By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

Alicia Jo Rabins grew up in a secular Jewish home, but, even as a young child, felt that something was missing from her life, that there was something different that she needed to make life feel complete. As she notes in her memoir “When We’re Born We Forget Everything” (Schocken Books), she first found that part of that missing element in music and then in Orthodox Judaism, before realizing that the best way to live her life was to find a balance between the sacred and secular. Or, more accurately, to see the sacred that exists in the secular and sacred worlds. Her work not only tells the story of her spiritual search, but offers chapters that contain her thoughts on biblical stories she found particularly meaningful.
Rabins writes that there are two ways to look at her spiritual journey: one focuses on her identity as a “white American girl growing up in a late twentieth-century secular suburbia, sensing mystery” in her everyday world and how she left suburbia “to search for meaning.” The other sees her as “a Jewish girl born in the Diaspora, in the Hebrew year 5737 [1977]” who discovers the religion her ancestors passed down through the ages, returning “to the faint flame [of that tradition] burning inside her.” Readers may feel both of these description are accurate since Rabins left and then returned to the secular world, while taking the flame of her Orthodox practice and using it to find the sacred in other parts of her life.
Her search began in high school with the use of drugs, including LSD, to uncover the mystery she felt existed in the world. She notes, “I was a disciple and LSD was my monastery, my teacher, and my instruction. It was a hidden door, a mystery rabbit hole, an ascetic practice to be hidden from my parents and, of course, my two younger sisters.” What may strike readers as unusual is that she, then, claims she experienced the same sense of mystery when studying Jewish text. That study began when she left Maryland for college in New York City. That was the first time she saw Orthodox Jews on a regular basis, not that she recognized the Jewish girls who lived in her dorm as such. It was their practice of waiting for someone else to open the automatic sliding doors on Saturdays so they wouldn’t use electricity that first drew Rabins’ attention. The mystery so intrigued Rabins that she became interested in learning more. When she begins studying Talmud at a Wednesday Night Learning, she is fascinated by the texts, so much so that she decides to spend a year after college studying in a yeshiva in Israel.
However, there are complications that she realized might create difficulties with her acceptance in the Orthodox community. Rabins knew that she had to keep her two college worlds separate, in part because she identifies as bisexual and was in a relationship with Zoe, a fellow student. Rabins also feels close to her chavruta (study partner) Shira, although their time together is spent only in study or celebrating holidays. The author sees what she learned from them as two different types of study: “With Shira I apprenticed in the school of the mind; with Zoe, in the school of body and heart.” Once Rabins decides to study at an Orthodox school in Israel and practice Orthodox Judaism, she knows that her relationship with Zoe must end and quietly leaves that form of study behind, at least for the time being.
At first, Rabins loves the rules and strictures of Judaism. It is only later that she seeks what she considers a more balanced path. What changed was that Rabins realized that holiness could be found in more places than she expected, even with the secular roommates she shared a house with in Amherst: “I began to realize that the holiness I found in Jerusalem was here too – was everywhere, pulsing through everything. It just required a gentle alertness to notice it, like a radio turned to the precise frequency, a clear signal.” That didn’t mean she deserted her Jewish practice, but found a way to take what she thought was the best of her Orthodox practice and combine it with other experiences she found sacred. 
That included teaching and music since the author also found spirituality in playing the violin. She began playing classical violin as a child, then learned to play bluegrass fiddle, before discovering klezmer. There were times she made money from playing, either by busking on the streets or performing with a group of musicians. At one point, after she had returned to the U.S. from Israel, it looked as if she would make her career through music, but that group took a different direction and found a new violinist. The author then found others to play with, music that allowed to infuse her playing with her vision of Judaism.
The sections offering her thoughts on the biblical text show Rabins’ often nontraditional approach to the stories. For example, when writing about the building of the Mishkan (the Tabernacle), she offers an interesting explanation of how the structure was as much for humans as for God: the story is “about the sanctity of creativity and craft, the meaningfulness of making, and the possibility of weaving sacredness out of the everyday. When we use our talents, skills, hands, and wise hearts to create beauty in any form, we perform a holy act. We invited God in.” The author sees the story of Potiphar’s wife as one that teaches “the powerful, destabilizing, potentially tragic, potentially liberating force of desire, longed and lust. A story about the relationship between two forms of desire: our desire for other people, and our desire for God.” Other sections also offer thought-provoking insights to the text.
“When We’re Born We Forget Everything” is different from many religious memoirs in that it doesn’t tell of someone Orthodox who leaves that world to become secular, or someone secular who enters the Orthodox world and remains there. Her book is beautifully written and offers a journey that readers might not want to take themselves, but which is intriguing to experience second hand, and which may leave readers pondering their own spiritual paths.