Category Archives: Jewish writing

May 3, 2010 · 9:18 am

“You a Jew?”

By Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

“You a Jew?”
“Yes, I believe I am.”
“Never met a Jew before.”
This from a sparkling, fresh-faced girl of nineteen,
a future film actress, I’m sure, on her day off
from the fundamentalist camp by the lake.
With the weight of my ancestry
pressing down on my back,
I felt the instant spokesman for my tribe.
Shouldn’t I be wearing a yarmulke and sporting payos?
Shouldn’t I be blessing this fair maiden in Hebrew?
“Ask me any question you like,” I said,
my ancestors from the Holocaust
rolling over in laughter from their graves.
“Do Jews believe in heaven?” she tried, innocently.
“No, St. Pete,” I said, using humor to shield my ignorance,
“but I respect your beliefs,” I added unnecessarily,
trying to extinguish the fires of the crematoriums
while posing as the even-handed poster child
for a religion that was as new to her as it was to me.

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and you can find his most recent poems in a new YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy,  edited by M. Jerry Weiss.

3 Comments

Filed under American Jewry, Jewish writing

Tagged as ,

April 19, 2010 · 7:00 am

Writing Practice: Counting the Omer

Over the seven weeks between Pesach and Shavuot we count the omer each day, marking the period between our liberation as slaves in Egypt and our receipt of the Torah at Mt. Sinai.

It’s a period of counting when we reflect on the link between slavery and freedom, and it’s a time when we can reflect, too, on the blessings of our lives.

You can use these days to count your blessings and to think about how your life is different in freedom than it might have been in slavery.

Why not take a moment to make a list of blessings that you are grateful for each day?

Then choose one of these blessings and ask yourself why you feel it’s a blessing.

How does it change your life into something remarkable?

What is it that makes something– or someone– a blessing?

You might describe how you first came to understand this something or someone as a blessing.

And then you might expand your thoughts and discuss how you’ve grown or changed as a result of this blessing in your life.

For more information on counting the omer, visit:
http://www.aish.com/h/o/lac/48971726.html
http://www.jewfaq.org/holidayb.htm
http://www.chabad.org/generic_cdo/aid/130631/jewish/Sefirat-HaOmer.htm
http://www.ritualwell.org/holidays/countingtheomer/
http://www.uscj.org/Counting_the_Omer_an6375.html

Leave a comment

Filed under Jewish writing, writing practice

Tagged as ,

March 29, 2010 · 1:20 pm

Chumatz

by Janet Ruth Falon (Elkins Park, PA)

Chumatz is all the things we can live without:
the puff
the fluff
the excess stuff,
the icing on the cake and, in most cases,
the cake itself,
the overboard
the elaborate
the non-essential,
the too-too
the frou-frou
the Bloomingdale’s when Sears would do
the Range Rover when a Subaru would get you there, too,
the centerpiece which, in fact,
prevents you from seeing across the table,
the lazy that takes its time rising
because it knows no one’s going anywhere

so even as we congratulate ourselves for getting along without chumatz
for eight days
like a Yom Kippur fast,
let’s thank Someone for our luck
that we have the chumatz to do without
that we can choose
to pare down for a week
trusting, knowing with certainty
that chumatz will be there to return to
that we don’t have to do without
that we have yeast, and sugar, and water, and time.

Janet Ruth Falon, the author of The Jewish Journaling Book (Jewish Lights, 2004), teaches a variety of writing classes at many places, including the University of Pennsylvania.  At the moment she is teaching journaling and creative-writing classes to people with cancer, and she’s working on a project that she hopes will be published as The Breast Cancer Journaling Workbook.

1 Comment

Filed under American Jewry, Jewish writing

Tagged as ,

January 11, 2010 · 9:31 am

The Diner

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

God’s sitting at the next table over,
amid the noontime rush,
consulting the menu the angelic
waitress has placed before him.
I wonder what he’s ordering,
what celestial meal will be to his liking.
There are so many questions I would like to ask,
but I don’t want to appear rude,
like some overzealous autograph seeker.
I’d like to ask if he made the universe eons ago,
and whether these days he takes an active hand
in the petty and paltry affairs of man.
I’d like to know why over the course of time
he has let so many disasters go unattended,
and more selfishly, what plans does he have for me?
But I will sit here quietly at my own table
and not presume upon his meal.
He has enough on his plate, I would think,
though I do wonder whether he leaves a large tip
as he finishes his coffee, checks his BlackBerry,
and contemplates what miracles
he has to accomplish by evening.

