Food

By Ben Greenman

Eating Jewish wasn’t a religious issue. It was a cultural issue. That’s what my parents always told me, partly to explain my grandmother. We’d go over there, my two brothers and I, and within twenty minutes we’d vanish inside a welter of bread, butter, brisket, potatoes, soup, sugar soda (not allowed at home), cookies (allowed, but not at those levels), and ice cream. Who needs two desserts? We did.

Eating Jewish wasn’t a cultural issue. It was a historical one. That’s what my grandparents told me, partly to counter my parents. Here in America, not two decades after the family had arrived, stuffed full of hope, the Great Depression had descended, a period of severe privation that rivaled the problems my great-grandfather had faced in Russia, minus the Cossacks shooting at him in the apple orchard.

Eating Jewish wasn’t a historical issue. It was an ethical one. That’s what my great-grandfather told me, partly to amplify my grandparents. No one in the trunk of my family tree was in the Holocaust, but my grandfather had cousins. His father’s brothers had left Russia for France, certain they would have a better life. But they were heading into the teeth of time. Eating, and eating well, was proof that no one could keep us from life.

Eating Jewish was none of those things. It was a tactic. That’s what my brothers and I told each other. Eating with the family was a way of keeping you at the table, eating Jewish, talking about what it wasn’t, demonstrating what it was.

What’s a strong memory you have of eating with your family around a table?

Ben Greenman is a bestselling author of fiction and nonfiction. He lives in Brooklyn.

Stories

By B.J. Miller

We all need a reason to wake up. For me, it was 11,000 volts of electricity. One night, sophomore year of college, a few friends and I were out on the town; one thing led to another, and we decided to climb a parked commuter train. Fun, no? I scurried up the ladder on the back, and when I stood up, whamo!  The current arced to my metal wristwatch, entered my arm, and blew down and out my feet. I lost half of an arm and both legs below the knee. I spent a few months recovering in the St Barnabas burn unit in Livingston, NJ. One day, several weeks in to the affair, it began to snow outside. I was told it was coming down hard and pretty. Around that time, a friend of mine smuggled a snowball into the burn unit for me. I cannot tell you the rapture I felt. The sensation of coldness on my skin, the miracle of it as I watched it melt to water. In that moment, I was amazed enough to be any part of this planet in this universe that whether I lived or died became irrelevant.

Are you awake right now?

BJ Miller, M.D., is a palliative care specialist and educator at UCSF, and executive director of San Francisco’s Zen Hospice Project.

STORIES #2

By Julie Hermelin

“You know that feeling, the one when the voice in your head tells you someone loves you from afar? I had that today,” said Joy, taking another sip of her Jack and Coke. It was another humid New York night and we’d been planted on the sticky bar stools at King Tut’s Wah Wah House, enjoying their industrial reticulating fan.

I had no idea what she was talking about.  It was 1988, and in the waning days of my teenage years, that was nowhere near the voice in my head. My voice was a constant, Howard Stern-esque, stream of criticism and ridicule that sounded unmistakably like my older brother.

Joy heard a different voice, an astoundingly different voice. What would it be like to try on that voice? To look out at the world thinking you are loved and seeing love that’s there? Howard laughed at the idiocy.

I picked at the bandage of my new tattoo. When we decided to get the tattoos that morning, I sketched something quickly on a napkin while we ate our eggs. “What’s that?” Joy asked. “Just something I’ve been doodling.” I didn’t mention that to my eyes the six points made up an abstract Jewish star bursting open. When the tattoo artist offered to put special “glow in the dark” ink in the center, I smiled.

What would it be like to change your story?

Julie Hermelin is a storyteller, idea generator, filmmaker, and co-founder of Momstamp. She lives in LA with her three monkey children.

Rebellion

By Jenn Maer

When I was a little kid, I was obsessively well-behaved. I ate my vegetables. Got straight As. Wrote thank you notes for every single gift I received. 

Then one day, I snapped.

It happened during recess in fifth grade. It was my turn to take the red rubber ball to the playground, which meant I was in charge of keeping it safe and choosing the game we’d play. I took this responsibility seriously—like I did everything back then—and silently vowed to be a just and fair keeper of the ball. We would play Four Square, I decreed: No backstops, no spinsies. 

Then out of nowhere, Adrian B, a sixth grade bully with the hard, mean eyes of a career criminal, stole my red rubber ball. The ball I’d earned with good behavior. The ball I’d sworn to protect.

This would not stand.

A white-hot rage bloomed inside me like a tiny, pony-tailed Hulk. I raised my fist and threw the first (and only) punch of my life. Adrian turned his back to me in reflex and the blow hit his spine with a sickening crack. I broke my wrist with that single punch. 

Adrian cried. 

I did not.

And every damn kid in the school signed my cast.

Ask yourself or your table this: Have you ever rebelled against your nature to achieve a greater good?

Jenn Maer’s career as a storyteller began at age seven when she penned (well, actually, penciled) her first novel—a 75-page, double-spaced, spiral notebook tour de force entitled “Shark!” She is a design director at IDEO.

Rebellion

By Shoshana Berger

I’d just completed my first semester of theater school at Carnegie Mellon when I got The Fat Letter. It hung amongst four others, nearly identical, pinned to the department bulletin board in crisp white envelopes. By fat, I don’t mean that it was stuffed with paperwork. I mean it was a letter whose sole purpose was to inform me that I was too fat. Carnegie Mellon is where Ted Danson and Holly Hunter and Ethan Hawke learned how to act. I doubt Ted Danson ever got a fat note. I looked around to see who was in the hall, then yanked it down and scurried away.

In neat courier type, it recommended I go see the school nutritionist and work on an exercise regimen. I grew up in Berkeley in the 70s. My mother wore flowing peasant Marimekko dresses and ate KFC out of the bucket. Hollywood bulimic chic was as appealing to me as any 18-year-old, but also a staggering rebuke to my free-to-be-you-and-me budding feminism. Fat notes weren’t a part of my worldview. So, I ate the fried zucchini sticks, drank the beer, and was kicked out of school at the end of freshman year. I transferred to NYU and joined a pot-bellied experimental theater troupe.

What small acts of rebellion have determined the course of your life? 

Shoshana Berger has written for the New York Times, SPIN, WIRED, and a stint as the editorial director (more like “cool-hunter”) for Young & Rubicam. She is an editorial director at IDEO.