Crunchy Wasabi Peas - For startling your senses into focus when the hours start to drag after midnight. When your courage or stamina starts to wane, hold one to the tip of your tongue as long as you can.

Frozen Green Grapes - Taste like bonbons, without the lethargy of dairy or the inevitable sugar-crash. Make you feel like you are being good to yourself even though you have been sitting in one place, in the same clothes for days, hair a mess, legs cramped, wrists aching. Fun to roll around in your mouth while you are thinking.

Carrots - Good for eyes so bleary and beat that when they close you see blue computer shaped rectangles. The crunch keeps you alert, the noise and the effort cranks the mental engine.

Dried Cherries - More interesting than raisins. You must have something chewy on hand, as well as something crunchy. An occasional blast of sweetness pleases the muses. Sink your teeth into a wad of them and a sprint of sentences is sure to follow. Dried white mulberries are also awesome.

Banana Chunks Dipped in Dark Chocolate and Frozen - Frozen things are far better than warm things when writing a novel. If you don't have the time to melt chips in a double-broiler, stir in banana chunks and freeze them, then a bowl of frozen blueberries or frozen peas will do. Warm, cooked things comfort away your edge, soften your neck so your head lolls back, moisten your face. Soups, meats, mashed potatoes, these are all a devilishly disguised drowse. Always opt for cold, even if you have to put a heater under your desk. And if you must have warm, because you are writing on deadline from a torn tent in a blisteringly cold tundra, choose tea, because tea is always beckoning of histories, cultures and spirits.

Water - To shows gratitude to your body for not atrophying in the time it takes to complete a chapter.  Drinking water ritually necessitates frequent breaks, during which you can blink, stretch, and jostle yourself out of a dangerous rut. After such breaks, you are more likely to be able to see the phrase you thought was so clever and essential before you walked away as the jutting abhorrence it really is. Drink tap water from a glass, because as environmental as you are, if your novel is published you'll be killing a lot of trees, so don't worsen your karma by cluttering landfills with plastic in the meantime. If you are a klutz, however, a straw may prevent splashing.

Almond Butter on Apple Slices - If your mind is shutting down and you need protein. Beware of dangerous distractions however. Don't make sticky fingers an excuse to leave your post. Wipe them on your jeans and suck it up.

We have a wrought iron hand rail that winds along the wall of our staircase. It would seem the perfect thing to hold onto when sailing down the stairs.

For some reason, however, it always feels more natural to run our fingers along the opposite wall, the one without the handrail as we go down, grazing it with our fingertips like a windsurfer skimming the surface of the water, or a cyclist taking a tight curve, skirring the gravel.

Countless times a day we go up and down the stairs running our fingers along the same lines, just below each respective family-member's left shoulder. The lines were invisible, until recently. After so much time, the fingerprints have accumulated and, though barely visible, there are streaks, five streaks along the wall. It is time to spray them with some eco-friendly scrub and swab them away. Easy enough. Yet I haven't done it. I admit it's strange, but I like them. They remind me of the marks in the door-frame growing up which measured my hieght throughout childhood. They remind me of rushing down the stairs for the umpteenth time that night to get a bottle of warm milk for a baby. They remind me of running downstairs to make sure the doors are locked, to turn off the lights, to check on a sound, to get a glass of water. They look so hurried, like the quick strokes that indicate a comic book superhero is moving really fast.

I like them because I imagine that, given enough time, all those softly padded fingers of my children and my husband will eventually create permanent grooves in the wall, grooves that the next owners of this house will use to display thimbles, acorns and Matchbox cars, grooves that cannot be erased with a quick swipe of Quilted Northern. I like them because they pay secret homage to the wall that holds me up when I'm scrambling in slippery socks, half-asleep, to find children's Tylenol for one or two or three fevers, and I want only to collapse. 

Then they aren't fingerprints and handprints and streaks, but the glistening brow of a hard-working shear wall, tethering the dream-stuffed mattresses of dozing children, as well as their distracted mother, to the bedrock below.

