MORE New Year at the Pier

Find out about our Teaching Authors Book GiveAway Contest running all this week! Click here for details.

Happy New Year! This week we’re celebrating the new school year and our very own April Halprin Wayland’s book, New Year at the Pier--A Rosh Hashanah Story, which is about another kind of new year--the Jewish New Year.

Esther:
April, how did being a Teaching Author influence/impact/inform your book?

April:
More than in any other of my books, I teach in this story—about forgiveness, about how to apologize, about friendship, about community.

All of my books have been fiction. My first book was about a child who turns into a rabbit. My second was a flying horse. My third was about a made-up Southern family and their wild grandma. My fourth was a fictionalized novel of my teen years. My fifth (published by a teensy weensy press in Canada) was about a fictional child moving to a new house.

In each of these, I had the freedom to invent anything I wanted in order to serve the story.

But New Year at the Pier is based on an actual event that I wanted to explain.

I sent drafts to religious Jews, I read them to synagogue classes (a Jewish librarian and Hebrew school teacher both suggested that I add someone apologizing to my main character, so we could learn not only how to apologize, but how it feels to receive an apology), and every New Year I watched myself and others celebrate on the pier as if I were a journalist, taking notes and taking photos—all to make sure I was telling the truth of this celebration.

So, I teach in this book more than in any of my others. I tried not to hit people over the head with the lessons!

The other way teaching influenced my writing in this book was this: I wanted to show that in real life, not everything is neatly resolved, tied up in a neat package. I fought to keep this element in the story and am so glad I did.

Now that I’m doing performances, presentations and workshops based on this book, I am talking about forgiveness and apologizing, and I offer tips on these topics on my website.

It’s been a fascinating journey for me to examine my own life and how I have or have not forgiven and how I do or don’t apologize…and how to turn all that humanness into poetry.

What a gift—to teach and to learn, both!

image credits:
tashlich on the pier:
April Halprin Wayland personal photos
sorry cat
http://dl2.glitter-graphics.net/pub/743/743662l45g05d1qv.jpg

New Year at the Pier

Find out about our Teaching Author Book Giveaway Contest running all this week! Click here for details.

Happy New Year! This week we’re celebrating the new school year and our very own April Halprin Wayland’s book, New Year at the Pier--A Rosh Hashanah Story, which is about another kind of new year--the Jewish New Year.

Stay tuned for a series of Q&As from the TAs (say that five times fast) about the gestation of this touching story.

Jeanne Marie:
April, can you tell us a little about your religious identity and why you wrote this book?

April:
Although this book is about the Jewish New Year, it’s really about universal themes of forgiveness and apologizing, friendship and multi-cultural ways to celebrate new year.

Growing up, my Jewishness was all about big hugs from Uncle Raphael, Uncle Izzy, Uncle Avrum, Uncle Chucky, Uncle Davie, Uncle Moish, Uncle Max, Uncle Art, Aunt Fanny, Aunt Cissy, Aunt Sue, Aunt Frances, Aunt Polly, sitting at the “cousins table,” the smells of matzo ball soup, the bright magenta color and hot sting of horseradish, the dark shadow of the holocaust, overlapping layers of talking, laughter, holiday songs, and Yiddish words seasoning conversations, of flickering candles.

Above all, being Jewish meant that part of my job on earth was tikkun olam—to repair the world. My relatives modeled tikkun olam every day.

I’m married to Gary, a non-Jew who embodies tikkun olam in every action, in every breath. We are both political activists in an effort to repair the world, and we weave Judaism into the fabric of our family throughout the year in other ways, too:

On Friday nights, our family goes to our favorite hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant. I’m not sure how Jewish tacos are, but it’s our way of marking the start of the Sabbath, a time of rest and renewal.

In December, we have an annual latke party, inviting neighbors to bring electric skillets, spatulas and aprons. Hanukah latkes are yummy hot-from-the-frying-pan potato pancakes, served with apple sauce or sour cream. We set up latke-making stations, cook, gab, sing, bless the candles, play the dreidle game and eat!

Gary’s a CPA and his busiest time of the year is near Passover. For many years, my son and I traveled overseas during his spring break, where I taught writing and poetry workshops. I’ve taught in schools in Germany, France, England, Italy, Switzerland and Poland, and every year we celebrated Passover with new friends. (One memorable year we ate Passover dinner on the floor of our Berlin hotel room…ask me about it sometime!)

Tashlich is a ritual during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The exact date of Rosh Hashanah varies—in 2009, it’s Sept. 18-20th. When synagogue is over, nearly two hundred of us will walk to the pier, sing songs, and fling pieces of bread into the ocean.

Each piece of bread represents something we wish we hadn’t done in the past year. Tossing the bread (tashlich means “to throw”) is a way of letting go of the past. It represents the footwork we’ve done to sincerely apologize and compensate for any wrongs we’ve done, cleaning the slate for the New Year.

Tashlich is outdoors, in a beautiful setting. Tashlich is community, a huge component of the juiciness of Judaism.

Tashlich is about healing the world, beginning with me.

Tashlich my favorite Jewish celebration. I’ve dragged many friends to the pier so they could taste its poetry. I wanted them to feel the wind, hear the gulls, experience the relief of tossing each piece of bread.

How could I not share all this in a picture book?

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Readers, don't forget to post your new-year goals to enter for a chance to win April's wonderful book! Click here for details.

image credits:
interior picture from New Year at the Pier © Stéphane Jorisch 2009
latkes: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQBj6Cw6XOWuLoqddygkaW1gDot9EdiA7JJ_QkXKc4AZu68Ti38CYY8YzF00boCIhHa6HjlzW2jgXNPGjH4z_FLvuJIrzS1YiStIRF_NT0-gyp_W80BkmK0kP938Dui3LN84pZaGmT41M/s400/latkes.jpg