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and you can find his most recent poems in a new YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy,  edited by M. Jerry Weiss.

“The Diner” was prompted, Mel says, by “the Job-like questions I still have about God and what He is not doing lately.”

You can read more about his work at his website: www.melglenn.com

15 Comments

Filed under American Jewry, Jewish writing

Tagged as , ,

December 7, 2009 · 7:51 am

Following the Lead of My Radical Foremothers

by Dina Ripsman Eylon (Thornhill, Ontario, Canada)

The idea to start an academic journal on Jewish women came to me while researching the lives of Rachel Yanait Ben Zvi, Mania Shochat and Netiva Ben Yehuda for an article on women in the military in pre-state Israel. I realized that despite the fact that these women were instrumental in military organizations prior to the establishment of the Jewish state, nothing about them was mentioned in history textbooks of the period. Growing up in Israel during the 1960s and 1970s, I was not aware of the contribution of any of these women, except for Rachel Yanait Ben Zvi, (the wife of the second president of Israel) even though during this time in North America, the Second Wave of the feminist movement flourished.

Confounded by personal reflections and undefined theories forming slowly in my mind, I devoured books in the fields of women’s history and feminism. I wanted to know more about complex issues like Jewish marriage and divorce, and the role women were expected to play in the family. I wanted to understand political and social structures that propagated discrimination and inequality.

Through this personal quest for enlightenment, I was introduced to the works and philosophy of the renowned novelist and author Virginia Woolf. In the late 1920s she explored the subjects of women’s history and writing. Woolf delivered two lectures on the topic of women and fiction at the Cambridge women’s colleges of Girton and Newnham. She examined women’s writing from all possible angles and famously concluded that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” and inevitably, if she is to write anything at all, or be written about. In A Room of One’s Own, her subsequent work, she articulated women’s inopportune historical exploits and boldly stated: “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”

In Israel, the question “what does it mean to be Jewish?” does not surface except for the need to affiliate oneself with either the secular majority or the observant minority. When I arrived in Canada in 1980 to pursue my graduate studies, I learned that being a Jewish woman was not limited to being merely secular or religious. Jewish identity was not inherent but actually a product of one’s self-search or desire to belong socially. Assuming a Jewish identity was a choice that many women wanted to make.

As the eminent Jewish feminist Susan Weidman Schneider wrote in her seminal work Jewish and Female, “the tension for Jewish women today comes from the struggle to stay within the tradition yet not compromise one’s identity and integrity as a woman.” Weidman Schneider described a variety of ways in which these identities are sought: changing and feminizing known rituals, “rediscovering” new aspects of Judaism that may relate to women, studying sources and texts to discern women’s input, and moreover, “transforming traditional Judaism and Jewish institutions so that they include women…”

Schneider’s book was another milestone in shaping a more defined view on the life of Jewish women in North America and helped to crystallize my feminist ideology. It was an ideology based on a determination to empower women by the only weapon I had – education.

As the founder and editor-in-chief of Women in Judaism in 1997, I wanted to help create ‘a paradigm shift’ within the field of Jewish Studies and build a new one reintroducing the findings to what is considered now the ‘mainstream’ or “malestream” study of Judaism. Since its inception, the journal has gained international readership and is listed in dozens of directories and indexes. In addition to publishing prominent scholars, the journal promotes young and emerging scholars and makes it a priority to give a voice to materials that most likely would have never been published by “malestream” Jewish periodicals. The journal welcomes a diversity of points of view, conflicting or harmonizing, in order to develop a genuine dialogue.

Our primary goal is to give Jewish women an uninterrupted voice, a place where all voices are heard and listened to, devoid of any patriarchal sponsorship or censorship.

Author and publisher, Dina Ripsman Eylon has a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. She has been teaching various undergraduate courses at Carleton University and at the University of Toronto. For the past twelve years, she has served as the publisher and editor-in-chief of Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal (http://www.utoronto.ca/wjudaism/journal/journal_index1.html), a gender-related publication, which has engaged and promoted new feminist scholarship in Jewish Studies. Her book, Reincarnation in Jewish Mysticism and Gnosticism, was published by Edwin Mellen Press (2003). Eylon founded the Vaughan Poets’ Circle and serves as the Thornhill branch manager of the Ontario Poetry Society.

