Lanna Michaels (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lannamichaels) wrote2023-03-20 12:49 pm
lannamichaels) wrote2023-03-20 12:49 pm
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Honey and Me by Meira Drazin
Honey and Me by Meira Drazin:
This is a midgrade novel about Orthodox Jewish bas mitzvah girls, published by Scholastic. That was the entire pitch to me by an RL person and that also serves pretty much as a summary.
I would not consider this book to have a plot. The book is about Milla Brown and Honey Wine, two best friends who are both becoming bat mitzvah while, for the first time, sharing a school. There are several sections, each essentially focused around a holiday. The first is Shabbos and the start of school, then we get Tishrei, Purim, Pesach, and Shavuos, with bits here and there in between, such as nebulous "winter break" that starts after Chanukah. The through-line is the dynamic between the girls and how their relationship and friendship strengthens and changes throughout the school year, as they both become bas mitzvah, as well as Milla's relationship with her mom, her family, and how she sees Honey's family as an ideal.
Bulletpoints about the book!
- Now, the first question you ask is, did the parents really name this kid Honey Wine, and the answer is no, they named her Hencha.
The first section's theme is on names and choosing them, and this section posits that Honey has no official name, that her birth certificate says Baby Girl Wine, that the only naming they gave her was Hencha but it's not on any documents. Which... no. I am willing to believe that they panicked a bit when she was born and then modified her birth certificate afterward, so yes, there is still a birth certificate that says Baby Girl on it. But she absolutely has a passport and absolutely enrolled in school under documents that have a name. All the teachers call her Honey by default so that may very well be an official English name, but I doubt it; I think she'd feel otherwise if it was an official name. So I suspect all her documents say Hencha.
She's also the only sibling with a Yiddish name. (Josh, Ezra, Micah, Honey, Miriam, Aaron, and Daniella) - This book is very midgrade. There's a ton of exposition, think the level of Babysitter's Club books. I think it does well what it sets out to do. And it is amazing that this book exists. A Modern Orthodox book published by Scholastic? o.O
- If anyone reads this book and has questions about any subtext they'd like explained, including the subtexts of all the different bas mitzvah stuff, or why the Wines have non-religious guests all the time but yet won't let Honey go to the parties with mixed dancing, let me know and I'd be happy to get into it.
- Milla Bloom is our hero. She has a younger brother with an age gap between them because of infertility issues. Her mother quit her job as a lawyer to take care of her younger brother, who was premature, and now does community work, such as serving on the board of Milla's school. Milla's father travels a lot for work. Milla's hippie aunt visits a lot. But Milla's home is a quiet and lonely place, so Milla escapes as often as possible to Honey's house, which is much warmer and more full of people and love.
Milla and her mom don't have a great relationship, but the book is full of people (okay, at least two people) who tell Milla that her mom loves her and she should be grateful for it, et cetera et cetera et cetera. I don't think the mom character really deserves all the good things people say about her relationship to Milla, but I think the mom finally does get a clue by the end that her complaining about how hard her life is, makes Milla think her mom resents her. - I think there's a lot of characterization-building for Honey that Honey wants to escape to Milla's house and is jealous of Milla's mom, but Honey can't do that because Milla spends all her time escaping to Honey's house and being jealous of Honey's mom.
- This book starts when both girls are 11 and has their bas mitzvahs. Honey's is originally intended to be only celebrated as a kiddush at shul, and then she changes to leining part of Megillas Esther (about which more later). Milla starts out learning Megillas Ruth with her hippie aunt; this is learning the text, not learning to lein. And then she changes to... something else? I honestly can't tell what she changed her learning to; her speech at the end doesn't seem clear on it to me. Doylistically I wonder if this is to avoid having a bas mitzvah speech that would go completely over the heads of a non-frum audience.
Doylistically, I'm not sure why Megillas Ruth was initially picked. Honey's birthday is on Purim, so that she could then do Esther. Milla's birthday is around Shavuos, but I'm not sure why the author picked that. Probably just to align with another holiday? Or have it at the end of the year and so it's the climax of the school year? There's really nothing done with Megillas Ruth, which is a missed chance to have something about chosen family. (But this book also has nothing about conversion). - This book gets the details right (with one notable exception below). This became clear immediately from the outset: Honey's eldest brother has graduated high school, her other two older brothers go to an all-boys yeshiva. Honey and her younger sisters were going to an all-girls school, but all of a sudden they're yanked out and sent to a coed school, which is the one Milla goes to. Sudden school change for the under-high-schoolers to a less frum school, while the yeshiva bochurs stay put? Ah, the younger brother is autistic and is about to start school. No wonder.
And then it's explicated explicitly in the next chapter for those who have never experienced the day school approach to special education.
