When We’re Born We Forget Everything: A Memoir

Singer-songwriter and poet Rabins (Divinity School) traces her winding spiritual and romantic paths in this invigorating account. Raised in a secular Jewish household, Rabins first encountered Orthodox Judaism in college, when her friendship with a devout classmate intensified her lifelong appetite for a more rigorous faith. Her interest deepened after she met Shira, a charismatic Jewish teacher whose blend of intellectual prowess and mystical curiosity spoke to her. These early spiritual awakenings unfolded alongside Rabins’s first romance with a woman, which prompted an internal negotiation between desire, identity, and tradition: “With Shira I apprenticed in the school of mind and soul; with Zoe, in the school of body and heart.” Subsequent travels to Haifa for an intensive Hebrew program and to a Jerusalem yeshiva brought Rabins further revelations, as did her ill-fated engagement to Nehemiah, an emotionally fragile American man whose volatility suffuses the narrative with darkness. Interwoven throughout are passages of textual analysis that examine biblical stories, like that of Jephthah’s daughter, through a feminist lens, highlighting how Rabins has come to know herself better via scriptural study. Readers drawn to stories of spiritual seeking will cherish this. Agent: Jennifer Thompson, Nordlyset Literary. (Mar.)