Abigail Pogrebin - My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, 1 Wondering Jew

More Praise For The Books Of Abigail Pogrebin

Stars of David

Consistently engaging... Pogrebin says this book grew out of her efforts to clarify her own Jewish identity. But you dont need to be on such a quest to enjoy the wide range of experiences and feelings recorded here.

Publishers Weekly

Pogrebin, a former producer for Charlie Rose and 60 Minutes, had the tools to push her interviewees beyond their comfort zone.

Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

...a wide and interesting variety of stories about faith and the lack thereof, family memory, ritual, continuity, and the choices they have made.

The Jewish Week

One and the Same

An enchanting, fascinating book.

Lesley Stahl, 60 Minutes

Spot on. An honest explanation of how multiples feel about the relationship into which they were born.

Newsweek

One and the Same is a touching, funny, smart book, written with considerable flair. Though it contains medical, social, political, and historical perspectives, it is at its core a book about love and intimacy.

Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree

An immensely satisfying, enlightening read.

BookPage

This book about what it means to be a duplicate is smart and revealing and wiseand, well, singular.

The Daily Beast

Bedford, New York

Copyright 2017 by Abigail Pogrebin

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Fig Tree Books LLC, Bedford, New York

www.FigTreeBooks.net

Jacket design by Jenny Carrow

Interior design by Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available Upon Request

ISBN number 978-1-941493-20-5

Distributed by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

A. J. JACOBS

A BBY POGREBIN SUBTITLES her book 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew.

Which is an excellent way to describe it.

But let me break her year down a little further for you.

Were talking a year filled with:

Fifty-one rabbis

Six days of fasting

Countless prayers

One day without deodorant

A couple of barrels of booze (Shabbat wine and Simchat Torah scotch among them)

Untold amounts of revelation, joy, and, of course, guilt

In short, a lot of Judaism.

Were talking an Ironman triathlon of holiday observance (or so it seems to those of us not brought up Orthodox).

For most of her life, Abby was only loosely connected to her heritage. To borrow a phrase from my own book, Abby was Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden was Italian. Not very. (No offense to the Olive Garden. Great breadsticks.)

But she hungered for a more authentic taste of Judaism.

And this wonderful book is the result.

Im impressed that Abby finished the year, with all its fasts and feasts, praying and partying. And Im even more impressed that she produced this bookits wise, thought-provoking, and funny.

Ive known Abby since we were about the age when most of our friends were becoming bar or bat mitzvah. (Neither of us Olive Garden types went through the ritual ourselves at the time.)

Ever since, Ive followed her career with a mix of naches (pleasure) and envy. I loved her work as a producer on 60 Minutes. And her book Stars of David, where prominent Jewsfrom Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Larry Kingreflect on their faith. And her book One and the Same, about her experience as an identical twin.

But this could be my favorite work Abby has ever done.

She achieves a beautiful balancein many ways.

She balances passion and skepticism. Learning and memoir.

She balances humor and tragedywhich, as Abby points out, is a very Jewish thing to do. The holidays themselves careen from celebrations to penance and remembrance. As Abby told me, Theres really no stretch of mourning and sadness thats not broken up by revelry. The calendar doesnt let you get too low without some dose of happiness.

She balances the modern impulse to rush around with the ancient imperative to slow down (a huge challenge for a Type A like Abby).

She balances her individuality with the demands of community. Because unlike Netflix, the Jewish calendar does not conform to your own schedule. You dont get to choose when to observe.

And she balances tradition with reinvention. She experiences the Orthodox route, but also experiments with ways to tweak the rituals (For starters, I plan to add some games and quizzes to keep my kids engaged during Passover. Name the second plague? Frogs!).

Her book has changed the way I look at Jewish rituals, history, and the religion itself. She is a dogged investigator and frank witness. Obscure holidays suddenly made sense; the ones I thought I knew took surprising turns.

A few years ago, I wrote my own book about the Hebrew ScripturesThe Year of Living Biblically. Mine was a much different journey. I was trying to follow the written law, the hundreds of rules contained in the Bible itself. (Do not shave the corners of your beard; dont wear clothes made of mixed fibers.)

Abbys journey is very different. She followed both the written and the oral Torah. She took on both the Bible and the thousands of years of commentary and ritual. Her quest is more explicitly Jewish.

And yet I did recognize one common theme in our books: the head-to-toe immersion in a topic.

Before I embarked on my book, I was frankly quite anxious. I was nervous about how it would affect my day job as a magazine editor and my marriage (the beard alone would be a crucible for my wife). I was anxious about the public reaction. I knew it would be easy for detractors to slam my approach as misguided. Would observant folks condemn me as too irreverent? Would atheists slam me for being too gentle on the Bible? Would I be afflicted by boils?

So I went to breakfast with a rabbi friend of mine, Andy Bachman, then head of Brooklyns Congregation Beth Elohim. And Rabbi Bachman told me a story (which Ive written about before; but I figure Judaism is all about the repetition of stories, so maybe youll forgive me).

The story is a legend from the Midrash, and it goes like this: when Moses was fleeing the Egyptians, he arrived at the Red Sea with his thousands of followers. Moses lifted up his staff, hoping for a miraclebut the sea did not part.