HISTORY SET in STONE

SARIT KASHANIAN

Slabs of immense lime

tell a story in themselves.

A people born in blessing, displaced, and back again.

The air thick with the murmur of prayers,

praise, and passion

flowing tears salty as the Dead Sea

split as the sexes

scarves to the right, skullcaps to the left.

Messages of longing spill from its crevices

hoping to reach the Source in haste.

I press my forehead against the cool stone

Whose energy enters my trembling skin,

eyes shut and senseless of the passing time

while wishes from within pour outward

joining the dissonant harmony

of voices ancient as the stone.

Sarit is currently #WFH as a loan analyst for the Jewish Free Loan Association. In her free time, she enjoys outdoor activities like hiking and gardening, which give her a sense of awe. Writing will always have a special place in her heart.

ACT of GOD

ALEX KRESS

I haven’t prayed much since my cancer diagnosis. Not that I ever prayed much. God was fiction, a comfort for creatures addicted to reason. It’s funny how humans use religion to comfort the ill and justify their illness, perhaps the peril of leaving a human creation in human custody. Yet I yearned for prayer. What else can you do but pray when villainous mutations silently stalk your body from within. As I opened my siddur, the phone rang—my doctor with biopsy results. “Rabbi, it seems your immune system killed the cancer. It’s honestly a miracle, an act of God.”

Alex is a Los Angeles rabbi who loves hip-hop, coffee, and justice. Check out his hip-hop High Holiday project, Rap-entance.

This piece was published by the Jewish Book Council in collaboration with NuRoots. J.B.C. enriches and educates the community through public programming, a literary journal, weekly reviews and essays, discussion questions, and more than twenty literary awards.

BACK to EARTH

KIMBERLY KYNE

Though far from perfect, I do my best to live a theocentric life. Any mundane act can be elevated to divine with proper intention. I received a note from a friend telling me that before she was shomer Shabbat I served as inspiration, and she kept a Shabbat in my merit. Compliments have a way of boosting the ego. When I read her message, I experienced the opposite. Teary-eyed and overcome with genuine happiness, I felt brought back down to Earth. This overpowering reaction helped remind me of what is truly important in this world. I’m here to reveal G-d.

Kim is a black Jewish Artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. She's passionate about creation (in every sense) and spiritual growth.

AFTER HOURS

ROTEM ROZENTAL

 It’s a post on Facebook, and it was written by a celebrated journalist. He is sorry, the journalist. He resigned. He is taking a break from public life. An investigative report will be published. It will expose how he mistreated women. He does not really apologize. It is calculated damage control. And the web erupts. And I remember. And I am flooded. And I knew him. And I knew the friend everybody mentioned, who was always there with him. I knew him very closely. And I rush to hug my daughter. And I wonder if the friend does the same.

Rotem is chief curator of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. In this capacity, she was appointed senior director of arts and culture, after having served as the assistant dean of the Whizin Center for Continuing Education and the Director of the Institute for Jewish Creativity since 2016. In these roles, Rotem works with and mentors artists throughout various stages of their careers, while spearheading annual exhibition spaces, cultural programming, a growing network of Jewish artists in Los Angeles, cross-city collaborations, institutional collections, educational initiatives, and various projects around performing and visual arts. 

THIS YEAR on ZOOM

RACHEL MCKAY STEELE

On Zoom Passover, I took crying, drunken selfies and ate brisket by hand. #thewickedchild. I vowed to be in a relationship come 5781.

The boy who called Yoko Ono a witch? You say that like it’s a bad thing.

The dude who said Islam is violent? Have you read the Torah?

The girl who texted the timing was wrong? Early L’Shana Tova!

The director? She ghosted. I didn’t quip or wish well. She’s posting photos of pastries and her new lover.

On Zoom Days of Awe, I’ll join voices: kotvenu b’sefer he-hayyim.

Silently, I’ll ask for a new genre.  

Rachel is a writer, comedian, and breakfast sandwich eater. She lives in Los Angeles with her two cats, Roxy and Esther.

IKIRU L’DOR V’DOR

AYSHA WAX

At the beginning of quarantine I dove into classic movies as an escape and for creative sustenance. The T.C.M. app opened me up to cinematic treasures, but I developed a fascination with Akira Kurosawa. His movie that changed me and left me emotionally raw was “Ikiru.” It’s the story of a bureaucrat whose death is imminent, but spends his remaining days creating a simple park. He will never be able to physically enjoy the park. Like the idea of l’dor v’dor he is leaving something gorgeous for the generation to come. I want to selflessly create and live that way.

