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.