A Memoir in Ritual Moments

The author is a trained psychologist who teaches writing to would-be physicians and college students, and it shows. Her insights into herself and the human condition are masterful; her writing lyrical. One comes away from this book uncertain as to whether Horwitz is more fascinated with telling her own story or describing the many different rituals which she uses both to reveal and to conceal her story. What else is one to expect from a psychologist?

Readers should know that Horwitz is the younger sister of my former student and former sister-in-law whom I have not seen since she was a young woman decades ago. Still the familial relationship, however former, however lapsed, makes it difficult for me to write of her with any measure of formality. So she is Wendy to me.

Her depiction of ritual and her defense of ritual will appeal to believers but perhaps, more importantly, to non-believers or to “occasional” believers who struggle between moments of faith and lingering doubts. Her interest in advancing the conversation regarding ritual “is engaging in the ritual not necessarily in service of religious belief but also to create beauty, solace, celebration, and community.” She is adamant and most persuasive by demonstrating that one can find meaning through rituals without giving up one’s identity or ideals. She also shows how religious participation enhanced her own sense of identity and strengthened her conviction, not a bad insight for someone who portrays herself as a non-believing, not quite traditional, certainly not halachic, but deeply affirming Jew.

One can read this book on many levels. It is a COVID memoir. It describes the haunting reality we lived through, the isolation, the loneliness, the loss of community, the inability to interact with others and to participate in events so routine that we forgot how meaningful they were. It is also a memoir of liberation after COVID, getting out of the house, hugging those we love, having guests for the holidays, or the stage in between, when life was still dangerous but not deadly, going to synagogue even while it was being held in a tent, sitting masked together with one’s community but apart from one’s neighbor with rabbi and cantor behind plexiglass shields.

One marvels at her imaginative use of rituals and her emphasis on when rituals are missing. One of her children graduated during COVID and like my younger son missed the pomp and ceremony, the procession and the celebrations that marks such a milestone. So, Wendy improvised for what her child missed when high school graduation was held in the parking lot, for what her niece missed when medical school was concluded but not solemnized. Wendy depiction of the joy, the smiles and the appreciation reminds us all that if we can’t have everything, we can and must at least do something.

One can read this memoir as a creative use of Jewish rituals. What is one to do with flowers sent by a former lover, who does not quite know that he is a former lover? Wendy thinks of Tashlich and goes down to the stream casting the flowers out one by one, day by day, purging so one can begin anew. The Rabbis never imagined Tashlich – the ceremony held on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, casting one’s sin’s symbolically into the waters as crumbs of bread — but Wendy did. What does one do with a Ketubah, an artistic remnant of a failed marriage? The rabbi suggested it be buried. Wendy packed it into a case in the attic, a case that resembled a small coffin. She bemoans the lost opportunity to ritualize the “get,” the religious divorce as the ritual did not quite work for a modern woman, who could not view herself as property to be purchased and then freed. There was no ritual as to what to do with her engagement ring. Selling it does not quite capture both the joyous and bitter memories associated with it. Her work is a challenge to invent a new ritual or improve the old to mark important milestone of dissolution.

She can understand when rituals work brilliantly and when they heal. Her depiction of the rituals of mourning and Kaddish are an example. Anninut, the period between death and burial, burial, shiva and shloshim, the 11 months of Kaddish and the Yahrzeit. Anyone who has gone through such a loss and ritually consecrated it will find her writing moving and most familiar.

She appreciates the opportunities lost, a post-college trip to South America finds her without a seder. The community was not inviting – Jews should always welcome the stranger, especially on Passover —  Ritz crackers, which she knows are chametz, cheap wine, and Dayenu will just not do. One misses families and songs, a familiar ritual. The next year’s seder is all the more important, the recollection last decades into adulthood. Medical students receive a white coat when they move from the classroom to actually dealing with patients. Psychologists receive nothing as they see their first client before them.

Rituals can not only be formal religious rites, but their adornment. Polishing the silver; setting the table; using the recipes passed on from generation to generation, especially in the handwriting of the first to commit the oral tradition to writing; and the aroma of the foods so familiar that waft through the house. Her detailed description triggered for me the memory of the first year after my mother’s death, returning home on Rosh Hashanah eve and finding something amiss, but unable to understand what it was — the distinct smell of my mother’s brisket, not quite captured in my wife’s superb cooking.

Wendy is firmly grounded in Jewish memories, surprisingly so for this traditional reviewer, who remembers her childhood home as more secular, less ethnic. Her rootedness enhances her appreciation of other rituals. Buying challah on Friday empowers her to notice those who buy bread from the same bakery for the traditional family dinner after church or to appreciate more exotic rituals from her world travels.

Milkweed and Honey Cake is a work to be savored; its flavor lingers long after finishing the work. It makes you notice what she notices and may have a particular audience in those who do not quite appreciate the rituals that endow our life with meaning.

Michael Berenbaum is director of the Sigi Ziering Institute and a professor of Jewish Studies at American Jewish University.