Aysha is an L.A.-based writer, comedian, and director. Her first short film, “Grief Vigilantes,” won the best short film comedy award at the Film Invasion L.A. festival. She also writes and directs for Jewish Women’s Theater. She has been surviving this quarantine with her new kittens.

YOSEMITE BURNING

  ORA YASHAR

 I walk through this land where the trees have a million stories to tell. And all I can wonder is: Will they be left to tell it? Will we? The sun may have risen, but I can’t see it shine. I’ve come to you, for you are my respite. Your embrace makes me whole. Refreshes my soul. The only place to rest my head without you is six feet below. Flecks of white sprinkle down onto my orange skin. Orange everywhere. Am I looking at the world through a sepia filter? No, this is no filter. This is Yosemite burning. 

 Ora is an Iranian-American writer/director. She is a Film Independent Episodic Lab Fellow and a Jewish Women’s Theatre NEXT Fellow, and has written an Emmy-nominated P.S.A. for the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Further nourishing Ora’s love of storytelling are her two seasons as the showrunner’s assistant on “Atypical.” She received her M.F.A. in directing from Chapman University.

This piece was published by the Jewish Book Council in collaboration with NuRoots. J.B.C. enriches and educates the community through public programming, a literary journal, weekly reviews and essays, discussion questions, and more than twenty literary awards.

GLOW SHRIMP

MARINA WEINER

the CHAIRS in D.T.L.A.

ENSHEA DANIEL

My favorite place is sitting on one of the low to the ground chairs outside on the second level of the Bloc at 7th in D.T.L.A. Those chairs are almost like chairs you would see poolside except they are made from a sturdier material. I am surrounded by dozens and dozens of people going to all the different stores and restaurants. I just sit there and read quietly. Normally, I like to read in as quiet as possible place, but this area is just so relaxing to me. I feel so comfortable and at peace reading right in those chairs.

Enshea is a lover of music and learning about different cultures.   

MIDNIGHT in PARIS

LENA GROSSMAN

The lights twinkled as the rain quietly fell to the earth. The streetlights hummed with their ethereal glow and the air smelled of wet pavement and vivid daydreams. Not a car in sight. Le métro squealed in the distance, the tales in the cars as numerous as the squeaking brakes are ear-splitting.

Walk, don’t walk.

Street signs mean nothing when you’re the only one on the street with nowhere to go yet everywhere to see.

Tomorrow meant returning to routine petit déjeuner, déjeuner, dîner, class, and broken attempts at French. Reality could wait.

Walk, don’t walk.

Loneliness never felt better.

Lena is a born-and-bred Angeleno who recently returned after three years in New York. She loves reading, running, and cuddling with her dogs. She thinks ice cream is the most important food group and will gladly talk abut "The Great British Baking Show" or the N.B.A. with anyone at any time.  

SATURDAY NIGHT

DAVID MEYERS

Saturday night. "I Love Lucy" on the T.V. The little boy is very happy. He's eating an ice cream sandwich, the little chocolate morsels melting over his hands and the wrapper. His grandfather sits in the chair behind him; his grandmother is asleep. He kind of knows it at the time, but there will never be another place where he'll be more content or happy. Others will come close. Others will match it. But nothing will top it. Hatred may have led his grandparents here, but love has driven them all to this moment. And then Lucy makes another joke.

David is an actor and writer, originally from New Jersey.   

ARROYO ENCANTADO

MICHAEL ROBERTSON MOORE

The Arroyo Encantado was called a folly in its day, an endless maze of a hotel where imperial Spanish detail glowed with new California money. Now the maze was old and haunted and the world around it was cheap. This was no folly, I thought as I looked at the menu, decided on steak frites, a Caesar salad with anchovies, a bottle of Spanish wine.

I placed the call to room service.

She looked up from the screen of her phone as I returned the receiver to its cradle.

“Aren’t you a vegan?” she asked.

“I’m also married,” I said.

Michael was born in San Francisco under the first quarter moon and the sign of Aquarius in the winter before the Summer of Love.   

BELOW AVERAGE

MICHAEL STONE

Sometimes I feel very low to the ground. I am below average in height. 100 years ago I would have been considered average. Sometimes my apartment feels very small and dingy. It is a small apartment. A rental. I try to keep it clean, but I’ve lived here seventeen years and it’s carpeted so it can never really be clean. After seventeen years you just have to move so the building manager can hire painters to paint over the years. I have no intention of moving. When I leave for work, I say to my apartment, I’ll see you soon.

