A Reliable Narrator
- Erin Conway
- Jul 13
- 4 min read
Summer started, and then started to pass, quickly. The sensation of momentum makes sense as many aspects of My Jewish Year find endings. Pogrebin dedicates several chapters to wrapping up, but I find the back to back chapters of Activist Shabbat and 17th of Tammuz to be a pairing, drawstrings in fact, that pulls the corners of the past year closed.
Activist Shabbat
Tzedek, tzedek tirdof: Justice, Justice, Shall you pursue
Pogrebin spends this additional Shabbat chapter with young adults who are serving for a year with Avodah. She asks herself, “Have I answered that charge? What have I done to pursue justice?” (242) Across the chapter, she contemplates the idea of ‘enough’.
Giving enough, being enough, these are themes that were initial activations of my Jewish identity but also themes that corrupted my ability to tell my own story across time. The Shabbat Pogrebin attends is organized around the theme of peacemaking. The facilitator references “Deep Dialogue” and posits that peacemaking depends on two questions we ask to seek understanding: “Why do you care so much? Why does this matter to you so deeply?” (243) These questions are meaningful, especially when the person you are making peace with is yourself.
17th of Tammuz
Pogrebin places this fast day in the context of the others she observed, to focus the mind, and as a kind of ‘hunger strike’. According to Stein Hain, Hebrew Bible professor David Lambert’s assertion of the metaphor explains, “It’s a way of a human being saying to God, ‘Please change this, or I refuse to eat.’” On the 17th of Tammuz, a separate kind of reality to the doing emerges. We relive the Roman siege of Jerusalem. in which "... the Jews were barricaded in the city, cut off from food and water, dying slowly, inescapably, in full view of their captors.” They knew the walls had been breached; they knew what was going to happen. He continues, "... Some people today know exactly what that feels like–to know how it’s going to end and have no choice but to wait it out.” (264)
Pogrebin concludes by centering on the value of an experience that is not about fixing (as highlighted in Activist Shabbat) but how you bear the fact your purpose must find something else that doesn't rely on a successful outcomes. This moment is the “liminal space, between the life you still have and the moment you’ll lose it.” (265). Within it we must position ourselves in the collective impact of what might come after us and remove the importance of ‘I’ in what was, or could be, done. This relieves, and so I stop reliving, disappointment resulting from artificial urgency.
My Rosh Hashanah goal was to let go. Let go of what I was holding onto that did not serve me at best and that was holding me back at worst. I spent my own Jewish year sifting and throwing and tucking and folding. Still, one cluttered space remained, a digital one.
I began reading manuscripts over the past month, starting with my memoir. Strings in Our Hands: A memoir for my community of teachers is organized by descriptors that I intended to progress as I took ownership of my experience, my identity, my story, except I hadn't. I cut pages and pages, easily fifty. Reading them was no different than the boxes of cards. Their collective impact was enough, one phrase, one photo, and then erasure. These pages held events, questions, judgment, doubt, relationships, names, and always weight I no longer needed with me.
I asked myself the questions from “Deep Dialogue.”
“Why do you care so much? Why does this matter to you so deeply?”
I had not known the amount of time it would take to arrive here and I was often impatient, lacking faith in myself. I asked these questions in the context of the 17th of Tammuz. Yes or no. Not maybe. Either the details were worth keeping or they weren't, because I now knew how everything ended. I was no longer defined by each individually: experience, success, impact, meaningless or otherwise. I took charge of the narrative. I enjoyed my own voice.
My story arc is not unique. The desire to own my story is hardly rare. The strength of the Jewish year, Pogrebin's included, is its ability to accompany collective and individual journeys, enriched by histories crafted over time. Someone recognized these moments and someone was brave enough to retell them, in a way that we could learn from, in a way that mattered and could matter more than once. While the narrative may sometimes be lost or its meaning muddled, ultimately, the only reliable narrator I need is myself.
My Jewish Year Series
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