5783 in Review

In no particular order, 5783 meant:

• Finishing my third year of rabbinical school and starting my fourth

• Developing content to help people mark Repro Shabbat (including my first byline in Lilith!)

• Supporting my husband through his first year of pulpit rabbi-ing

• Spending hours at the beach

• Buying clothes that fit my now-body instead of waiting for them to fit my then-body

• Visiting Europe for the first time

• Eating a lot of French pastries

• Celebrating one year of marriage

• Starting to figure out what kind of rabbi I want to be

• Buying grown-up couches and taking a bunch of Shabbos naps on them

• Hosting my family for Pesach

• Getting pregnant

• Miscarrying, just in time for Elul

You might say that I buried the lede. And perhaps I did: my entire life has expanded only to cave inwards over the past weeks. I got to hear my father’s voice when he realized he would be a grandfather, got to hear my mother-in-law start crying. I got to hear a miraculous heartbeat, only to hear that it wasn’t miraculous enough. Only to spend the next few days in bed bleeding, or stumbling around the house, hungover with grief.

I’m not sure what the purpose of writing this is, except to say that it happened. I haven’t made my peace with it, and I don’t know if I ever will. There’s something doubly painful about being newly unpregnant on a holiday where infertility narratives and birth metaphors fill the machzor. So, when I’m eventually not too angry to pray, I know what I’ll be praying for. But I don’t think I’ll be praying this year; God and I are not exactly on speaking terms.

My husband, who is a better person than I, turned our suffering – his suffering – into Torah that he’ll share from the bima. All I can do right now is hang on to my gratitude for the people in my life who are holding us and helping us through this, who remind me that Torah and God will be there when I’m ready for them.

May we all have a year of blessings and answered prayers.