TC Jewfolk

I don’t wake up (or go to sleep) thinking of myself as a Jewish artist. But should I? Hard to say. I spent the winter polishing up a new (debut) novel for young readers called The Beat on Ruby’s Street. Set in Greenwich Village in 1958, the novel is focused on eleven-year-old Ruby Tabeata, who is growing up in the midst of Beat Generation artists and poets and wants to be a poet herself. On her way to a reading by the poet Jack Kerouac, Ruby is waylaid by a blood orange, accused of stealing it and hauled off to the police station.

For nostalgic reasons, I have a hard time being objective about Isaac Becker’s restaurants. Long story short: After moving here, my wife and I went to 112 Eatery for our anniversary, and we’ve now gone there every year since. So dedicated we are, we mark June 12 on our calendars to remind us that that was the day we could make reservations. So when we were able to get to Burch Steak in the Lowry Hill neighborhood, we were ecstatic and came away planning our next visit. But not for the reasons you’d expect.

My husband and I were both born and raised Jewish. We both identify strongly with our Jewish faith. Our children attend/ed Hebrew and religious school and all four will be Bar/Bat Mitzvahed (two down, two to go). Yet for many reasons, the most prominent being that we had family members attending, we made the choice to send our children to an Episcopalian school. A school that explains in its mission statement: “Our goal as an Episcopal school is to nurture the spiritual development of each person and to welcome everyone to our community.” And for the most part, we have all found this to be true.

I was running late to Federation’s Young Leadership happy hour one evening last November, which meant I was able to skip the awkward but necessary introductions and small talk. Instead, I hijacked my way into a conversation where someone said, “Daci, this is Rebecca! She’s a writer too.”