14
Friday, May 24, 1985
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
iltin
Memories
BY ELAINE ELSON
Special to The Jewish News
Sensitive author Faye
Moskowitz returns
to Michigan and
her childhood.
Open the book to any page and
marvel at its poetic charm. Whether
the passage is funny, insightful or sad,
it is always real, and it makes you
care. A Leak in the Heart is a series of
autobiographical story-essays. The
author is former Michiganian Faye
Moskowitz.
Dressed artistically, author Faye
Moskowitz is at once dynamic, warm,
intelligent and genuine, with an obvi-
ous dedication and commit-
ment to her teaching and
writing. It makes sense that
this is woman who is a guest
commentator for National
Public Radio's All Things
Considered, that she con-
tributes to the Washington
Post and the New York Times
"Hers" column, that she di-
rects and teaches at The Ed-
mund Burke School in Wash-
ington, D.C., and that her
publisher, David- R. Godine,
has decided to give her book a
second printing merely two
weeks following its publica-
tion date. "I'm a storyteller,"
she says relaxing on a sofa,
her eyes electric with energy.
"I can't help it. What is there
in my memory I' manage to
put down. What I put down
brings other memories." .
Memory is itself the sub-
stance of her book. A Leak in
the Heart describes Mos-
kowitz growing up as an Or-
thodox Jew in the primarily
non-Jewish city of Jackson,
Mich. in the late thirties and
early forties. She writes of
the conflicting emotions
which result when a Jewish
person wants to blend in and
yet retain a sense of self. At
a time in my life when I
would have sold my soul to be
Tiscopalian like my friend
Eileen, my mother coaxed me
into carrying a box of matzah
to school so I could give my
classmates an explanation of
Passover." Moskowitz speaks
of this conflict and of her
pride in being Jewish.
"Maybe living in a small
town as we were, we didn't
take our Jewishness for
granted, the way a child
Benyas-Kaufman raised in a Jewish ghetto
would," she says. "On the one hand, no,
I didn't want to be elbowed out in a
world where everybody's elbowing.
But on the other hand, there has al-
ways been a pride in me about being
Jewish — a sense of culture in a con-
tinuum over the years. I try to give my
children that same pride."
In her book, Moskowitz also re-
calls her adolescence in Detroit —
those years when she deemed hers4lf
"the kind of girl whose doting parents
comfort themselves with, 'Wait until
she gets to college; by then the boys
will have matured enough to ap-
preciate her.' " There are also musings