This piece is based on Dina Ripsman Eylon’s “No More Anonymity,” which appears in Living Legacies: A Collection of Inspirational Contemporary Canadian Jewish Women (edited by Liz Pearl). It’s reprinted here with permission of the author.

1 Comment

Filed under Jewish writing, Judaism

Tagged as , ,

August 24, 2009 · 8:23 am

Writing Practice: Simple Acts

The simplest acts in our lives–from breathing to brushing our teeth to bending over to lace our shoes–are sometimes taken for granted.

Can you think of an act that you perform daily or weekly which you may overlook in your rush to catch the bus on your way to school or as you hurry to your next office meeting?

Maybe it’s the moment at your desk when you take the first sip of your morning coffee.

Or maybe it’s when the phone rings and you hear a loved one’s voice.

Or see a rainbow from your car window.

Or hear a new song on the radio.

Take a moment to think of the blessings in your life… and then write about a specific moment in which you first recognized that moment as a blessing.

Once you’ve written down the bare bones of the moment–go back and re-read what you’ve written.

Can you find a Jewish element in the moment?

And can you flesh out that Jewish element as part of that moment?

Here’s the beginning of a draft that I came up with:

Sunday Morning Doughnuts

It’s early Sunday morning, and I’m sitting at Dunkin’ Donuts after dropping my daughter off at Hebrew school.

On the table in front of me I’ve set a medium cup of coffee (extra light, no sugar), steam rising above the rim, and, on a paper napkin, a chocolate frosted doughnut.

I lift the doughnut to my lips and, before biting into it, say a blessing to thank God for allowing food to be grown and processed and made into something as delicious as a doughnut.

This simple act of blessing the doughnut–or any food that passes my lips–is my way of acknowledging God and reminds me of  all that flows out of God and how I’m as much a part of that flow of energy as the wheat and sugar and chocolate (not to mention the human labor) that goes into the creation of the doughnut.

But part of me wonders–in the very act of saying the blessing– how I can say such a blessing if I doubt God’s existence?

Does my doubt–as slight or great as it may be on any given day– make the blessing hollow, hypocritical?

These two conflicting poles–wanting to acknowledge and thank God on the one hand, but doubting God’s existence on the other–pull me in different directions.

On some days I gravitate toward one pole; on other days, toward the other. The tension is always there. It’s part of my Jewish identity, an internal debate reflecting, perhaps, my American-Jewish soul.

As an American, I try to be open to the world. I want to be free of the shackles of the Old World, to explore new ways of living. But as a Jew I look a bit dubiously at the New World. I want to be faithful to the past and to the faith of my forefathers and my Jewish heritage.

How am I supposed to reconcile these two conflicting impulses? Are they conflicting impulses or simply different sides of the same issue regarding faith?

Do I just learn to live with them or, ultimately, must I choose one or the other?

Can both–faith and doubt– co-exist simultaneously, or must one conquer the other and emerge the victor?

And then I take a bite of the doughnut, and all my questions of faith and doubt dissolve in the moment of savoring the taste of chocolate frosting.

Let us know what you discover about being Jewish in the simple acts of your daily life when you get a chance.

2 Comments

Filed under American Jewry, Jewish identity, Jewish writing, writing practice

Tagged as , ,

July 20, 2009 · 7:19 am

A child is waiting for you in Australia

by Nava Semel (Tel Aviv, Israel)
translated from the Hebrew by Dan Gillon

I am on my way to meet my child in Australia.

I’m going to visit Iyar my son who, for the last three and a half years, has been living on the other side of the world. Whoever it was that said, if only half seriously, that my son had “run as far away from you as he could” had a point. Maybe there he could discover something about himself that he was unable to find in our midst.

At my end of the world, it is intolerably humid. Midsummer in Israel. Dragging my suitcase stuffed with winter clothes, I remind myself that there are times when one needs to get as far as possible just to come a little closer.

I am going ‘Down Under’ to visit my son in a part of the world where everything is upside down. He lives in a place I had never even heard of until he chose it as his place of study. Soon, following a chain of flights spanning two whole days, his place will become real to me. At first, he studied sound and music technology over there. Later, in an abrupt U turn, he began to study music itself from A to Z.

