JWOW

Zooming in On My Personal Preference

By Rebbetzin Faigie Horowitz

“The Girl in the Red Boots” was the recent selection of the JWOW! book club. The Zoom discussion of psychologist Judith Ruskay Rabinor’s memoir ranged from making peace with one’s mother to eating disorders and family secrets, the key themes of her personal narrative. I particularly enjoyed reading the book, even if it was an effort to finish it. I knew her brother John from his years as executive vice president of UJA-Federation of New York. His sister’s narrative gave me the canvas of his family and Jewish background.

Some of us are people who like to immerse ourselves in other people’s lives. Carried on the back of a strong character, we venture into depths of feelings and sink, swim, and re-emerge from the bath in other as changed people. We don’t skim the surface of a life story. We submerge ourselves in their friendships and difficulties, soaking up details of uncommon travels and travails. Unabashedly, we listen in on family feuds, organizational politics, and personal prejudices. We are not yentas. We are the readers of memoirs.

It may be a middle-aged thing. We can commit hours to stepping into someone else’s shoes and walking with them. We don’t lose ourselves in their narratives, but we do find a lot in their story. Courage, inspiration, and judgment reverberate from good chronicles of a life, even if it was not a great life. Perhaps, we identify with the author’s growing self and abilities; his/her development validates our own personal journeys.

If it’s a woman, her mindfulness as she sketches and catalogs the trivia of her saga reminds us of our own ruminations and conclusions about our past. Her journaling toward her own personal truths resonates with all of us who have drawn later conclusions about earlier experiences. It’s the feminine way, and it’s making public her private thoughts and feelings from a place of mature confidence. And I am taken by those women who have the self-knowledge and self-discipline to sit down and put finger to keyboard and record them.

I was startled out of my emerging

Give me the jacquard of a twentieth-century feminine memoir over the tweed of a classic biography any time.

maturity by my friend who is taking Fayge Borchardt’s memoir writing class and writing pieces for her children. How brave to look back and open up with adult eyes and heart, I thought when she shared this project with me. It’s a legacy of her own, a unique voice about her past that she can capture without being accused of being preachy or particularist. She is truly older than I in understanding herself and her upbringing.

Writing a memoir also seems to grant you a legitimate way of speaking your piece. You can be heard better on paper, perhaps, certainly by your children who are used to your voice since their uterine

state. Maybe that’s why she is doing it now. I am not yet ready to say my piece. I’m still a work in progress.

Another friend has had an interesting history spanning across continents and marriages and is looking back from her early sixties to give her children a sense of who and what she is in her own words. Her story may not be as thrilling as Gutta Sternbuch’s Polish narrative which I recently reread or as exotic as Irma Robles Lopez Cardozo’s account of Sephardic life in Suriname and Manhattan. But it tells her own history and the way she views her life and the experiences that shaped it with honesty.

Her “brenn” comes through her words. The reader senses her charisma through her impassioned youth group leadership and her statement: I have a Chassidic soul. The editing of her life story is her privilege. She doesn’t have to share that which she does not care to. But what she does share is an eloquent incubation of holiness within a woman.

My great-great Aunt Chanale Twersky Rottenberg’s soft-covered volume chronicles the conflicts and complexities of “rebbeshe” daughters between the two wars. Her style and her story both clarify her choices. She presents her later life in the ways she wants them to be seen. I revel in the idiosyncratic sense of person and place of “the Mima’s” memoir. I relish the legitimate subjectivity with which the personal narrative and historical context is infused.

I love my history light and highly colored. I want it succulently detailed with people I know in surprising contexts. Give me the jacquard of a twentieth-century feminine memoir over the tweed of a classic biography any time. Who needs all the chronological minutiae? Give me the themes and highly personal perspectives on particular times and places.

Some people get their inspiration through a shiur, a story, or an experience. Make mine a well-crafted memoir from which I borrow time-tested courage, character, and resilience from real people.