Often Dayenu is the sound­track for wild­ly cre­ative peo­ple who over a life­time gen­er­ate a range of projects. Con­sid­er Ali­cia Jo Rabins. It would have been enough to be the vio­lin­ist in the klezmer punk band Golem. It would have been enough to have the first per­for­mance of the Girls in Trou­ble song cycle at the Jew­ish Muse­um in New York in 2008. It would have been enough to cre­ate a rock musi­cal, A Kad­dish for Bernie Mad­off (2014). It would have been enough to win the APR/​Honickman First Book Prize (2015) for the poet­ry col­lec­tion Divin­i­ty School. It would have been enough to have a sec­ond poet­ry col­lec­tion, Fruit Geode, be a final­ist for the Jew­ish book award (2018). It would have been enough to have the rock musi­cal A Kad­dish for Bernie Mad­off adapt­ed as a film (2021). It would have been enough to pub­lish an essay col­lec­tion, Even God Had Bad Par­ent­ing Days (2022). None of this was enough, now Ali­cia Jo Rabins brings us the spir­i­tu­al mem­oir When We’re Born We For­get Every­thing. Dayenu!

Julie R Ensz­er: What prompt­ed you to write a mem­oir, specif­i­cal­ly a spir­i­tu­al mem­oir, at this point in your cre­ative life? 

Ali­cia Jo Rabins: I did­n’t set out to write a mem­oir! I was very hap­py being a poet, actu­al­ly, but once I was giv­ing a poet­ry read­ing at a writ­ing con­fer­ence an agent approached me and said, ​“You should try writ­ing non­fic­tion — you have a voice.” She was­n’t offer­ing to rep­re­sent me, just mak­ing a friend­ly sug­ges­tion, and she added that non­fic­tion real­ly sells, as opposed to poet­ry. (Ouch.) 

Strug­gling artist that I am, this def­i­nite­ly piqued my inter­est. I decid­ed to fol­low her advice and write a non­fic­tion book. Then I had to decide what to write! I set­tled on a book about Bib­li­cal women from a fem­i­nist per­spec­tive, since this is a sub­ject I’ve long stud­ied and taught. But when I pitched the idea to anoth­er agent, she said, ​“It’s a nice idea, but you’ll need some per­son­al nar­ra­tive woven through­out or it will be too aca­d­e­m­ic.” So I start­ed to write a bit about my own spir­i­tu­al path, and I found that the sto­ries just kept pour­ing out of me. Before I knew it, I was writ­ing a spir­i­tu­al mem­oir with Bib­li­cal wom­en’s sto­ries inter­wo­ven, instead of the oth­er way around.

JRE: Is there a par­tic­u­lar imag­ined audi­ence to whom you were writ­ing while work­ing on this memoir?

AJR: I don’t real­ly imag­ine a spe­cif­ic audi­ence per se when I write, but as a read­er and seek­er myself, I love read­ing sto­ries of trans­for­ma­tion, seek­ing, and learn­ing; I also spend a lot of time teach­ing both teens and adults, being present inside the ques­tions with them. So I think there’s a place in my heart where I go when I’m writ­ing, which is the same place I go when I’m teach­ing Torah — an expan­sive field of seek­ing, curios­i­ty, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, the state of being on the edge of what we know and that which we are dis­cov­er­ing, and hold­ing all human expe­ri­ence with love and curiosity.

JRE: The struc­ture of the mem­oir intrigued me, par­tic­u­lar­ly how you inter­laid the sto­ries of women from the Torah with­in the book. Could you elab­o­rate on struc­ture in When We’re Born We For­get Every­thing?

AJR: Well, now that you’ve heard in the ques­tion above about the inside-out way I end­ed up writ­ing this book, maybe it makes more sense!The full sto­ry is that for a long time I strug­gled to decide whether the Bib­li­cal wom­en’s sto­ries and my own were two sep­a­rate books, or one. I just could­n’t fig­ure out the answer. One day I walked past our local witchy sup­ply store (crys­tals, incense, etc. — I’m in Port­land), I saw a tarot read­er was offer­ing walk-in read­ings. I got one, and although I had­n’t said my ques­tion out loud, the read­er kept turn­ing over cards about inte­gra­tion and hold­ing two oppo­sites in one place. I took that as a sign and decid­ed to com­bine the projects! 

