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Guest Post: Erika Dreifus on Jewish Storytelling

file000845471725Last year when I spent the evening in my uncle’s living room the night before my grandmother’s funeral, he told stories about her, about my great-grandparents, about Mama and Papa Murdoch. I recorded tiny notes in my phone. These pieces of my history have become critical to my understanding of the world, and some of them were new to me; I didn’t want to forget at thing. Lisa Cron (Wired for Story) explains why:

Story evolved as a way to explore our own mind and the minds of others, as a sort of dress rehearsal for the future. As a result, story helps us survive not only in the life-and-death sense but also in a life-lived-well social sense.

Stories then are tied not only to history but also to the culture of family and beyond. Today I welcome Erika Dreifus to talk about storytelling–its significance and symbolism–within her culture.

On Jewish Storytelling

By Erika Dreifus

When Christi invited me to contribute a guest post on the topic of “Jewish storytelling,” I thought immediately of the perennial joke: “Two Jews; three opinions.” And that’s because the very phrase—“Jewish storytelling”—invites debate. As far as I have observed, writers (and readers) seem to be engaged in a lively, eternal discussion, unfolding in print and online, to clarify and define what makes a given story “Jewish.”

Some of my ruminations on this subject stem from my own writing, notably my short-story collection, Quiet Americans, which is inspired largely by the experiences of my paternal grandparents, German Jews who immigrated to the United States in the late FigTreeBooks_Logo1930s. But I’ve also considered the subject more broadly, particularly as I continue to read and write about other people’s “Jewish stories,” and, most recently, as I’ve joined the team of new company, Fig Tree Books LLC, that focuses on publishing “the best Jewish fiction of the American Jewish Experience.”

Helping me shape my thoughts throughout is a website that I discovered thanks to one of the innumerable Jewishly-focused newsletters I subscribe to. At The 5 Legged Table, educator Avraham Infeld’s teachings frame a discussion of the question: What is being Jewish all about? The underlying principles impress me as applicable to a related question: What is a Jewish book or story all about?

Briefly, the 5-Legged Table comprises the following elements:

  • Memory: “While history is about what happened in the past, memory is about how that past drives our present and our future.”
  • Family
  • Covenant: Grounded in the idea that, at Sinai, Jews committed “to recognize one God; to make the world a better place for all people; and to use certain rituals to define and shape Jewish time and space. So, for Jews who observe any or all of the mitzvot, and those who are committed to tikkun olam (repairing the world), and those who serve the Jewish community, or move to Israel, the covenant established at Mount Sinai is still a tie that binds.”
  • Hebrew
  • Israel

My hypothesis: To the extent that these are the “legs” on which a particular book stands, that book is a Jewish book; its story is a Jewish story.

Note that the work need not necessarily include all five legs. After all, tables normally stand on four. But I take pride in realizing that, to varying degrees, all five are woven into Quiet Americans:

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“Yet it was the freedom in the words that mattered.” ~ from “Lebensraum”

Memory: The book itself stems from the transmitted histories of my grandparents and their families, and how all of that accumulated history is remembered and continues to influence me.

Which leads to family: Family relationships are at the core of virtually every story in my book.

What about Covenant? Here, I think especially of one story in my collection, “Lebensraum,” and the role that Jewish ritual plays there. Moreover, in a small gesture of tikkun olam, I have been making quarterly donations—based on sales of Quiet Americans—to The Blue Card, a nonprofit organization that aids U.S.-based Holocaust survivors, ever since the book was first released.

Hebrew words—albeit transliterated—are sprinkled throughout Quiet Americans.

And Israel is very much on the minds of many of my Jewish-American characters, whether they are watching Golda Meir speak on television after the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, or anguishing over the Second Lebanon War (and international condemnation of Israel for it) nearly 35 years later.

So that’s my take. But others have their own views on Jewish stories and storytelling. If this question interests you, I recommend that you explore the views of a diverse array of writers in Moment magazine a couple of years ago. There’s more food for thought—much more, in fact— in those contributions.

ED1014bErika Dreifus lives in New York, where she writes prose and poetry and serves as Media Editor for Fig Tree Books. Visit Erika online at www.erikadreifus.com and follow her on Twitter (@ErikaDreifus), where she tweets on “matters bookish and/or Jewish.”

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Digging Deep or Taking the Easy Way Out

photo 1(3)I just spent a weekend in Texas visiting a good friend, stopping in tiny towns, driving down country roads where I saw much of what I miss when I think of home: pastures and barbed wire fences and unfettered land.

And pecans.

Everywhere there were pecans. Tossed near the gear shift in my friends car, placed in a basket in her pantry, stuffed in her kids’ stockings for St. Nick’s. And in that early morning hour when her girls found the nuts and insisted on eating them straight away, I was pulled out of slumber by the sound of shells cracking.

