A Quick Community Note

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

This won’t be a full-blown newsletter, but I just wanted to bring your attention to a few quick things.

I usually talk about exciting upcoming events in my Shabbat newsletter, but I’m leaving town for the weekend this afternoon so this will be my last missive for the week and I wanted to send the info that would have gone out tomorrow.

One week from today, on the evening on April 16 — 5 pm Pacific time, 8 pm Eastern — the Never Alone Book Club will feature a conversation between author Irena Smith and poet Elyse Fenton, about the former’s debut memoir Troika.

Here is the publisher’s description of the book:

When three generations of women—a Gen X narrator, her seventy-seven-year-old mother, and her twenty-two-year-old Gen Z daughter—set out for a quick trip to California's Central Coast, what begins as a road trip soon transforms into something far richer: a modern-day Odyssey. Over the course of three days, the three women brave a severe winter storm, encounter ravenous ostriches, walk through an enchanted light exhibit, binge-watch White Lotus, hunt for coffee with plant-based milk, bicker, reconcile, and share stories.

Troika braids the narrative of a three-day road trip with the longer strands of migration, memory, and motherhood, creating a layered meditation on distance traveled—geographic, generational, and emotional. The result is a kaleidoscopic journey that traverses the landscapes of identity and family history and stretches from the horrors of the second world war and an escape from Soviet Russia to adolescence and motherhood in the suburbs of Silicon Valley. As the narrative swerves from heartbreak to hilarity, from Homeric detours and Russian proverbs to internet memes, it weaves together an intimate, poignant, and darkly funny meditation on how we get from where we were to where we are—and what we carry with us along the way.

And for an introduction to Troika, you can read an excerpt HERE.

I know these events are usually publicized with more notice, but the book was not published until this week! You do not have to have finished or even begun the book to attend.

Irena was on the admissions committee for Stanford and her first book was about how to write the most effective college essay during the application process. This is to say: she knows very well how to write compelling creative nonfiction.

And Elyse is a poet of extraordinary gifts and sensibilities.

These are two utterly brilliant women, and I guarantee a fantastic conversation. I really hope to see you there!

Please let us know if you’d like to attend by taking a second to respond to the poll below. No need to respond if you can’t come — we just need a count for the zoom package.

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We also have a gorgeous poetry feature up on JUDITH today.

Here is one of them:

TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST COMPANY


                  —Emma, aged 16


I do fine work, my stitches delicate

as an eyelash. This earns


me a spot by the window. Dirty

as it is, some light filters


through. Rosie’s clumsy, her fingers

thick and fit only for rough


cloth stitched by gas lamp.

We buy our own needles, pay


the electric for our machines.

We rent the backless stools


we sit on. The bosses lock us in

and we’re searched


when we leave. Some girls

do steal—buttons, ribbons,


even whole shirts. But not Rosie

and me. Now all I have left


of her is the famous photo.

She stands unsmiling


beneath hand-lettered signs

tacked to the wall—


No back-talk, no stalling in the Ladies.

Don’t come late. Don’t leave early.


If you’re not here Sunday,

don’t come back on Monday—


beside her, and taller than she,

towering stacks of unfinished cloth,


her day’s quota, endless as the straw

the miller’s daughter had to spin.

You can read the rest of the showcase HERE.

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Okay, fam. I’m so sorry I won’t be with you tomorrow but I wish you a heartfelt Shabbat shalom in advance.

I’ll be back with you Monday. Much love in the meantime.

Am Yisrael Chai.