When I was a little girl, my father taught me how to
kiss the mezuzah. It was a simple thing, but it stuck with me. Maybe it’s the
reason that more than anything else, I’m a Jew.
There were other things growing up that helped make me a
Jew. Someone always had to hear me say “Shema” before bed. Not the whole
prayer. But that one powerful sentence, sung in my childish singsong.
I wanted to write about this. This and other things. But
since October 7, I haven’t been able to write. Not like before, when it flowed like
a river, from brain to fingers to keyboard.
Now it’s stuck. Maybe something shorted out.
And still, I am trying to find my way back to the keyboard.
So each week I tell myself, “Write something short.
Anything. People will understand.”
Instead, I imagine my childhood bedroom, the glossy white
paint of its walls and furniture, streaked with the merest tint of pale aqua. My
father holding me up to the mezuzah. Teaching me how to kiss it and why.
I only had my father a short time. But I can still hear his voice, its exact
cadence and timbre. In thirteen years, he gave me everything I needed.
He made me more than anything else, a Jew.
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