His father, Noam, called him “Rabbi Akiva,” after a famous Jewish scholar who decided to go to school when he was already a grown man. Sometimes Noam says it with a sigh, but I detect a hint of admiration, too.

I’m also going to meet my child’s girl friend whom I have never seen. Her name is Lucy Elliot and she is not Jewish. She is twenty two, a student of Chinese medicine and Iyar’s sweetheart. It is she who caresses him, sleeps with him, and comforts him — the young woman who provides him with a warm nest, a home away from home.

I’ve only seen her in pictures sent by Iyar. A winning smile, a dimpled cheek, wavy honey-coloured hair, her lips touching a yellow, very ripe, lemon.

As I set off on my journey, I am utterly drained. All the empty space within me is filled by sorrow, as in Michael Ende’s book, The Neverending Story, where encroaching nothingness gradually gobbles everything up. Because just a week ago Adi my beloved brother-in-law passed away. On his death bed, his eyes blazing an eternal blue, he whispered to me, “A child is waiting for you in Australia.”

I’m on my way and the grief bites ever deeper. The shoulder carrying my wintery suitcase aches, probably maimed by the bitter parting from Adi and our helplessness when facing his suffering. I am going to see Iyar who was not physically present in the room where Adi lay but was nonetheless by his side. Because he and Adi are twin spirits sharing the same view about expanding our horizons and pushing the boundaries of self-experience no matter what.

I embark on my journey emotionally torn and ravaged. “My soul drips with sorrow” as is written in the book of Psalms; now the phrase keeps ringing in my head, mingled with the repeated calls for my upcoming flight.

Tomorrow my husband Noam, my sister-in-law Sarah and her two daughters, Techelet and Toam, will end the Jewish seven days of mourning and I will be far away.

Lucy Elliot had sent a letter of condolence from Australia. She wrote that he who dies is reborn elsewhere. She added that the end is also a beginning. Beautiful, fine words. Compassion in English, which is not my native tongue. Yet this is the language in which my son’s sweetheart whispers words of love to him.

Her Australian accent is heavy. In our short, snatched telephone conversations, I have difficulty understanding what she is saying. Once she called me “Ima” –“Mom” in Hebrew– and in the background I could hear Iyar’s rolling laughter.

I set out on my journey carrying with me an empty notebook, hoping to tie up the loose ends of the last chapter of a novel I’ve been writing for the last year and a half. Like me, the novel is full of sorrow and loss, and I have so far lacked the strength to finish it. Perhaps Australia will help me find a way of concluding a haunting tale of Jews hiding in Italy under Nazi occupation.

“Mom, there’s a story waiting for you here,” Iyar tells me. I am on a journey to look for that story, though in the past it was the stories that found me. I don’t know what kind of tale is waiting for me over there; and maybe this was merely bait to lure me to cross continents, and the moment I land the story will slip away. But that is of no importance. It is a year since I last saw my son. And over the past six years, since he finished his army service, he has been roaming the world, a restless pilgrim in search of inspiring sites, grasping everything in awe. He is driven by a constant desire for adventure. Is this, I wonder, a sign of belated rebelliousness? Observing Iyar’s urge to travel to the earth’s furthest corners  reminds me of my grandfather, Gabriel Herzig, who left Europe so many years ago, abandoning my grandmother and the baby who was to be my father, seeking his destiny in America which in those days was no less the end of the world than is Australia today.

Will we be strangers to one another? After all, I’m a woman in mid-life. Embarrassed as I am to apply these words to myself, even though in my heart of hearts the same ‘youthful me’ has lost none of her intensity and refuses to wear the mantle of old age. Deep down there’s still that old insecurity, those same fears of darkness and built-in childishness that are the cornerstones of my nature.

Will we get on? Will we quarrel? And where will I sleep? Iyar wants me to share his room but I have already sent him a panicky text message that I will take a hotel instead

Above all, I want to avoid a rift between us. Many years have past since we shared a room, curled up together, mother and son.

On Independence Day last year he was twenty eight years old yet I still call him “my child.”

