THE ALMIGHTY FEMALE

I can’t believe it’s already December and Hanukkah starts in a week. 

A personal update: I submitted my application to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for their MFA in Filmmaking program. I am looking forward to hearing back. It’s an exciting time because I am also on a 3 week work placement for school right now, and I am working at Tripwire Media, which is a company that makes beautiful videos and they are based right here in Winnipeg.

My friend Shoshonna, who I call Shoshy, and I have a tradition where we get together to exchange Hanukkah gifts the week before the holidays starts, and we did is a little early this year, and she drove over on Tuesday night. We usually only give small gifts and this year she gave me a hand-decorated ashtray, and I gave her a vintage alarm clock. 

While she was over, we drank tea and talked about our trip to Israel that we went on in 2011. It was a birthright trip, meaning the Israeli government and two private sponsors paid for us to go. All Jewish people between the ages of 18 and 26 (I believe) have this opportunity, but it was a very special one for Shosh.

Shosh had struggled with the relationship she had to other family members for a number of years. She is a creative soul and her family has a number of doctors and lawyers in it, and it was hard for her parents, especially her father, to accept that she did not want to pursue anything other than a fine arts degree from the University of Manitoba. It really strained their relationship and Shosh told me she stopped praying altogether, because she could not bring herself to believe in any kind of God while experiencing some of the things she faced, and learning about the condition and political climate of the Middle East through books and artwork. 

“It changed when I went to Israel, though,” she told me, and I already knew the story because I remembered seeing Shosh cry at the Western Wall. 

The Western Wall, sometimes called the Wailing Wall, is located in Jerusalem and the idea is that you put a prayer in the wall and it goes to God. 

“I met Her that day,” she said, explaining to me that God, or at least her God, is a woman. “I negotiated with Her about my life.”

That’s only a snippet of the interview I had with Shosh, and I am going to use what she told me as inspiration for a character in my story that is governed by the theme of relationship to a higher power. 

Shosh and I riding a camel in Israel.