At an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly com­pli­cat­ed time in our coun­try and in our world, this beau­ti­ful lit­tle book appears as a balm for it all. Man­na Songs: Sto­ries of Jew­ish Cul­ture and Her­itage, edit­ed by Diane Got­tlieb, is an engag­ing col­lec­tion of thir­ty-two essays that cel­e­brate Jew­ish joy. Joy is a flex­i­ble state of being that is reflect­ed through var­i­ous inter­pre­ta­tions through­out this col­lec­tion. In fact, it was enlight­en­ing to read about joy in such a broad scope. The essays includ­ed here take place all over the world, and are writ­ten by peo­ple of var­ied back­grounds. Imag­ine sto­ries set in New York, Spain, Tal­la­has­see, and Israel, to name a few, by poets and artists. 

What holds the book togeth­er is this remark­able diver­si­ty and the authors’ inter­pre­ta­tions of joy. Some of the essays tell beau­ti­ful, uplift­ing sto­ries; oth­ers are more poignant, find­ing joy in the unlike­ly moments of sad­ness. All of these sto­ries inspire the read­er across so many life stages and events – rang­ing from rit­u­als, new life, death, or even anti­semitism. To accom­plish this, the book is divid­ed into four sec­tions focused on iden­ti­ty, rit­u­als and pass­ing them down, hon­or­ing those who came before us, and Jew­ish connection.

In a won­der­ful homage, the cov­er is actu­al­ly a paint­ing by one of the con­trib­u­tors. In addi­tion, the col­lec­tion begins with a beau­ti­ful for­ward by Eri­ka Drei­fus that frames the col­lec­tion. An ear­ly essay cen­ters around the mem­o­ry of mak­ing a cup of Elite instant cof­fee. For almost twen­ty years, I have kept one of these red can­is­ters in my kitchen, regard­less of where we’ve lived. I have kept it for the same rea­son the author gives trib­ute to in the sto­ry — the mem­o­ry it evokes. An Israeli coun­selor who stayed with us while work­ing at our children’s sum­mer camp brought it as a gift, and then pro­ceed­ed to make me a cup each morn­ing as I fran­ti­cal­ly tried to get out the door. When I make myself a cup today I am imme­di­ate­ly trans­port­ed back to that thought­ful ges­ture. Read­ing Man­na Songs evokes a sim­i­lar feeling. 

The sto­ries are man­na them­selves, sus­tain­ing us at a fraught moment in time. They bring us joy just by their mere exis­tence. Find a com­fort­able place to read, maybe with that cup of cof­fee, and immerse your­self for a moment in these words that for­ti­fy us much like Judaism itself has sus­tained us for thou­sands of years.