Born in Jaffa- Tel Aviv, Nava Semel has worked as a journalist, art critic, and TV, radio and recording producer, and has received numerous literary prizes for her work, which includes sixteen books, four plays, and opera libretti. Many of her stories have been adapted for radio, film, TV and the stage in Israel, Europe and the USA, and her books have been translated into many languages. Her acclaimed novel, And the Rat Laughs, which was made into an opera and composed by Ella Milch-Sheriff, has run on the stage of the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv for the last five years. The novel came out recently in English from Hybrid Publishers in Melbourne, Australia.

For information (in Hebrew) about Semel’s work, visit her website: http://navasemel.com/

For information (in English) about Semel’s work, visit the website of The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature that represents her work: http://www.ithl.org.il/authors.html

And if you’re interested in reading more (in Hebrew) about Australian Wedding, the book from which this is an excerpt, take a look at:
http://navasemel.com/index.php?page_id=141

Leave a comment

Filed under Family history, Jewish identity, Jewish writing

Tagged as ,

July 6, 2009 · 7:28 am

From Jew-ish to Jewish

by Rachel Reeves (Brighton, UK)

I feel frustrated at the moment.  I’m sitting here on the train, wishing I had my laptop instead of having to resort to my illegible scrawl.  This will be my ‘nth’ iteration of my innermost thoughts about my journey to becoming Jewish.  My initial version was written in the time running up to Shavuot – which has now long since passed.  Reading it back to myself now, it comes across as rather thin and superficial – not because that’s how I feel about my Jewish journey, but because I’m afraid to let too much out.  It’s an intensely personal thing and I’m afraid of baring my soul to readers who know nothing about me.  But, if I don’t tell the truth, then what’s the point of writing it down in the first place?

This redrafting has partly been inspired by a few in-depth conversations I’ve had with a new (Jewish) friend of mine.  He was born Jewish, lived very un-Jewishly for many years and has only recently started to bring his Jewishness back into his life.  He wants to be productive, contributory, a good Jewish person.  From what he tells me, he carries a lot of guilt around for basically ‘checking out’ for a large part of his life.  This really made me think hard.  I had made the assumption that all born-Jews I had met had lived intensely rich, fulfilled Jewish lives.  All the things that I, as an in-transit convert, had not.  To be honest, it has not been unusual for me to feel terribly jealous of these seemingly settled, comfortable, confident people that I have met over the past few months!  But this insight has been a bit of a revelation for me, at once helping me to feel a little less different (we are all, it seems, dissatisfied with our situation on some level!) and also a little more unsettled.  If all I can look forward to is more self-doubt, more internal pressure to do better, then why am I doing this?

And I suppose that this is the six million dollar question.  The easy answer that I have at the ready (for a short-hand ‘in’ to anyone at the synagogue that asks) is that somewhere in my family’s past there are Jewish roots.  True, but I don’t think that it totally answers the question.  That answer does nothing to reveal the deep-seated urge within me to be Jewish.  At the first Shabbat service that I attended, the rabbi (who has a beautiful voice) led the singing from start to finish.  The passion and haunting melodies pulled at something in my soul to such an extent that I knew there was no way that I could just be an observer.  I wanted all of ‘that’ to mean something to me, to form part of my way of living, breathing and being.

It’s not easy, but then nobody ever told me it would be.  Much of the time, I have felt only Jew-ish.  As if I am not putting enough effort into this journey of mine.  There is always something else demanding my attention, my time, my energy.  I see other people who have embarked on their conversion path at the same time as me and they seem so much more prepared, practised, consistent, organised. I just see them as being in a better place than me.  I know that being Jewish requires a practical commitment. It is far more about ‘doing’ Jewish than just considering yourself Jewish and having the piece of paper to prove it.  I expect that’s where my friend’s guilt is coming from. All those years of not ‘doing’ are clearly an important and serious issue for him.  And in a small way, I can appreciate this.  After all, my concerns all arise from the fact that I think I’m not ‘doing’ enough.

