Recent Jewish memoirs document movement away from observant religious practices, particularly for people who identify as queer or feminist; Alicia Jo Rabins’s When We’re Born We Forget Everything is different. Over four sections, Rabins narrates her journey from the secular Jewish life of her childhood to a more observant life as a musician and teacher. Her path is neither linear nor absolute. Rabins explores her ongoing negotiations of religious observance as her life unfolds. Near the end of When We’re Born, Rabins writes, “I begin to ask anew, as the spiral turns again: What does it mean to receive an ancient tradition, and make it our own? What does it mean to carry the past into the future?” . These questions animate this memoir. Rabins’s unique insights emerge through her emphasis on seeking as spiritual practice; throughout, Rabins seeks knowledge, community, G‑d, ritual, and joy. She frames the lifelong seeking process as an ongoing quest.
Rabins often organizes the chapters of When We’re Born around a single image, defining moment, or particular insight from her life, then deftly braids these incidents into conversation with Jewish traditions. For example, in “The Earth Wobbles on Its Axis,” Rabins interlays a story about the cosmos with her chavruta partner explaining Talmud in baseball terms, then unfurls the narrative of a romantic relationship where the lovers “were each other’s caryatids.” Similarly, while describing her first shabbat in Israel, she gestures to James Joyce by titling the chapter, “Portrait of the Artist as a Kiddush Cup.” Equal to the coming-of-age narrative and stories of a growing Jewish practice are reflections on finding ways to be an artist in the world. With all of these threads, memoir emerges as tapestry in When We’re Born.
Narratives about women in the Torah are another vital element of the memoir. Rabins begins with the story of Bat Yiftach (Jephthah’s daughter) and then transitions to a series of chapters that recount and reflect on the lives of Hannah, Miriam, Serakh bat Asher, Tamar, and others. These stories expand and complement Rabins’s musical work in Girls in Trouble and I Was a Desert: Songs of the Matriarchs. In a discussion of the story of Potiphar’s wife from the Book of Exodus, Rabins offers multiple interpretations and describes the story as “about the powerful, destabilizing, potentially tragic, potentially liberating force of desire, longing, and lust.” It is a dynamic story with contemporary resonance. Rabins continues explaining that the story is “about the relationships between two forms of desire: our desire for other people, and our desire for G‑d.” These two forms of desire also offer a key to understanding When We’re Born.
For some readers, the emotional heart of When We’re Born will be its focus on Jewish life and ritual, but equally important is the emotional vulnerability that Rabins lays on the page. Loneliness is both a feeling and an experience in When We’re Born, conveyed in compelling ways. Loneliness as emotional truth — and Rabins’s willingness to plumb its meaning — shapes her life and her search for Jewish traditions. While the details of individual lives differ, the emotional experience of loneliness is universal. Intellectual engagements with Jewish practice are plentiful; however, in When We’re Born, the emotional rendering of loneliness lingers, inviting a range of readers to engage this story.
Julie R. Enszer is the author of four poetry collections, including Avowed, and the editor of OutWrite: The Speeches that Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture, Fire-Rimmed Eden: Selected Poems by Lynn Lonidier, The Complete Works of Pat Parker, and Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974 – 1989. Enszer edits and publishes Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.