In the my half-sleep half-wake fog, I was taken back in time. I remembered my own small fingers around the handles of the nut cracker, the textured metal cold to the touch. The sound of the shell giving way. The sensation of pulling at the hard outside to reveal the tender insides of two halves nestled together. There was the thrill of using the nutcracker’s sidekick, the pick, to clear out any hulls and the Cheshire grin of my grandfather when I’d neglected one tiny piece and scrunched my face at the bitter aftertaste. No amount of water–or time…even now I cringe!–can kill that taste.

pecan pieNow rooted up north and far from any pecan trees, I’ve grown lazy. I bypass all the work and purchase the nuts already halved and prepared for a tasty pie. I don’t once think about the bitters. But swathed in memory last weekend, I wondered if I might be missing out by ignoring the meditative (and maybe even therapeutic) process of cracking the shell, finding my way to the good stuff within.

It never fails that these tiny moments in life lead me to writing. These days, I am faced with a few projects that cry out for me to dig deeper, to pry open, to uncover. The subjects are either very different from what I am used to or altogether foreign to my own experiences, and I’ll be honest. Many days I want to take the easy way out, dress up the surface with pretty prose and hope the middle holds. Am I lazy? Maybe. But most likely I’m simply afraid. Lisa Ahn, in her essay on Hippocampus Magazine, reminds me that I am not alone:

Every story, every essay is a push-back against fear, the insidious little whisper that says, “not this time, you won’t.” That first draft? It’s never pretty, never even close. I’m just hoping for a string to hold, a path, a backbone in the wreckage. Revision is an exercise in ruthless shearing, cutting off two sentences for every one I keep. The bridge from brain to paper is a devil of a crossing. Even when the story’s done, it’s an act of faith and daring to push it, hard, into the world, to gather the rejections, and send it out again. Every writer knows this. . . . Writing isn’t for the faint of heart.

So, yeah, I could avoid the work it will take to give these pieces the attention and depth they deserve, but that would mean missing out, perhaps sacrificing the story. While that won’t serve the reader well, it also puts me at a loss. Taking the easy way out, I pass on an opportunity to grow as a writer. Which leads me to a great quote from Antonya Nelson in her “Ten Writing Rules:”

Write into the mystery. Write what you do not know. Write without having any eyes looking over your shoulder. Write the way you would dress for a party: utterly naked and alone, at first, and then, finally, stepping out and asking a trusted companion “Do these shoes go with this romper?”

This journey of mine is slow and tedious and full of angst, qualities that may serve me well if I’m willing to pay attention. Dig deep or take the easy way out. Which will you choose today?

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When a Writer Goes on Respite

photoLast month, I cleared my plate of a blogging obligations in order to finish this current round of novel rewrites. In those thirty days, I found plenty of time to write.

I spent much of that time reflecting. Some of it lost in aimless TV. A large portion of it devoted to watching Colin Firth in Pride & Prejudice. A little blown on complaining musing about the realities of life. You can see where I’m going with this, right?

I didn’t finish the draft.

I did learn an important lesson, though. Contrary to what I believed, Time is not my problem (though it is certainly a good scapegoat).

For me, Time is like money: the more I earn the more I spend, and not always on the things for which it was intended.

IMG_2012I don’t regret taking a break from blogging. When I wasn’t lost in Jane Austen or Jane Austen-like movies, I made Thanksgiving dinner with the hubby. Fired up the record player with my mom’s favorite Elvis Christmas album. Put up Holiday decor with the kids. Prepared for and celebrated the birthday of “Nanci” (a doll, mind you, but a very special member of the family…imagination runs rampant in our house, and only a little of that is mine).

Is there any wonder why a writer with a life might take years (and sometimes a full decade) to finish a novel?

I could pout about getting little done on the draft. Well…actually, I did pout. In my journal, in a late-night email to a friend, in a out-of-the-blue argument with my spouse who wisely did not take it on and sent me packing with my laptop to the nearest coffee shop. Pity-Party U.S.A. But then I read this on Amy Shearn’s Twitter feed, a quote from Sarah Ruhl’s 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write:

[T]empting as it may be for a writer who is also a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with the writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.

IMG_2002Lesson learned. Everything I did over the past several weeks–from the tiny rewrites all the way to the photos I took of Nanci in her birthday dress and Nanci “blowing out the candle”–carries weight and importance in my journey as a writer. I mean, you cannot bypass the making of chocolate pie or the building of Christmas Town just so you can finish rewriting chapter 8.

The key for me is not in finding balance between life and writing but in becoming willing to participate in both without seeing one as the enemy of the other.

How did your November shape up?