Aviva’s World

When I wrote AVIVA VS THE DYBBUK, I set out to depict the world where I’d grown up and where I still live today.  As a middle schooler, I rarely read Jewish books because few of them felt as though I was reading about myself! And today, I find that most mainstream children’s fiction about Orthodox Jews is historical fiction that takes place during the Holocaust. There isn’t much about the specific kind of Judaism that is my culture.

In Aviva’s world, Judaism is very much a way of life. Our culture defines everything– from the way we tie our shoes to what we eat or how we speak. There’s even a blessing said each time we use the bathroom! Once a week, we shut down completely and spend a day away from screens, cars, and work, and we rest and read and hang out with friends and family.

But at the same time, our everyday life intersects easily with the outside world. Many children will watch the same movies or play the same games, though others will shy away from movies and the Internet and the exposure there to the rest of the world. When I was in middle school, we had a television in my parents’ room that we rarely watched. On 9/11, it stopped working, and we never bothered to replace it. I had friends who loved playing Pokémon or listened to the radio, though my parents were taken aback when I started listening to non-Jewish music in high school. Today, in my school, I teach classes where the girls are just as immersed in pop culture as anyone outside of the culture, and others where the girls have no idea what Star Wars is or have ever been online. They all seem to read Keeper of the Lost Cities and Percy Jackson, though!

You’ll notice that Aviva’s world is almost entirely female and Jewish. That’s not uncommon for girls growing up in my sect of Orthodox Judaism! I went to an all-girls school and camp, and I rarely spent time with any boys. The only exceptions were my brother’s friends and my friends’ brothers, and we had little interest in each other. In high school, some girls were inclined to date boys or spend time with them otherwise, but it was frowned upon until we were out of school. We also knew very few non-Jewish people. I had a few neighbors who weren’t Jewish and whom we played with, but that was the bulk of my non-Jewish interactions until college. There just weren’t a lot of other people around!

Overall, though, I had parents who were engaged with the outside world and found a balance between immersion in our culture and an openness to people who followed other ways of life. None of my father’s relatives are Orthodox Jews. We still spend time together when we can and have a lot of respect for each other! And the Internet means that I have many close friends now who aren’t Jewish. The world has gotten smaller over the past few decades, and I’m excited to present a story to all of you that offers an in-depth view of a life that has always felt very normal to me! I love my culture and my community, and I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to share it with the rest of world.