5.0 out of 5 stars
A Life Both Spiritual and Poetic, March 14, 2011
This review is from: A Spiritual Life: Exploring the Heart and Jewish Tradition (S U N Y Series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture) (Paperback)
My brother and I were at Sinai
He kept a journal
of what he saw
of what he heard
Of what it all meant to him
I wish I had such a record
of what happened to me there
It seems like every time I want to write
I can't
I'm always holding a baby
With these words, Merle Feld captures the reality of Jewish women's struggle, from Sinai to the present: Beliefs, while deeply felt, have only rarely been recorded.
Feld sets out to close this ancient lacuna -- which has made women's spirituality the malnourished stepchild at the feast of Jewish learning -- with an inspirational account of her own inner life, from childhood in Brooklyn (assimilated) to adulthood as a sought-after poet, playwright and lecturer (flourishing alongside her husband, a rabbi whose spiritual journey enriches -- but cannot always parallel -- her own). This is a travelogue of Feld's years in the desert.
Feld tells the story largely through her poems (many previously unpublished, others re-collected from anthologies and journals). The poems are animated by their Bombeckian attention to the details of daily life:
Do you flush? When she's napping--
Do you flush?
No, I say to the voice on the other end of the phone.
We both laugh.
Another mother's secret shared.
The verse is about childrearing, but its subtext -- that women can survive only by comparing notes -- is central to Feld's project.
The book tracks her life in roughly chronological order: childhood, marriage (to a rabbi who encouraged her search but, given the dearth of resources for Jewish women, could only guide her so far). Of their first Friday night together, in the shabby apartment, she writes:
It was all so ugly that we turned out the lights
Only the shabbos candles flickered.
Shabbos candles become the weekly punctuation as Feld moves through childrearing, the struggle to find a voice (now loud-and-clear in several oft-performed plays), and personal tragedies, such as a miscarriage and the deaths of parents:
My fingers were cold this morning
hanging out the wash
but the warmth of the sun
reminded me of how I had planned
to sit in the sun with my mother.
Eventually, there is activism (in Israel and at home), and finally, the creation of a community of Jewish feminists, whose journeys inform Feld's own and tantalize with the possibility that hers may be the first in a series of intertwined memoirs. The book suggests that the spiritual journey is a long and winding road, but that answers are found along the way -- and that uncertainty is no reason to postpone the trip.
Feld's great gift is for linking feelings about being a wife/mother/sister/friend/lover, and feelings about being a Jew. Thus, discovering the depths of her Zionism during a year in Israel, she writes:
Jerusalem
I write your name
as long ago I wrote the names
of boys who made me flush
with inexplicable pleasure
Feld's prose can be as lovely as her poetry. Take this description, from her chapter on the cycle of the Jewish year, of effort required to prepare her kitchen for Pesach: "The refrigerator, the stove, must gleam, even cleaner than for snoopy in-laws, even cleaner than for resale--clean enough for God."
I am reminded of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's deceptively simple definition of poetry as "writing in which the author makes a deliberate decision about where the lines will end." (Neither poetry nor prose, as Sedgwick implies and Feld confirms, has a monopoly on rhythm, dead-on imagery, or powerful emotional effect.)
This eminently readable book suffers none of the shortcomings of other spiritual memoirs (pomposity; certitude; caricaturing doubt as an enemy easily vanquished in time for the last chapter). It is a perfect gift for any spiritually-wandering Jew.
Feld, who is also the author of a cookbook, would almost certainly be pleased to see this memoir take its place on the kitchen windowsill (to be explored while waiting for toaster to pop or teakettle to whistle). After all, Feld is a feminist who doesn't throw off the realities of daily life, but ennobles them. (God is in the details; for Feld, family responsibilities are more often the genesis than the nemesis of spiritual/emotional fulfillment.)
In a time when superficiality is in fashion -- Alfred E. Neuman's "What Me Worry?" is as deep a philosophy as many Americans seem willing to adopt -- Feld's book is a "Let's Go" for the soul. The trip from Sinai will be long and difficult, she tells us -- but less difficult for those who takes notes (and share them, as Feld has done compellingly) along the way.
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