Judaism has had to adapt to the times over and over again.  I have joined a progressive form of Judaism – a truly modern iteration that still attaches great importance to traditional ceremonies, the Hebrew liturgy and inclusivity.  It may not suit some, but it certainly speaks to me.  The ethical and social approach fits broadly with the morals and guidelines that I tried to live by ‘before’ and those which I was brought up to value in an atheist household.  I wrote in my first attempt that I was concerned by the fact that this chosen religion of mine was centred around the family, and children in particular, and that I don’t have children to whom I can pass on my traditions.  To some extent, this concern has waxed and waned depending on how comfortable I feel with how much I am contributing to the community that I have joined.  I don’t want to be what a former colleague of mine referred to as a ‘net contributor’ – someone who takes more than they give, or who doesn’t give at all.  I would like to think that this ability to contribute is only limited by my current status (the one I refer to as Jew-ish) rather than by any natural disinclination to become a fully-functioning member of the community.  This ‘Jew-ish’ status also has more practical implications since I don’t really have any right to influence what happens in the community as yet – not until I become a fully-fledged member, which in turn can only happen when I become a fully-fledged Jew.

So, how do I feel with regards to my conversion?  Do I feel anywhere even close to being Jewish yet?  Well, I was immensely flattered and pleased to hear from someone just starting out on their conversion journey that they thought I was born-Jewish and had no idea that I was only a bit further along the winding path than they were.  Of course, this was all about outward appearances – the fact that I could follow the service, point them in the right direction in the Siddur when they lost their place, could sing or speak most of the Hebrew and knew other members of the community.  Yes, this is all part of ‘it,’ this progression towards becoming a Jew, but what about what is happening inside?  How do I really, really feel?  To be honest, I’m not sure that I know.  This doesn’t mean that I don’t know if I am doing the right thing, which is certainly beyond doubt and something I don’t ever remember questioning.  What I’m trying to say is that from day to day, my feelings change.  On one day, when I’ve made sufficient time to study Hebrew a bit more, when I’ve read a bit more of one of my many books on Judaism, when I ‘get’ a reference to some inside joke, then I feel that I am making good progress.  The very next day, when none of these things have happened, when for some reason I can’t attend a service, or when I’ve forgotten the Hebrew I learned the day before, I feel as if I am getting nowhere and have perhaps even gone backwards.  There have been days when my heart hasn’t been in the study, there have been Shabbat services when I have felt as if I am going through the motions and classes when I haven’t applied myself wholeheartedly to the work in hand.  This all makes me sound like a terrible student and perhaps not someone that should be welcomed with open arms into the Jewish community, which needs strong, disciplined, committed members for its future growth and benefit.  But I am trying my best.  When I feel that I have slipped, I work harder the next time. I try to approach the next study time with a different viewpoint and clear my mind of all the other day-to-day concerns that do their best to interrupt my train of thought.

But ‘this’ isn’t all about study, commitment and discipline.  It’s about spirituality, becoming a part of a people, history and life.  For some inexplicable reason (and believe me, I have tried to work out the ‘why’) I have always felt an affinity with the Jewish people, even when I was very young and before I knew about my own hard-to-pin-down family history.  I have always felt a little bit different, part of an indefinable ‘other.’  I couldn’t work out what this was until I first entered the synagogue for my first Shabbat service.  Never mind that a great portion of it was in a language I knew almost nothing about, that the constant flipping backwards and forwards through the Siddur confused me beyond belief.  I felt as if I had found my home and would do whatever I could to make sure that it became that place of refuge, a true sanctuary, for me in the future.

Much of this gives the impression that I am trying to run before I can walk – which of course is perfectly true (and it won’t be the last time it happens, either!).  I want to know Hebrew inside out, understand all the rituals and the history behind them, help influence the running of the synagogue – all of it now (or even better, yesterday).  At least it shows that the commitment is there!  But even if all that were true at this very moment, that I had ‘passed the test’ and was now a fully paid up member of the Jewish people, would that mean I could rest on my laurels and stop learning?  Actually, no it wouldn’t.  Of course.  It would just mean that one part of my spiritual, practical life had ended and I would now be embarking on a new stage in my Jewish journey.  And I can’t wait to set off on that future path, wherever it might take me.

Rachel was born in Birmingham, England and has gradually moved south over the years until finding her true home in Brighton, on the south coast.  Any further moves south will involve moving to another country! She tries to work, rest and play to the best of her ability and believes that she has always been Jewish in her soul, but only found herself in the right place spiritually and mentally to actively ‘scratch the itch’ last year.  Starting her conversion journey has become more enriching than she ever anticipated. You can read more about her journey at her blog: http://shavuatov.wordpress.com.

