A review by littlemiao
My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew by Abigail Pogrebin

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

3.0

I feel fairly neutral about this book. The concept is worthy, and I support efforts to promote Jewish literacy and engagement. And though I often disagreed with her interpretations of the holidays, her perspective on them is certainly valid. Her year is a very US-centric and economically privileged year. Yet, the rabbis she interviews and quotes can serve as a starting point or reading list for delving deeper, so even if her own experiences don’t resonate, the book could be useful if you can look past its limitations.

The biggest drawback for me was the tone. Meant to be accessible, to me it was off-putting. Some of it is cute, if trite, like “Try Judaism - the same is always new.” Some is just plain cringeworthy. Rabbi Steinsaltz is “The Beyoncé of Talmud”?! And Eliyahu is a “macho prophet”?! What is a macho prophet, anyway? And perhaps some of my discomfort with the book comes from the audiobook narration. Hebrew pronunciation and intonation was often odd or just plain wrong. And I wonder, who pronounces “G-d” “gee dash dee?”

These issues notwithstanding, I appreciated her overall framing of the holidays into an interconnected annual cycle, rather than a random disconnected jumble. “No holiday stands alone. All are intertwined… Jews need to view several holidays at once to understand the one we’re in.” And I liked that she drew attention to the meaningfulness of repetition within the yearly cycle, and from year to year. “Memory itself is recurrence... Repetition is starting to feel resonant to me. It creates a rhythm. Each repeated ritual is an affirmation that we’re Jewish… the echo of our ancestors in these rites informs the moment we do them today.” I also like how she describes Judaism as demanding a “a leap of action”: “First you do… then you’ll understand the meaning.”

There were some interesting bits of trivia. Like how the guide for learning to blow a shofar suggested practicing blowing water out of your mouth to a distance of four feet. Cleanup after this exercise would get a bit tiresome!

Antisemitism was on the rise when the author wrote this book, and in the ten years since its publication, it has increased dramatically. She wrote in the shadow of the 2014 Gaza war. As bad as things were then, it made me nostalgic for less grief-laden times. I was struck by how different Simchat Torah 2014 was from 2024. Now every discussion of that holiday will need to make space for the heartache of October 7.

A book like this is bound to have omissions. Some are quite glaring. For example, Rosh Chodesh is omitted entirely. Little sense is given of how the parsha cycle lines up with the rhythm of Shabbats and of the year. 

I often disagreed with her, though I think her interpretations are probably fairly common. Her analysis of Chanukah was overly simplistic even for an overview book like this. It seems the Jews she talks to in this book who consider themselves “assimilated” into dominant American culture (remember, this book is completely US-centric) feel a kinship the Hellenized Jews who were willing to offer sacrifices to Greek gods and abandon circumcision. As if Jews would have endured as Jews for long if they had not rebelled against the outlawing of their way of life. Resisting Antiochus’ rule was not merely being anti “assimilation,” it was defending the ability of Jews do all the things that make Jews Jews. Why be squeamish about standing up against explicit cultural genocide?

Similarly in the Purim chapter, I thought her interpretation of the conclusion of the Megillah was tendentious. She describes the Jewish victory as “the wholesale slaughter of non-Jews,” but in fact a plain reading of the text supports the idea that the Jews acted in self-defense. The king could not revoke his earlier edict against the Jews, but he did grant Jews the right to defend themselves against any who attacked them.

A disorganized summary of some other issues I had with the book: Calling terror victims like Marla Bennett, murdered in an attack in the Second Intifada in 2002, “accidental soldiers” is wrong. She was killed in the war against Israel, but as a student and a civilian. Terror victims don’t need to be posthumously conscripted in order to be remembered on Yom Hazikaron.

The author equates “halachic Judaism” and the Orthodox movements, and ignores the fact that the Conservative movement is halachic.

The author suggests that Shabbat doesn’t resonate with a lot of Jews because it is a “Creationist” holiday. This is a straw man argument - nowhere does Shabbat observance require creationist thinking. In order to conceive of it in those terms, you have to first accept a Christian hegemonic interpretation of Bereshit. Judaism contains many interpretations: One day could be one cosmic eon. The Torah is always richer than what one translation or Christian-influenced interpretation can convey.

Finally, the concept of “original sin” is not Jewish but it is natural to be affected the hegemony of Christian ideas. I would avoid its use in an overview of Jewish holidays and I would only use the phrase after thoroughly discussing it in a Jewish context.