Some details like that are explained very clear in the text. Some aren't, likely the ones considered less vital. For instance, there's a girl in their class who is specifically the only one besides Honey who is having a shul kiddush alone as her only bas mitzvah celebration, her dad is the shul rabbi, she lives far enough away that they all sleep over to go to her bas mitzvah instead of walking over... what's she doing in this school? Learning disability? Got bullied at the other school? Expelled? - Absolute subtext about the schools that I'm bringing out into its own bullet point because I keep referencing it in others: Honey is going to be going back to an all-girls school for high school. The Wines are annoyed at the elementary school, but they are not annoyed enough to send their daughter to a coed high school. So this is a switch for Honey for a couple years of school to a completely different environment, on the knowledge that she's going to go back to where she came from, and to all her old friends at that school.
Milla will be continuing on in coed unless she specifically requests otherwise and even then, her parents might not allow it. - I was talking to relative about this book and he asked me who the target audience is, and I said "school and public libraries to have a midgrade Jewish book not about the Holocaust."
(There is, of course, the requisite Holocaust survivor character because some tropes must be obeyed*)
My impression of this is based on reading the book's afterward, which let me know that yes, it still is the case that it's still basically Holocaust Books Only, But We Must Mention All-A-Kind-Family, To Prove That Non-Holocaust Books Exist, Even Though They Are Seventy Years Old.
And you know what, I loved All Of A Kind Family, but the kid in the Youth Of Today who tried them was uninterested. The gap was just too big; those books take place a century ago. - Things that were slightly off:
- Honey goes from absolutely nothing to being able to lein a perek of Megillas Esther in less than a month of practice. Nope.
I don't care that she did know her older brothers's bar mitzvah parshas better than they did by the end, that's her learning it from listening to them and memorizing it, not from looking inside. If she's never done it, it's gonna take longer than that. There's a reason there's at least a year of prep for this.
Also, after she finished leining the perek, no one would be singing at her. If you want that, have her lein the last perek, not the third one.
- Honey goes from absolutely nothing to being able to lein a perek of Megillas Esther in less than a month of practice. Nope.
- Things that were very off:
- At one point, Milla claims in the narration not to understand why there's separate seating in shul, a thing that the character absolutely understands. I feel she does this just so the book doesn't have to explain it to the reader. But this girl knows what a partnership minyan is and can make a Hillel vs Shammai joke. She knows why there's separate seating. The author just doesn't want to explain it to this book's intended audience, because it's too long to get into.
- My real one complaint on the details: Milla goes to a coed school with kids who aren't all that frum (there is clear subtext in the ranges of bat mitzvahs), her parents send her to coed parties with mixed dancing on the understanding that she won't mix-dance herself, her dad doesn't wear a kippa to work, her mom wears a hat at shul and otherwise doesn't cover her hair, Milla's still eleven...
...and her parents won't let her wear pants outside.
LOL. No.
Honey is going to Bais Yaakov for high school, but I think Milla's parents would send her to a non-Jewish school before they'd send her to Bais Yaakov. There's both an all-girls option and a co-ed option and Honey's the one whose parents made the school change. Milla's parents were sending her to a coed school all along when there was an all-girls option. You do that on purpose.
And those parents aren't telling their eleven year old she can't wear pants outside the house.
Based on this book, if Milla is only wearing skirts outside, she made that decision herself, based on what the Wines do. (I will give this to the Wines: they are not trying to kiruv Milla, and they don't expect Honey to kiruv any of her new classmates. However, that doesn't mean they aren't influencing Milla.)
- Amusing bits:
- There's a side character who is a ba'al teshuva and that term is never used. I must assume, as someone who has tried to gloss BT, that it was avoided so as not to have to come up with a translation for the glossary in the back. (There's also no "frum".)
- The shul pulls off a women's megillah reading for a bas mitzvah on less than a month's notice, getting enough people to do all the parts the bas mitzvah girl isn't doing.
This megillah reading is held in the basement.
- Simmering under the surface, entirely in subtext, is Honey's feminist rage.
She's the middle child, but the oldest daughter, with three older brothers. Two of the older brothers are still in high school; they got to stay at their yeshiva when Honey and her younger siblings had to switch.
She feels her parents didn't even bother naming her.
At age 11, she's babysitting her younger siblings and making food.
Unlike her brothers, who leined their bar mitzvah parshas, she was only set to have a kiddush and wasn't doing an extensive learning project or making a siyum.
She somehow manages to learn to lein a perek of Esther in a month, which is absolutely impossible if she really was starting from nothing like it's presented as; the only way this works is if she has been working on it much longer.
