I am struggling to maintain a dayenu mindset. On Passover, one of the highlights of the telling of the story of the Exodus is the song Dayenu. One by one, singers list each of the miraculous things God did for B’nai Yisroel–aka the kin group that became us, the Jewish…
It’s taken me this long–almost three decades–to figure out how my view of the world was shaped by the history I learned at Jewish day school, which often focused on the Holocaust. It sounds silly, but only over the past few years have I really understood that, actually, not being…
It’s the best of yearly quarters, it’s the worst of yearly quarters: April is a very intense time at work, as the end of the school year brings final projects and presentations and burnout (for both students and faculty/staff). May is a million loose threads as we wrap up the…
I’m hesitant to use the #OwnVoices tag even when I’m writing characters whose identities and experiences overlap with my own. It’s not because I’m unsure who I am–I know that I’m Jewish, bi, grey-ace, GNC, etc. It’s because I’m not sure I’m enough of those things to count. Looking at…
We often phrase the “Golden Rule” as though it’s simple: do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. Or, according to Rabbi Hillel, what is hateful to you, don’t do to your fellow. Or, love your neighbour as yourself. All of these are slightly different takes on the…
In therapy, I’ve been struggling to accept that no matter how hard I try, sometimes I’m going to hurt other people–and that sometimes, I can’t or won’t try my hardest, because no one can all the time. I’ve internalized somehow, and reinforced through some of the discourse I consume, that…
The novel I’m working on has two protagonists. Each has qualities and sides to her identity that I share, and each has some for which I have to use my empathy and imagination. For example, one’s gender presentation is masculine-of-centre, and so is mine. One is Jewish, and so am…
As you can tell by this blog entry, these reminders are as much for me as for readers of this blog. The long haul is hard, but we can do it. This month, the Black Solidarity Fund (via Canada Helps) benefits from donation-matching. If you’re in a position where financial…
If you are white like me, here’s where we can educate ourselves on how to be good allies to Black folks and then act on it: https://www.adhoc.fm/post/black-lives-matter-resources-and-funds/ And here are some more places we can act on it if the action open to us right now is financial support: https://coveteur.com/2020/06/02/donate-racial-justice-organizations/…
When I was in Hebrew school, our teachers warned us about the dangers of assimilation. I’ve almost forgotten how often they did this, mainly because even at the time, I didn’t take it seriously. Some of them talked about it like the mainstream white Anglo-Saxon Protestant society Borg were going…