JRE: There are many won­der­ful vul­ner­a­ble moments in When We’re Born We For­get Every­thing. Where do you feel most exposed as the book publishes?

AJR: Oh my gosh, thank you for cor­rect­ly assum­ing that I feel exposed, it’s true — I feel like a peeled toma­to. It’s like there are two parts inside me: the writer, who just wants to tell a sto­ry as best I can and, as long as it’s eth­i­cal, has no lim­i­ta­tions on what I’m will­ing to dis­close for the sake of art; and the pri­vate, shy, intro­vert­ed part of me, who is sit­ting here think­ing, ​“What the heck are you doing???” For­tu­nate­ly, I’m fair­ly used to this feel­ing, because my job as an artist is to be vul­ner­a­ble in front of peo­ple. I try to most­ly focus on the grat­i­tude that this project I’ve worked so hard on for ten years is com­ing out. But I am def­i­nite­ly tak­ing a lot of deep breaths these days. I think it’s less any par­tic­u­lar aspect of or moment in the book, and more the gen­er­al shame of being seen, which is a feel­ing I’ve always been fas­ci­nat­ed with.

JRE: I was very moved by the moments in When We’re Born where you name lone­li­ness. They felt true and uni­ver­sal. How do you think about lone­li­ness while writ­ing this book?

AJR: Thank you for say­ing this. I had no idea I was writ­ing about lone­li­ness until one of my ear­ly read­ers named it as one of the main themes of the book. It was a total sur­prise to hear that, and a huge help because then I was able to think more con­scious­ly about the role of lone­li­ness in the book in future drafts. Lone­li­ness became a sort of char­ac­ter in the book, a recur­ring char­ac­ter, and look­ing back I think it often showed up (and shows up) to point me towards places where I need to grow, ways in which I need to get to know myself bet­ter, find more peace inside myself, con­nect more to the Divine, as well as ask­ing how I can be of ser­vice to oth­ers in those moments.

JRE: How does lone­li­ness show up in your life today? How do you greet it?

AJR: I’m not sure why, but the acute sense of lone­li­ness I’ve felt on and off for most of my life has been less­en­ing in recent years. It may be because of get­ting old­er, which I am def­i­nite­ly notic­ing has some deep inter­nal shifts. It’s very pos­si­ble that writ­ing this mem­oir has some­thing to do with it, because I think I have come to under­stand myself bet­ter through telling (one ver­sion of) my sto­ry. 

Also, I’ve done a lot of inter­nal work in recent years to learn to befriend myself. I used to feel like I had an emp­ty space at the core of me, which I was look­ing to fill, and I only knew if I was doing okay based on exter­nal reflec­tions. I’ve gone through a huge process in the past ten years of shift­ing my cen­ter of grav­i­ty inward (yay, for­ties!), and now I feel much more able to keep myself com­pa­ny, which is a huge gift. I still get knocked off bal­ance all the time, of course, but now I have the abil­i­ty to return to myself in a dif­fer­ent way. 

JRE: It strikes me that one of the impor­tant pieces of work that When We’re Born We For­get Every­thing does is artic­u­late a sub­jec­tiv­i­ty of a seek­er. What does it mean to be a seeker? 

AJR: I absolute­ly iden­ti­fy as a seek­er, and I love your phrase, ​“artic­u­late a sub­jec­tiv­i­ty of a seek­er.” I think some of the most intense jour­neys we embark on in life are inner jour­neys, and that sub­jec­tiv­i­ty is a wild ride! I’m con­stant­ly won­der­ing how to bal­ance our objec­tive­ly infin­i­tes­i­mal, brief exis­tence with the over­whelm­ing­ly pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and self. How to inher­it wis­dom from our ances­tors; how to work with time, ego, the body, and rela­tion­ships while we’re here; how to pass it on to future gen­er­a­tions – these are ques­tions I’m hope­less­ly obsessed with!

JRE: Do you imag­ine When We’re Born We For­get Every­thing in some ways gal­va­niz­ing the idea of being a seeker?