I am looking forward to my father James Grashow's openning at the Taubman Museum of Art. Here is a picture of it waiting to be shipped from the studio in my family's home to the gallery in Roanoke, VA. It is a corrugated fountain, and the opening reception is June 10, from 6.30 - 8.00 pm. If you are in Virginia, come by! The show runs from June 11, 2010 - February 20, 2011

In the show's promotion it was written: Grashow creates works in a variety of media that address the themes of man, nature and mortality. The scale of his work ranges from large environmental installations, through which the viewer traverses, to the delicate and contained world of his houseplants, where tiny fabricated homes and buildings replace flowers and buds in intricately constructed bouquets. For the past three years, Grashow has been working on his most ambitious work to date; a Corrugated Fountain - an epic work reminiscent of the Trevi Fountain in Rome, complete with Poseidon, nymphs, rocks, waves, and an assortment of sea creatures. The idea of a cardboard fountain is an impossibility, an oxymoron that speaks to the human dilemma. Grashow has made something heroic in its concept and execution with full awareness of its poetic absurdity. His work can be found at www.jamesgrashow.com.

One of the strangest things abotu moving to California was the fact that no one I met had ever been in my father's studio. I couldn't imagine that anyone could ever understand who I was if they'd never been in that enchanted space. I suppose it's true for anyone, really. Our origin becomes our own private story, no matter how often we share.

A poem in celebration of the Festival of Shavuot...

There are Torahs in the corner that need to be swept.

Sit still. Your hair is tangled with scrolls.

The sink is filled with sudsy Scriptures. 

You'll need extra parchment to keep out the cold.

Hold still. An alef fell into your lashes.

The setting Exodus sinks slowly into the sea.

A Genesis is begun whenever we say hello.

It is the end of Deuteronomy whenever you leave.

I take coffee with one heaping teaspoon of prose,

And wish on shooting Numbers in deep turquoise skies.

Whenever I'm asked a difficult question,

New Torahs compose themselves behind my eyes.

Look over the mountains, those pulp sodden pages,

Billowing gray Torahs predict a spring storm.

Verses among the vegetables need to be kept.

Be still. A Leviticus landed on your arm.

Three boxes of the new paperback version of Drawing in the Dust arrived on my doorstep today. The paperback is being released this month, with a new cover, reviews in the front and a reader's guide in the back. The same month that my two daughters have their birthdays. Holding the paperback in my hands, she seems foreign to me. The book I sent out into the world looked and felt different. She was preciously packaged, and commanded space. I had picked out the earrings and approved every bit of her design. Now she has returned, like a grown child looking for a little money, laundry and food before hitting the road again. She seems to know things I do not. The praises inside the front cover intimate the many places she's been without me. If I cyber-stalk her, I find her written about on posts and blogs, and I have to wonder just how many bedrooms has she been in? How many times has she flown coach or firstclass in the laps of strangers-to-me? I hold the new paperback, and the story I crafted over so many years seems alien. She has thrown off her protective shell, and is loose and liquidy in my hands. She is cheaper, and proud of it. She knows I had no real say concerning her new look. The cover portrays a mysterious woman wrapped in a red shawl spiriting through a Middle Eastern walkway. I do not know this woman. I am unsure which of my characters, if any, she is supposed to depict. If the woman were to turn around, I imagine her smirking at me, her eyes flashing: "You may have created me, but I do not belong to you. Your keyboard can't touch me. You don't even know me..." She is hurrying toward some green door I have never seen before in my life. Behind that door, I can only imagine whose egg-salad smeared fingers will bend and fold her, press lint into her creases, tear her up and pass her around. She knows her power over me. Propped up on my desk she seems to say, "You gave me your heart, and I will turn it into a coffee-coaster if I please." I want to say something in return. I want to advise her relevantly. Something that will comfort her when she swells up with saltwater or kindles a campfire. "You are more than the sum of your words to me. Tears and sparks. And breath."  