She's frustrated with her family, attacked her sister Miriam with thrown candy on purpose, and explicitly refers to Milla as being her sister (subtext: the sister she actually wants). Her older brothers provide no childcare or household help (it seems to be a day school; the boys don't dorm), and it's not like they got forced to change schools.
And meanwhile, the family has guests over all the time and are heavily involved in kiruv, so Honey has to perform at home, there's only so much she can get away with in terms of misbehavior or showing her feelings, and she goes to the maximum extent possible on it to the guests on how much she doesn't like her place in the family. Honey's jealous of Milla's mom and wants that kind of relationship with her mom, because Honey's mom has time for everyone other than her, and at least Milla's mom spends money on Milla.
Honey is about to snap. She's either going to Yeshivat Maharat or off the derech**. I don't know that her parents have noticed, but that visiting scholar who jumps on the opportunity to teach her to lein in one month flat definitely, definitely knows. - The reason I think Yeshivat Maharat is in the cards is because Honey's the only one in her class, of the bas mitzvahs who are shown, who do anything explicitly involving religious practice. There's a dearth of religious practice in this book, for all that it is around holidays; the girls go to shul but only to eat candy, they don't daven (the men at the Wine house are constantly going to and coming back from shul; accurate). The frum girl does a dvar torah and probably learned for it, but it's not said. Milla was starting to learn Megillas Ruth but stopped it.
This whole "doing a service/charity project" for the bas mitzvah was after my generation. I have no objection to the trend in principle. But when it's used in place of learning, but not for bar mitzvahs, it sends a clear message about what the purpose of a girl is and what a bas mitzvah actually celebrates. Men learn, women do community service.
Honey is the one to buck that trend and, in a class that absolutely has Conservative girls in it who could lein at their own shuls, is the one to actually do something religious for a religious celebration. - The dearth of religious practice is not a complaint against the book; I understand the limitations of a book like this, and I think it's great that it does show holidays, plural. Compare to Shtisel, a show about black hatters, and in two seasons of that show, never showed a holiday. (I haven't watched the third season yet.)
- Also after my generation:
best manbest friend speeches at a b' mitzvah. I had to confirm with the RL person that this actually exists. She said she's heard of it done once, but yes, she has heard of it. It is wild to me that you would add a speech to a b' mitzvah. The last bar mitzvah I went to, both parents spoke and then the boy gave a drasha. And you want to add a speech? - Orthodox Jews, They're Just Like You: there's a bit at the beginning of the book about there being a Jewish studies curriculum and they have chumash class. After that, all their coursework depicted in the book is English literature class and a public speaking competition. But there is half a day of Jewish studies, promise!
- Categorization for seekingferret: Jews Dance In This Book
- Warning for a sudden unexpected death of a beloved teacher. The Holocaust survivor makes it to the end of the book.
Footnotes:
*There is no intermarriage-in-defiance-of-family-pressure and no super touching wonderful candlelighting scene, and barely any Chanukah. Some tropes are ignored!
**but I repeat myself. Joking aside, I think her parents wouldn't consider that the same thing is because they did let her have the bas mitzvah she wanted. However, her extended family absolutely would consider that the same thing. For a book about "Modern Orthodox Jews", there are certainly some thinky-thoughts to have about the definition of Modern Orthodox that the book has no interest, obviously, in engaging with. But Honey and Milla's families are on opposite ends of Modern Orthodox; I would not consider Honey's immediate family Modern Orthodox until that moment they let her lein Esther for her bas mitzvah. (You have a daughter born on Purim, you are supposedly Modern Orthodox, you do kiruv, your daughter isn't shy, she's good at public speaking, and not one person in this family has been pushing her to lein Esther for her bas mitzvah since the day she turned six years old????) (You have a daughter born on Purim, you kind of panicked on her name, and you didn't name her Esther or Hadassah?????) And meanwhile, that rich kid in their class is going to go to a high school that focuses on college prep and not wasting half the day on Jewish studies. I'm surprised Honey was allowed to eat at her house. It's fully possible Honey wasn't, and that the rich kid's parents buy pizza or other take-out when their daughter has classmates over.
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It is absolutely recommended! It is very much a kid's book, but unlike a lot of frummie kids books, it's actually good.
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...also, for Reasons That I Am Legally Barred From Explaining At This Juncture, I have suddenly become part of a small group of goyim + a couple Very Not Orthodox Jews who have to get a crash course on the interior dynamics of the local Haredi community, and weirdly-to-me, the question most of the others kept asking was "but *why* are the men and women kept so separate?" (This had never occurred to me as a question to ask, it seemed self-evident). I was wondering if you had the suitable-for-11-year-olds explanation that this book left out, to bring with me next week...
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Ah, well, until you got to that part, I was singing "let's talk about sex, baby".