2 Comments

Filed under Jewish identity, Jewish writing

Tagged as ,

June 1, 2009 · 8:29 am

On Writing a Poem Related to the Holocaust

by Susan L. Lipson (Poway, CA)

My student came to me with a school assignment: write a poem in response to a Holocaust victim’s poem, “The Butterfly,” by Pavel Friedmann.

We discussed the particular juxtaposition of a yellow butterfly’s beauty with the haunting images of life in the Jewish ghetto, and the symbol of hope amid the ruins of life.

I asked him to imagine himself in a concentration camp: “So, as an inmate, what would you see every day as you worked, something that you could see in another way, a brighter way, out of both desperation and hope?”

He mentioned a barbed wire fence in front of flowers on the other side.

I replied, “How about the barbed wire fence itself–how might a hopeful, yet hopeless person view such an ugly fence in a new light; what simile could describe the wire and the barbs as looking like something happier?”

I drew a line with asterisk-like barbs across his paper.

“What does it look like to you?” I asked.

He replied, “Flowers on a metal vine.”

And so his poem, and mine simultaneously, was born.

He turned in his free verse to his teacher with pride; I’m posting mine here, hoping to elicit your comments.

SONNET FROM ANOTHER LIFE
by Susan L. Lipson

Metallic flowers on a silver vine
Stretch taut to keep us in their garden walls,
Where worms like us must dig, but never whine,
Must bury seeds of hope before they fall;
No birds alight upon these petal spikes,
Lest they get pierced like friends I’ve loved and lost,
Friends who were but “vermin,” “dogs,” or “kikes,”
Rebelling, not considering the cost.
To sniff these blooms brings blood, not pleasant scents,
Yet still the petal barbs tempt me to climb—
Just up and over!—leave behind this fence,
Escape to fragrant fields and summertime…
Confinement alters views, both tempts and taunts;
Like a relentless ghost, our minds it haunts.

Susan L. Lipson, a poet and children’s novelist, has taught writing in the San Diego area for more than ten years. Her latest books are Knock on Wood (a contemporary fantasy for children) and Writing Success Through Poetry.

Lipson also writes songs, including Jewish spiritual songs, some of which have been performed by synagogue choirs and soloists.

For more information about her work, visit her website: http://www.myspace.com/susanllipson

This piece first appeared on her blog, Writing Memorable Words (http://susanllipson.blogspot.com/) in slightly different form. It’s reprinted here with permission of the author.

Leave a comment

Filed under American Jewry, Jewish writing

Tagged as ,

May 18, 2009 · 8:27 am

From Ghetto Girl To Rabbi’s Wife

by Aliza Hausman (Riverdale, NY)

I have always been a stranger in a strange land.

My childhood years in Washington Heights, an inner-city New York offshoot of the Dominican Republic, were Rapunzelesque. I watched the goings-on in the ’hood from our sixth-floor apartment, which towered over the hilly area. My sisters and I weren’t allowed to play outside because of the drug dealers, the culture, and the language, all of which my mother was sure were veneno—poison. According to Mom, Spanish was okay, English even better, but “talking Ghetto,” the Spanglish slang of the streets, was no good.

I learned about religion watching The Ten Commandments over Easter. On Sundays I attended catechism classes at the local Catholic school. At home my mother practiced a blend of Catholicism and Santeria (Afro-Caribbean “voodoo”), taking me to brujas (witches) to cure my allergies. I had no idea that only blocks away, in the midst of my Dominican ghetto, there was a Jewish neighborhood.

So how in the world did I find my way to Judaism?

It started with a car ride. My best friend, Igor, a Russian Jew, had gone to Israel an atheist and come back Orthodox. Driving around the neighborhood with me and my sisters, he thrilled us with tales of going kosher, living life as an observant Jew, and scaring all his old friends. He wore a black kippah, soon to be coordinated with the white shirt and black pants that would become his signature wardrobe. I was wearing a halter top and short shorts. All I knew was that Judaism meant I wasn’t allowed to hug him anymore.

“Wow! That’s so interesting. Tell us more!” my sisters chorused from the backseat. And then to me: “You should be Jewish! You always wanted to be Jewish. Remember?”

When I was 13, a visit from a Holocaust survivor to my junior high school had piqued my interest in Judaism enough that I stole the Star of David my mother kept with her cross and wore it every day. I went to the library’s religion section, where I discovered that the Jewish notion of G-d matched the one I’d always had in my head and heart. G-d was always watching over me and always listening. There were no intermediaries standing between us.