You are incredible people at an extraordinary time in your lives, and you don't always get enough credit. Every single day you are trying to maneuver introspectively through challenging social, spiritual and moral situations. You are balancing self-respect with peer pressure, individuality with group dynamics. Every day you are learning new relationship rules. Your friendships are often tested, and you are wrestling with giant things like meaning, purpose, existentialism, love...things that philosophers, poets, artists and scholars spend their lives trying to tackle. You are also trying to understand very difficult things that don't get much easier, like gender-stereotyping, loneliness and stress. A major change from what I may have experienced as a teenager is that I faced it all without having to deal with MySpace, IMs, texting and micro-blogging. A note passed in the classroom was seen by one or two people, unlike what you deal with when someone posts something on their Facebook wall. I admire you for learning to navigate rapidly expanding technologies while also working through schoolwork and constantly interpreting and reinterpreting your relationships with family and friends. You really don't get enough credit.

More and more we see in the news stories of teenagers bullying or being bullied, and the pain and tragedy that results. On top of that, such shows like "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" and "Gossip Girl" are filled with harmful messages. It is clearer now more than ever that the culture at large has not been a great friend to helping teenagers to be healthy and happy. Did you know teenagers who live in countries without television have virtually no eating disorders? You are faced with a barrage of impossible so-called ideals. How can you be expected to make wise decisions when we are so deeply immersed in a culture of materialism, hypocrisy of power, and idolatry of status?

But here's the thing. You are the kings and queens of counterculture. Teenagers invented counterculture. Amidst all the changes in and around you, you are generating the most fantastical and passion-filled ideas. You are powerful thinkers and creators. I would argue that if it wasn't for the zealous passion of visionary teenagers, Israel would never have been founded. We talk of Hebrew as an ancient language, and yes, it is the language of our Biblical ancestors, but it was teenage pioneers from all over Europe who revived it while they drained the swamps in the north and made the desert bloom in the south. Think about that, what you are experiencing right now, if channeled correctly, can be a movement that changes history.
Your ideas, while often outrageous, are exactly what the world needs to hear. And just like the people loathed to listen to the prophets, often people don't listen to you. Teenagers really don't get enough credit!

But here's the other thing...Judaism is the ultimate counterculture. Judaism emphasizes that we are not animals with impulses that can't be controlled. Judaism acknowledges the complexity of humanity, while teaching that there is a purpose for everything. Judaism teaches that you are made in the image of God no matter who you are or what you believe, that your body is a gift and your soul is good and purposeful, and that your heart and your mind matter. Your ideas count. In fact, at thirteen, you are already a full member of the community.

I want to remind you that the temple is a second home to you. It does not stop being your home because you had a bar or bat mitzvah, or finished confirmation. You are not judged here. You are honored for exactly who you are.

Last year I asked a small group of you what it is that you wish the temple could provide for you, and I was surprised with your answer. You didn't say that you were looking for a social scene or a place to hang out. You said you wanted to meditate and to worship. We open our sanctuary doors to you. Here is the ultimate countercultural experience.

Teenagers, you are the philosophers of the world. Good luck on your final exams this month, and when times are tough, please don't keep it all inside. Talk to the people you trust, and remember the synagogue as a second home.

It takes a tremendous shift to start a new novel. Space and time have to be prioritized. I find myself preparing to begin in the same manner that I prepared to bring home a new baby. Nesting.

Over the past few months I've gone through just about every closet in my house, hefting bags of toys no one's thought about in years, clothing everyone's outgrown, and board games with missing pieces, out of the house. Salvageable items were all donated. One family carted bins of stuffed animals away in a pick-up truck to distribute to kids on their block for Christmas.

Once the clutter of the house was brought to a manageable level, I zeroed in on my writing desk. I set up files, each labeled with topics that will be woven throughout the new books. I filled each file with the downloaded research articles I need. I organized the books I'd ordered. Books on genetics, the science of vision, Africa, Il Libro dell'Arte. I turned down the pages where I'd begun highlighting passages in Letters to Theo. I feel myself falling in love with Van Gogh as I immerse in his words in the same way I had fallen in love with the Prophet Jeremiah, and the familiarity of that love agitates me to want to channel it into stories. Love is the green light that makes me want to write.