AJR: It had­n’t real­ly occurred to me in those words, but I have often said that if my book inspires or gives some­one per­mis­sion to write (or just try to under­stand) their own sto­ry, I’d be very glad. Maybe that’s a dif­fer­ent way of what you’re say­ing — to name the fact that although we’ll nev­er be writ­ing ​“seek­er” on our tax returns, mean­ing-mak­ing and sto­ry­telling is a pow­er­ful part of life. And at the same time, I hope that peo­ple who just like a good com­ing-of-age sto­ry will be enter­tained by this book.Sometimes ​“seek­er” can feel a lit­tle gauzy, and I am most fas­ci­nat­ed with what being a seek­er means while we’re also liv­ing in the phys­i­cal world, with all its messi­ness and rela­tion­ships and frozen peas.

JRE: What are some things you do in your work in the world that pro­motes seek­ing as a way of being in and engag­ing the world?

AJR: I think I expe­ri­ence art-mak­ing as a form of seek­ing, and per­for­mance as a pub­lic ver­sion of that. I believe in vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and for bet­ter or worse, I’ve always had the instinct to drop direct­ly down into the mess of my own emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence as a way of mak­ing art. That raw vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is the place I cre­ate from, and it’s where I go when I per­form as well. My oth­er work is teach­ing Jew­ish stud­ies. I teach teens and adults, and I spe­cial­ize in work­ing with b’nai mitz­vah stu­dents who aren’t part of a syn­a­gogue, which means I spend a lot of time each week in deep dis­cus­sion with a twelve-year-old (usu­al­ly on Zoom), think­ing togeth­er about the mean­ing of Torah, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, and what it means to be Jew­ish. I try to mod­el seek­ing in these lessons, mak­ing it clear that even though I’m the teacher, I don’t have answers to these deep human ques­tions — we can ask them togeth­er, we can con­sid­er dif­fer­ent pos­si­ble answers, or we can even just sit in the not-know­ing together. 

JRE: Liv­ing and study­ing in Jerusalem is an impor­tant part of the mem­oir and your path to Jew­ish prac­tice. What prac­tices and rit­u­als are help­ing you to nav­i­gate this dif­fi­cult moment in our his­to­ry between Israelis and Palestinians?

AJR: I am a human­ist; my pri­or­i­ty is to do what I can to pro­tect those who are in phys­i­cal dan­ger, while refus­ing to dehu­man­ize any­one. As a dias­po­ra Jew, it feels impor­tant to acknowl­edge that key years of my spir­i­tu­al trans­for­ma­tion hap­pened in Jerusalem, and that my time there was mean­ing­ful. I feel a time­less love for the sacred city of Jerusalem, which has passed through many empires in its his­to­ry, and I want Jerusalem to be equal­ly acces­si­ble to all peo­ple of all faiths. At the same time, I feel shame that the gov­ern­ment of this coun­try, where I was able to con­nect so deeply with the tra­di­tion of my ances­tors, is also caus­ing such suffering. 

In terms of prac­tices and rit­u­als, I pray for peace and jus­tice; I donate to Pales­tini­ans in the West Bank and Gaza when I’m able; I edu­cate myself; I speak and act accord­ing to my human­ist ethics, and try not to pay too much atten­tion to online vit­ri­ol. Over and over, I return to an ethos of love and com­pas­sion for every human being, both in prayer and in action.

JRE: When We’re Born We For­get Every­thing ends with an affir­ma­tion of rit­u­al. You describe rit­u­al as ​“there for us when we need it. To hold us; to car­ry us. To help us remem­ber that mag­ic is woven through the every­day like a thread of gold, and if we stop for a moment, we can find it.” Can you describe a rit­u­al or two that are par­tic­u­lar­ly mean­ing­ful to you right now?

AJR: I love indi­vid­ual prayer and the tech­nol­o­gy of bless­ings. Wak­ing up and recit­ing a short bless­ing giv­ing thanks to be back in my body is real­ly help­ful, whether or not I con­tin­ue into a longer ver­sion of morn­ing prayers. I love begin­ning each of my b’nai mitz­vah lessons by recit­ing the Torah study bless­ing with my stu­dent (we both choose between mas­cu­line and fem­i­nine forms of the bless­ing each time). I always feel like we are walk­ing through the gate of Torah study togeth­er, mov­ing from reg­u­lar life into sacred study. I love singing the She­ma to my kids at night, and ask­ing them to share one thing they are grate­ful for. And Shab­bat dinner!