“Mom, I want to be Jewish,” I declared one day, running to her in a frenzy of excitement, books in hand.

My mother’s lips curled in horror before she reeled her arm back like a baseball pitcher and cracked a slap across my face. Later, various family encounters would teach me that anti-Semitism was alive and well in the world. I put Judaism on the back burner.

At 25, I tried going back to the church. I hoped Protestant Christianity might be less fire-and-brimstone than Catholicism. But the calculation that no Jesus equals eternal damnation didn’t sit well with me. So when my best friend started talking, I was intrigued.

Two months later, I was knee-deep in Jewish books and had an appointment with an Orthodox rabbi. No Jesus. No Trinity. No more scary confessions to priests. No nuns looking perturbed when they asked all the students to draw G-d and I held up a drawing of a giant yellow squiggle and said,“G-d is light.” In my head, G-d was as bright and warm as a sunburst, always lighting the way ahead. Even at 8, I wasn’t drawing Jesus idols.

Over the year I became a constant presence in the synagogue office. I took weekly classes. I assaulted the rabbi daily with questions via e-mail. I read late into the night and listened to educational MP3s on the way to work. I was a human iPod, downloading a lifetime of Jewish learning into my brain.

I saw Judaism as an extension of the personal relationship with G-d I had already honed over years of angry rants and silent wishes aimed at the heavens. I got high on how Judaism could teach me to make every action in my life holy and how to focus on bettering myself for my time on Earth, not as a ticket to Heaven.

Judaism began to color all the areas of my life. I bought my last pair of pants from the Gap and a week later sold them to a fellow teacher at the high school where I worked. I charged knee-length H&M skirts by the dozen. I prayed all the time and for everything. And when I discovered Shabbat, I sighed with relief. Shabbat was the first vacation this workaholic had taken in a long time.

I finally confessed my decision to convert to my father in an international call to the Dominican Republic. “Dad, I’m going to be Jewish. You’re going to have Jewish grandchildren.”

After a long pause, I heard a faint chuckle escalate into booming sputters of laughter. “You’re crazy!” No, I assured him, I wasn’t.

But still I was a stranger. My olive skin was much darker than the Ashkenazi faces I saw at shul. People stared at my curly Afro. When I told my non-Jewish friends that people at shul complimented my “tan,” they reacted in disbelief: “But you’re so white!”

Six months into my conversion, I met my future husband, then a graduate student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, at a housewarming party for some rabbinical students in Washington Heights. Here, at least, I felt like the consummate insider—Dominican and (almost) Jewish in a neighborhood that had long been home to both groups.

After nearly a year of studying, the rabbi thought I was ready to convert. But first I had to survive Israel.

My husband’s supportive mother sent me to a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) school. Orthodox Jewish boys dated for marriage, and we couldn’t wed until I was “kosher.” In Israel I realized that I was becoming part of a family. Like any family, there is bickering and infighting. Sometimes we can be dysfunctional in the way we tear each other down. But we can also be amazing in the support systems we create: cooking meals for new mothers, sitting shiva with friends, and partying at glorious weddings not to be missed.

Two months later I returned to New York to dip in the mikvah. A beit din (rabbinical court) of three rabbis asked me questions before shepherding me into the little pool. Fresh from the mikvah and clasped in a bear hug by my friend Devora, I was sure that, though I had been born to a non-Jewish mother, I had always had a Jewish soul.

Am I still a stranger in a strange land? As I pack my husband’s lunch before he heads for rabbinical school, I wonder how many other Dominican Jewish rebbetzins are out there. But I’ve never felt less alone in my life. The story goes that converts, too, were present at Mount Sinai for the giving of the Torah, but we were lost along the way and have had to find our way home.

And where is home?

Ruth, the most famous convert of all, put it best: “Your people will be my people, and your G-d, my G-d.”

You said it, sister!

Aliza Hausman, a Latina Orthodox Jewish convert, freelance writer, blogger and educator, blogs daily at Memoirs of a Jewminicana: http://www.alizahausman.net. She is currently working on a memoir.

4 Comments

Filed under American Jewry, Jewish identity, Jewish writing

Tagged as ,