I created a bulletin board filled with pictures of people who resemble the characters I've dreamt. I've outlined the book from beginning to end. I've written a draft of the prologue and three chapters, and begun contacting various people around the world, from Canada to Swaziland, who have access to information that will authenticate aspects of my story. Activists, artists, prosecutors, ophthalmologists. A network of strangers who each unknowingly owns pieces of a grand puzzle.

When you prepare to write a new novel, it is as if you are preparing for world travel. For Drawing in the Dust, I shipped myself to Israel, both modern and ancient. It is a disconcerting means of travel, however, because you propel your soul far and wide and then leave the orbit of your writing desk to touchdown again smack in the midst of family and work. The concrete here-ness and now-ness of children's need and professional responsibility takes a moment of adjustment, when just moments before you were descending into a 46,000 year old ochre mine, covered in gold dust, or posing nude before a painter in a converted garage while the sun reflecting off a starched sheet of snow through the window bathes you, and him, in light.

Space and time have to be prioritized to start a new novel, and space I've taken care of. It is time now that I need to wrangle. Carving the next year into well-defined compartments of time. Identifying the hours well in advance that will be set aside, and digging a moat around them that distraction cannot cross. I'm searching inside me for the strength to plunge headfirst, and the stamina to sustain the swim.

Happy Thanksgiving! The last few weeks have been wonderful, having the opportunity to step into different communities and glean treasured learnings from new environments. In each place I'm invited to speak, I acquire new unexpected mentors. I've learned from leaders in Buffalo, Toronto, New York, Phoenix, and many wonderful faith communities in and around Los Angeles. I always return with handfuls of new seeds to sow in my own garden of beloved friends, family, and congregants. As many will gather around their tables this week, I imagine that all our tables are connected, that we pass around the same bottomless cup and sip from the same eilxir of gratitude and hope.

In honor of the holiday, from "The Gates of Prayer": Let us not be content, O God, when others go hungry, or be serene while some lack their daily bread. Teach us to give thanks for what we have by sharing it with those who are in need. Then shall our lives be called good, and our names be remembered for blessing....

And a poem of mine which i wrote for the Air Quality Awards in Los Angeles years ago:

Sacred Invisible

How can we be strangers
When this moment
I breathe in and out
The same thousands of nitrogen molecules
That were in the deep breath
Of your great great grandmother
Whom you never met,
Swept up into the winds of the planet
To join the international stock
Of terrestrial atmosphere,
To join the natural and necessary breaths
Of every creature that ever sighed,
In an eternal dance,
Ballerinas of the air,
Clothed in star jasmine and hyacinth,
Lavender and exhaust,
Spiced with citrus and spirits,
Smoke stacks, sawdust,
Hairspray, soap bubbles and cities burning.
The perfume of Christmas ham
Waltzing and whirling
With kosher strudel
High above and apart
From our imagined distinctions,
Incense and offerings
Swaying with the sound waves
Of distant sobbing
And recent laugher,
The sacred warbling from citadels
And minarets,
Magical mantras,
Wind chimes
And soothing bells,
Pierced through with shrieks
Of tortured sufferers
Somewhere else.
The breath of my enemy too,
And the faint current of a butterfly wing.
Flurry of snowflakes, blast of heat
From a laundry vent.
How can we be strangers
When a year from now
You will breathe in and out
The same thousands of nitrogen molecules
That were in my deep breath
This moment?
We are not strangers at all,
We are most intimate,
For what is in you was once in me
And will be again,
And I in you,
You are each under my skin
And I under yours.
The stuff of the distant past
And the breath of great creatures
We've never ever known
Blend seamlessly with
Future souls.
Air is the ultimate intimacy,
All of us drinking from the same
Bottomless cup,
Ruach Elohim,
Eternal wind,
Blessed be the breath
That makes us one.
Blessed be the transcendent air
That bridges time and space
And you and me
And rock, bird, icicle, tree,
In honor of the Sacred Invisible,
In hope of repair,
In resolve, pledge and commitment
To our covenant with earth and sky,
We who breathe,
We whose souls are Eternity's breath,
We join not as strangers,
But as partners,
Blessed be the air we breathe this day,
The breath we pass from one to the other
Back and forth
Out of me and into you
And out of you and into me
And my ancestors
And your descendents,
This air, this prayer,
For time immortal.  