The context in the book is about why it's kept separate during davening, which from a practical standpoint is that there's stuff men do but women aren't allowed to do. And women are distracting to the easily-distracted menfolk, and alas, if I get too far into this, I'm gonna trip into my personal giant well of deepseated rage. But anyway, women are distracting, and must be kept away lest men have any sinful thoughts when they are meant to be praying.
But anyway. Yes, we hold these truths to be self-evident: it's about sex. (also sexism, a fair amount of it directed toward men as not able to distract themselves from Sex Thoughts and erections)
(amongst my trauma is a rabbi at my high school who would walk through the hallways with his fingers in his ears, muttering to himself, lest he hear a teenage girl singing. And, the unspoken part of it was: get an erection from our voices.)
(Honey is a very very very recognizable character, I went to school with her.)
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AAAAHHH!
Okay, thank you for the explanation! It doesn't have to be suitable-for-11-year-olds sex wise but it probably does simplicity-wise. But "they believe women are too distracting" is probably a suitably simple answer if it's reasonably accurate. U_U I guess we'll see what questions come up next time for reasons-I-am-not-legally-allowed-to-explore-at-this-juncture. Hopefully I don't have to try to explain kosher smartphones in any more detail than I already attempted to.
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A couple of things:
-I wouldn't have necessarily have gotten all the subtext about Honey's feminist rage if you hadn't pointed it out, but I do very much agree with you (and disagree with
-Gosh, Milla's mom. Speaking of people who didn't feel like they had choices :P I mean... I know someone like this -- again, not Jewish, I only mean in the sense of having an overwhelming amount of suppressed rage about how much children demand from mothers, especially in a patriarchical-leaning society -- and I sympathized with her while at the same time being like, but... but do you really think it's the right choice to show all this to your actual child?
-At one point, Milla claims in the narration not to understand why there's separate seating in shul, a thing that the character absolutely understands.
So, if this is the same part I saw, I didn't parse it like that? On page 149:
So I think it's written ambiguously, but the way I parsed it was that she was talking about two different objections: first, there presumably are specifics of the laws that she can't really quote verbatim or anything that say that Honey can't do the leining, and second, the separate seating part is just to point out that it doesn't even make logistic sense either, even without getting into the laws of who can do leining. Not that she didn't know why they can't go into the men's section :) ETA: Though now I'm thinking maybe there was another bit that I'm missing?
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regarding Honey and her parents, I'm very hopeful! One of the constraints of POV and length of this book is I don't recall if we actually got Honey talking to her parents very much; I don't recall if she talks to her father at all. Her mother's sending her off to do stuff and all that, but we don't get the kind of parental interactions with Honey like we do with Milla. So I'm hopeful that her parents will be willing to encourage and foster this. Either way, she's going to land on her feet. She'll be fine.
The one I'm really concerned about is Miriam. She has no friends at her new school. She's jealous of her mother's time and attention, and vicious with it. She's not close with Honey. Dan-Dan is still very young and is not a peer. Honey? I went to school with Honey. But Miriam was in my high school friends group. Honey might go off the derech from frustration with her family, and potential lesbianism, but she has a soft landing with Milla's family if she does. Miriam is on track for alienation and untreated mental health problems.
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(Why does conservative have mixed seating and orthodox doesn't?)
One of the constraints of POV and length of this book is I don't recall if we actually got Honey talking to her parents very much; I don't recall if she talks to her father at all.
I don't remember it. I also honestly don't remember her having a lot of anger directed specifically at her parents, and it seemed to me that she has a pretty close relationship with her mom. So, yeah, she'll be okay, she might go off the derech but she'll figure things out, I agree.
The one I'm really concerned about is Miriam.
Oh.
Oh... crap. I didn't even think about that.
Yeah, I knew a Miriam. (Not Jewish, again, and not exactly in all particulars a Miriam, but the reason why this book is so good is that the way its characters are drawn are, well, universal as well as specific.) And... you are right on. Ouch.
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Briefly, because the Conservative movement is much more interested in women being fully involved participants and actually want to attend services.
What sticks out to me the most is that Honey is 11 and has somehow never heard the story of Why She Has Her Name. She really thinks her parents didn't bother to give her an official name, and that the name they picked to name her at shul was an off the cuff panic name. For her to hear for the first time this late that she was named after someone and it was important, shows to me a real lack. And then her mom sends her out to do chesed things like delivering food, or babysit her siblings, it seems like her mom is constantly putting her to work and not engaging with her and providing parenting to her. So I don't know how close they are. And if they are close, how much is parenting and how much is parentifying. But the book went back to the library so I can't check any of that.
One of my Miriams was even named Miriam!