Telem writes ♥️

Shalom! I've been pretty busy lately. Reading books for the blog, editing my first novel (again!), and trying to create my own book cover. I will make a separate post about the latter when I'm done.  And that is all on top of my regular mommy,  wife, and house responsibilities. Don't ask me about the pile of unfolded laundry in my room.  But I would be remiss not to make a post about Purim. It's one of my favorite holidays but it also has a romantic dynamic at its core. In case you don't recall the story, here's a quick summary: 1) After feeling slighted at his feast/drink-binge, King Achashverosh of Persia has his queen executed. 2) The next morning a sober Achashverosh realizes his "oopsie" and holds a beauty contest to find a new bride 3) Hadassah, a Jewish woman, is forced to enter the contest but uses a fake name, Esther, to hide her true identity 4) The King likes her and decides to marry her 5) Mordechai, Esther's uncle, thwarts a plot of ki...

Shalom, friends! In my previous post I reviewed Unmatched, the memoir of Sarah Lavane who navigated the stormy seas of Jewish matchmaking for decades. If you haven't seen it yet, please check it out here . So without further ado, I'd like to welcome Sarah Lavane. She joins us here to tell us more about her memoir shedding much light on the “unmatched” who live in a “matched” community. TELEM: Your book has been out for a while now. What was the most surprising reaction to your memoir? SARAH: So many readers told me that they stayed up all night to read the book and couldn’t put it down. I had no idea my memoir would do that. It was thrilling to hear! I was also surprised by the wide spectrum of readers and how they all connected to different themes. One reader was a non-Jewish Romanian woman. English was not even her first language. She connected because she, too, is looking for a religious husband. She told me she read my book with its glossary as well as an English dictionary...

Shalom, shalom! Do you ever feel like whatever you do fails? That although you put effort and time into this thing it doesn't blossom into a tree but stays underground where any progress remains invisible? I have that feeling every so often. Both my passions of being a mom and a writer require lots of work while the fruits could take years to materialize. Everything is trial and error. Worse, even things I thought I figured out can come and kick me in the shin. Recently I came across a memoir that deals with this in the world of shidduchim, Jewish   matchmaking. It's called Unmatched, by Sarah Lavane. We follow Sarah across decades in her struggle to find a husband. The problem? He has to be Orthodox and respectable. I enjoyed this memoir for several reasons. First, it is a time capsule, spanning from the 1980s until today. Second, it's a treasure trove of material for Jewish romance stories. Third, it doesn't sugarcoat and shows a woman having desires. And lastly, it s...

⚠ This post contains some sensitive subjects from the parashah This week's parashah is Shemot which deals with the slavery of the Jewish people in Egypt. You don't need me to retell the entire story. Dayenu ! That's what Pesach is for. I would like to focus on one aspect: Survival. Despite the hard labor, despite the decree ordering the slaughter of the newborn boys, and despite the drowning of those boys, the Jewish people survived. The famous commentator Rashi explains in a later parashah how this survival came about. There, in Parashat Vayakhel (38:8), the Torah tells us the Jewish women donated their copper mirrors for the building of the washbasin in the mishkan , aka tabernacle. Rashi explains that Moshe Rabbeinu had his reservations at first. These mirrors weren't to check for food rests between the women's teeth. The women used these mirrors to seduce their husbands. They would beautify themselves with the help of these mirrors, and meet their husbands in th...

A while ago I pitched my first novel to frum publishers. Frum is the Yiddish word for religious btw. Some years before, a frum publisher had published "Pride and Preference" by Barbara Bensoussan and seeing as my book was a Pride and Prejudice adaptation set in Israel, I assumed I had a shot.  I don't want to reveal who gave me which rejection but be kitzur, in short, they all rejected it. I don't think one of them read the manuscript. But while most rejections were polite, and some even commended me for the idea, one rejection stood out to me. Of course, I can only assume the tone of an email and there's a chance I misinterpreted it. But just so you can read it the way I did, I added emojis and internal thoughts in parentheses to the text:   Dear Tamar, 🧐 Thank you for submitting your book for our review.  As [➖️➖️➖️➖️]'s main clientele is the Chareidi [Ultra orthodox]readership,we don't take on romance books at all.😤😡 [The very thought! The notion!] W...

What a mouthful of a title! But these things all contect, I promise.  Chanukah has just begun, which although it coincides this year with Christmas is very much not a Jewish Christmas. In fact, Chanukah celebrates the re-dedication of the temple, our beit ha mikdash, once the Maccabeas liberated it from the Greeks. Interestingly enough, many Jews at the time were perfectly fine living under Greek rule. One might even argue some overdid it. I don't even know if I want to get more specific than that, because, yikes, and ouch. If you know you know.  The Greek ruler Antiochus could have followed in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. Instead he acted like a putz and forbid Jewish traditions. At that time, the Hellenistic Jews happily went along but for the Maccabeas this was the drop that spilled the kiddush cup. Chanukah is therefore a holiday that celebrates the fight against assimilation.  This was all recap. Now I want to get to my actual subject which is the impact of ...