices, or not; some feel deeply connected to God and some seem to follow all the rules by rote, and the same people can do it all differently at different times in their lives.

I was sure I’d missed a lot on my first binge through the three seasons of the show (I watched 45 episodes in about a week and a half), so I was thrilled when my mom was interested in watching it through from the beginning with me, at a somewhat slower pace. And on second viewing I’m noticing a lot more details, of course, but I’m also feeling more, allowing myself to sit with these characters and their certainties and doubts and their mistakes and their deep love for each other. It feels like these characters are my friends now, even the one I hated at the beginning (though he still pisses me off on a regular basis), and I’m allowing myself to know them as they are, and accept them as they are, without (too much) judgement.

I saw an article online saying that the creator of the show tried to make a sequel a few years ago, showing this same community in the next phase of their lives. I don’t know if anything came of that effort, but if they ever get a chance to make that show, I will be watching.

Srugim trailer – https://youtu.be/zbxgf3cNV4U?si=m7eUiplvnZ6x9a-H

Srugim theme song – https://youtu.be/OrvMH0hQClQ?si=kD4KQP3S7_EL7pUR

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?

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Watching Movies on Chaiflicks

Posted on August 3, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

            This year for my birthday I got a subscription to Chaiflicks, a Jewish streaming service that has movies from around the world (France, Hungary, Germany, South America, the United States, and, of course, Israel). And since there’s almost nothing new on regular TV in the summer, except for news and sports, I’ve been making my way through their movie collection.

            There was one movie called Nowhere in Africa about a Jewish family who left Germany for Africa just before Kristallnacht (1939), leaving behind family members who still weren’t convinced that Hitler and the Nazis really meant all of the awful things they said they wanted to do to the Jews. The transition to life in Africa was hard for them: the heat, the villagers, the farming and hard labor, and of course the language and culture and food. The movie is based on an autobiographical novel by the daughter of the family, and we get to see a lot of the events through her eyes, both her incredible adaptability and the grief she feels when, after the war ends, the family returns to Germany to help rebuild the country.

Another movie, called Gloomy Sunday, was about a thruple (two men and a beautiful woman) in Hungary during World War II. One of the men is a Jewish restaurant owner and the other is a penniless musician who is hired to play piano in the restaurant. Drama ensues, of course. The musician writes a song that becomes intertwined with a series of suicides, and the Jewish restaurant owner is eventually sent to the camps and killed, despite thinking he had a friend among the Nazis who would protect him. But the ending is satisfying, in a revenge is best served cold sort of way.

            You may be sensing a theme at this point, because many of the non-Israeli movies on Chaiflicks focus on the Holocaust, from many different perspectives. One of the more hopeful stories was about a grandmother in Bordeaux, France who thought her whole family had been murdered in the Holocaust and then she accidentally finds her granddaughter, alive.

The Missing Granddaughter

            There are so many stories that deserve to be told, and have so much to teach us about survival and grief and evil and fighting back, but it’s hard to take it all in.

            One of the non-Holocaust movies we watched was about an event I knew almost nothing about: the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1994, which killed 85 people, including children. The movie is called Anita, and focuses on a woman with Downs’s syndrome who is injured in the blast and survives, but gets lost for days, while her brother believes she must have died along with their mother in the explosion. Anita seems to bring out the best in a lot of the people she meets, but not right away. In a strange coincidence, the week after we watched the movie the 1994 bombing was in the news again, because it was the 30th anniversary of the bombing and after a court in Argentina had finally placed blame for the bombing on Iran and Hezbollah, the government vowed to pursue justice.

            We’ll see what else I can learn from Chaiflicks this summer, though I’d really like it if the filmmakers could be more gentle with my prudish American sensibilities and stop randomly showing women’s breasts in every other scene.

            I don’t think I would have had the emotional bandwidth to deal with these movies during the school year, and I feel really lucky to have summers off, not just to rest but also to challenge myself in ways I couldn’t tolerate the rest of the year.

            Of course, I still take tons of breaks to watch Hallmark movies, or to binge one of the great South Korean series on Netflix, so I’m not overdoing it. Don’t worry. I just wish I had more time for all of the things I wanted to do this summer. I’m not ready for it to be August already, with only one month left before school starts again. If anyone knows where I can find one of Hermione’s Time Turners (from Harry Potter) I’d be eternally grateful.

“Is there a doggie streaming channel for me?”

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?

20 Comments

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