Michael is a film school refugee. He currently earns his keep as a real estate photographer and videographer. He’s also working as a lead writer and producer, adapting Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio” for T.V. 

WHEN IT’S QUIET, YOU LISTEN

JULIE SUGAR

“Sunrise looks different when you’ve been up all night.” She can’t sleep, and that line from an email floats into her mind. It’s been years since she spoke with the person who wrote the email. Insomnia uncorks her curiosity and she looks him up, lamplight pinning her to the couch. But he has become the email, become the line. Sunrise looks different when you’ve been up all night. Her thoughts glide, swimming from a memory to the day’s news to a project she hopes to complete. A car passes, a single ocean wave. She stays awake for a long time. 

Julie Sugar writes nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and plays. She is the script writer at YiddishPOP, which teaches Yiddish using short animated movies.

AFTERNOON RUSH

CASEY ADLER

She fell and hit her little head against the curb. Blood pooled along the concrete and into the street. Drivers drove by and walkers walked by. The birds squawked and encircled the child, readying their beaks for a tasty treat. A middle-aged shop owner peered through his plexiglass window and discovered the homeless thing. With haste, he phoned the emergency line and demanded a clean-up crew, “Please, she’s turning away business!” Policemen arrived and handcuffed the girl. They dragged her body into the back of a cruiser and sped off as business renewed just in time for the afternoon rush. 

 Casey J. Adler is a playwriting member of the renowned Actors Studio, and his full-length play "Birdy" was recently published by Smith Scripts. He has had play productions and readings by Mixily Presents, Jewish Women’s Theater’s NEXT, and Actors Circle Ensemble. He is a proud fellow of the Inquiry for Jewish Artists through the Institute for Jewish Creativity in Los Angeles.

HINENI

ROEI EISENBERG

They say you must face your demons to succeed, until you come to terms with your past. They never say what to do when trauma is written into your bones, when tragedy is coded into your D.N.A. What to do when the demons you face aren’t your own, when the past you deal with was written before you were born.

Hineni. Here I am. A vessel for healing for generations betrayed by their neighbors, partners, and friends. I am here, afraid of what’s behind the curtain but hineni.

Let the darkness of our past face me. I'm ready to atone.

Roei is a writer and poet. He was an editor for two Israeli news publications until moving back to L.A., where he adopted a messy maltipoo and a Jewish screenwriting micro-community.

SUPERMAN

AMIE SEGAL

My brother was fascinated with flying from a young age. He would always dress up as Superman for Halloween. When we were teens, he insisted on watching “Top Gun” repeatedly. I too became fascinated with flight. He went to the Air Force and became a fighter pilot. I went to college and studied dance. Now when I dance, I feel like Superman. I get that euphoric feeling. Throughout the day I’m in my head, but when I dance, I’m in the moment, seeing in all directions. And worries, like a sea of tiny houses, get smaller the higher I soar.

Amie is founder of the Living Room, an L.A. organization that brings people together through dance, music, and Jewish ritual. She is currently earning her DPT at CSUN.

a 2020 DAY

LAUREN YORMACK

A 7 a.m. news cycle, the world feels like one big dumpster fire and horrible people abound.

A heartbreaking story, the old couple drowning trying to save each other from the fire. It feels hopeless, and what’s with all the conspiracy theorists?

A video call with the giggling infectiously joyful baby. Feel it rippling through.

You breathe and soften into the unknown. The bewildering allure of life’s dualistic nature.

An inscription in book of life for the year to come, a commitment to staying in the fray. It’s your dumpster after all, and you’re down to fight that fire any day.

Lauren is an actor and activist living in Los Angeles.   

AWEFUL

HANNAH MIET

She hated how easily he slept, his body draped on a diagonal across the bed. She could fit only when she curled herself into a ball. They hadn’t talked much since his trip to New York. His early bedtimes made her wonder what happened there. Her fingers wandered across laptop keys. Browser history. Craigslist. M4MW...Take me in?...My girl is home in Cali; I have permission. A photo of him, full mast. A photo of her, spine arched. Permission, a rage acidic in her esophagus. Corrosion she knew she’d never speak about. Corrosion made more poisonous because she’d stay.

Hannah is a poet, essayist, writing coach, and editorial consultant. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, PANK, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She's an ex-journalist and an ex-New Yorker thriving in the California sun. Check her out on Twitter.

This piece was published by NuRoots in collaboration with 100 Word Story, an online literary journal dedicated to publishing the best micro-fiction and essays from around the globe. Based in the Bay Area, it will celebrate ten years of publishing in spring 2021.