Yesterday I attended the memorial for Mary Travers at Riverside Church in Manhatten. Growing up, my family has had a close, wonderful relationship with Mary and her husband Ethan. The memorial was exquisite, a kaleidoscope of brilliant speakers and stars, including Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Senator John Kerry, Senator George McGovern, Senator Max Cleland, Bill Moyers, Tom Paxton, Rabbi David Saperstein, Rabbi Dan Syme, Whoopi Goldberg, Theo Bikel, of course Noel Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow, along with many more. It was four richly textured hours culminating in an extraordinary "This Land is Your Land" which could only have been better had Mary's voice been there, but her spirit was all around. Here, I'd like to share the words I spoke at the memorial. Blessings to all --

A Toast to Mary Travers - Rabbi Zoë Klein

The dining room table
Is an altar,
The words shared around it,
Offerings.
How many times
Had Mary sat at our table,
How many times at friends' tables,
At my brother's table,
Cutlery clinking,
Laughter ringing,
Everyone interrupting,
Subtlety, winking,
Stories sliced in edgewise...
Course after course
Of opinionated discourse,
Thoughtfully spiced with
Philosophical musings...
Artfully spiked with
Humor and play...
How many times
At Mary and Ethan's table,
In that rustic room
Where Mary's heart was the hearth
And Ethan's love an eternal ember...
In their home
Which is so delicious
It might well be made of gingerbread.
How many times
Did we lift our glimmering glasses
To life, to love,
To justice, to passion...
To imagination,
To every wild irrational
Vision of perfect peace
And fair distribution of power...
The out-of-reach utopian world
For which we pined and debated
While we relished the hours
Infused with the spirit
Of loving one another...
At their table, gleaming,
As an altar...

Toast after toast,
We lifted our tumblers
To many things...

To your love,
Mary and Ethan,
On your wedding day,
When you married
Under a canopy of branches and flowers
In my parents' backyard.
Mary walked down the aisle of grass
Holding a small sculpture
From my father's studio,
And during the ceremony I looked up
And was struck
To see the maple trees
Had aligned their branches
Into a perfect heart against the sky.
A toast to your wedding 18 years ago,
And to trees and to roots
That run so deep.

I remember a toast around the table on her patio,
- Minted iced tea -
She had called us and said,
Hurry, come over,
The wisteria
Which only bloomed once a year had opened.
A toast to flowers,
To beauty,
To hope...
Mary, Mary, bright luminary,
How does your garden glow,

She told me once she could identify
Each gray strand in her platinum hair,
This one civil rights, this one Vietnam,
El Salvador, she named each atrocity
That turned her spun gold to silver...
Mary, Mary, revolutionary...
Silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids ought to be free.

She was a wizardress of voice...
Sang her soul
And spoke for the voiceless.
She could scathe or soothe...
She informed and inspired agents of change,
And because of her,
My husband and I are both rabbis
Who can say that
When we find ourselves in times of trouble,
Mother Mary comes to us...
Whispers words of wisdom...
 
She was a radiant sun
with a galaxy orbiting around her...
and just as rays of light
continue to rush through time and tide...
so shines Mary...
While we, the astronomers,
try to interpret her dancing light,
she climbs
higher and higher...
a golden star
pinned to the velvet black
of God's deep night,
a rival to the North Star,
a multi-faceted diamond...
let this light shine forever,
let this light - undimmed -
steer the ships,
guide the troops,
chart the wanderers,
dispel the gloom,
orient the dreamers,
and infuse the living
with courage
and wonder
and love.

Mary, Mary, come sweet chariot,
Coming forth to carry her home...

Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down that stream...
Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary,
Life is but a dream...

So, a toast,
On Mary's birthday...
I ask you please,
Lift your glasses high,
Filled with light,
All of us at Mary's table,
Hands cupped,
Filled with memory,
Sweet to drink,
Aged to perfection,
Everyone here holds in his or her hand
And heart a draft of the fountain
Of her gifts, her generous soul,
We raise our crystal chalices together,
Raise them high...
To Mary,
On your birthday,
L'chayim.