The blessings of daily life

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	• Life in the Present Tense: Reflections on Family and Faith Rifka Rosenwein Ben Yehuda Press, 2007 - 228 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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The blessings of daily life

Rifka Rosenwein was a writer and mother of three who lived in Teaneck, N.J. She died in 2003 at age 42 of cancer.

Rosenwein wrote for the Wall Street Journal and later for The American Lawyer and for a host of other periodicals. In 1996, Gary Rosenblatt, editor of the New York Jewish Week, asked her to write a monthly column about daily life in an Orthodox Jewish community -- its joys, sadnesses, triumphs, and frustrations. This book is a compilation of those columns, which she wrote for seven years, almost up to her death. Barry Lichtenberg, her husband, wrote a touching afterword, and Tova Mirvis, the well-known novelist who was once Rosenwein's intern, wrote a brief preface.

Rosenwein touches on many subjects, but the one that resonates most for me is time. Professionally, she intentionally chose the "mommy track," choosing to combine her journalistic career with the demands of three young children. Her time, as she points out over and over again, was under constant stress. She found carpools, soccer, homework help, and birthday parties occupying much of her time; she found the Sabbath and Jewish holidays an indispensable respite; and she would not have had it any other way.

Time, sadly, became a part of her life in a different way. Once she received her cancer diagnosis, she wrote: "If I had a problem with time, it was that, between my job, my family, and my community, there was never enough of it each day. But I never questioned that there was an order to life, one thing following another, always moving inexorably forward ... No more. I am now on cancer time. Cancer time puts an end to this kind of thinking."

She faced her illness with strength and occasionally with humor. She was unafraid to share it with the readers of her column. After all, she was writing a column about her life and her community, and her cancer was part of her life and affected her community most deeply.

As Rosenwein writes, her "close-knit homogeneous suburb where everyone knows your business" was never stronger and more important than during her illness. People she hardly knew dropped by to visit, to baby-sit her children, to bring food or say a prayer.

Life in the Present Tense shows how daily life can take on meaning, how the generations can come together, how a community can unite to help others. This is an inspiring book and an enjoyable read as well.

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Life in the Present Tense: Reflections on Family and Faith is a portrait of the religious, suburban soccer-mom, caught between identities, parents and children, and fighting for her life. Sharing seven years with readers through her column, "The Home Front," in The Jewish Week, Rifka Rosenwein voiced the pleasures and frustrations of her life. Her storytelling always struck a chord.

The daughter of holocaust survivors, Rifka saw herself as a bridge between the world of her parents, and that of her three young children. Rifka passed along her parents' traditions, values, and stories to the younger generation. Rifka approached this personal responsibility with reverence and humor.

Contracting cancer in 2001, Rifka bravely decided to share her experiences with her readers who read along with her as she continued to cope with her illness. In her own words: "Writing is what I do. Not to write now is tantamount to letting cancer defeat yet another part of me."

Her reflections -- on topics ranging from her son's first kindergarten girlfriend to living life on "cancer time" -- are a death-defying celebration of life.

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