*The Wandering Jewess | Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | May 23, 2025*
On October 5, 2023, I sat in my temporary room at the University of San Diego, looked out the window, sighed at the beauty before me, opened my laptop, and officially began working on a new book. It was a collection of memoir essays I had long wanted to write—it had already been taking shape in my mind. That day, I managed to write for several good hours before heading off to teach, and afterward, Harel and the girls picked me up at the entrance of the university in a big RV and we drove off for a weekend in the desert.
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In the desert, in a place called Joshua Tree, there was a biannual festival: music, RVs, and local artists. We managed to sleep one night under the stars, and 24 hours later, I saw the first posts on Facebook from friends in Kibbutz Be’eri—pleas for someone to call the army. When it was 6:30 a.m. in Israel, it was still 8:30 p.m. the night before in Joshua Tree.
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In the days that followed, even though I was far from Israel, the ground shifted beneath my feet in the United States too. The city was filled with anti-Israel rallies, my Jewish students at the university were afraid to come to class, and I was advised to cancel my lectures if I felt unsafe. All my speaking engagements across the U.S. that had been planned for the semester were canceled by the FBI, which barred any gathering of more than twenty Israelis. And I lost my words.
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I had nothing to say—and worse, I couldn’t write anymore. Not poetry. Not that book I had just begun. The file remained unopened ever since. At some point I wrote a series of essays, in Hebrew and English, on antisemitism. They were published in journals in Israel and abroad. I had never been interested in antisemitism. And suddenly, it turned out I had a lot to say.
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I looked at myself from the outside, stunned.
I didn’t recognize who I had become.
And I didn’t know who I was supposed to be in a time like this.
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Only in retrospect was I able to see all that I did during that time—during the 6 months I taught in the U.S., then the months I spent in Europe in a temporary home, then back in Israel. Then again in the U.S. And again in Europe. I traveled around an endless web of events and connections and conversations among Jews across Israel and the world. And sometimes I traveled because I was fleeing. Because we were hit by a rocket’s shockwave. Because my daughters were afraid. Because all of us were traumatized.
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And through all these transitions, quietly, I began documenting what was happening. I told myself that even if I couldn’t write a word now, at least I’d document here and there—so I wouldn’t forget.
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And so, when I was afraid to speak Hebrew in the street, I wrote about it. When I realized my name gave me away and I changed it in the UBER app from Maya Tevet Dayan to “May Day,” I wrote about it. When I discovered in Israel that, during rocket sirens, my father didn’t go into the shelter but instead ran into the kitchen and started sautéing food in a pan—I wrote about it. And of course, when the rocket hit our home—I wrote about that too.
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I wrote whenever I had no answers for my daughters. Every time I lied to them because I simply didn’t know what else to say. I wrote about the conversations I had in my heart with my grandmother Rivka, when I told her—eleven years after she passed away—that everything she had taught me about antisemitism had become heartbreakingly relevant.
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At some point—to soothe all our anxieties—we adopted a dog. And yes, I even wrote about her.
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The book I began in San Diego wasn’t written. But the things I wrote down just to remember started to gather. And when I looked at them, a year and a half after the day the world fell apart, I realized that just like so many other unplanned things that happened to me since—here it was. A book. A different one than I had started. One that documents impossible days. Life perspectives I never anticipated. And events I could never have imagined.
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I called it The Wandering Jewess, because that’s how I felt during this past year and a half. Deeply Jewish. Wandering from place to place, from community to community, between our home and temporary ones. I experienced antisemitism firsthand. That same antisemitism that in the 13th century, invented the legend of a Jewish cobbler who refused to let Jesus rest on his way to the cross, and so Jesus cursed him to wander the world forever. The Wandering Jew. That figure reappears in countless literary and artistic works—always helpless, sometimes grotesque or hunched, homeless beneath the open sky.
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I asked my friend Ori Snir to paint a different Wandering Jewess. And she did. She painted a woman who is a bit like me—tattooed, carrying all the things that run wild in her soul from place to place. On her head, a black cat; in her hair, a paper boat; in her hands, the plant called “Wandering Jew.” When I saw her, my heart clenched—and also expanded. This Wandering Jewess meets your gaze. And more than that—she stands tall.
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She has people. She has land. And neither one is to be taken for granted.
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This Wandering Jewess, and the poems she holds, are my personal testimony to this time. In a time filled with bitter losses and acts of courage that will one day enter the pages of history, my testimony sits on the margins of the news cycle. Between global antisemitism and a rocket strike on our house in Israel. Within the wrenching belonging to the people of Israel. I found myself a new kind of Jewish mother. I ran and I returned, I was terribly afraid, I worried deeply, and I did my best to tie the threads of my people together. I searched for walls that would support me—and slowly, I found them.
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So I’ll close this time with the poem that also closes this book. It was written while I was helping my daughter study for her high school history final. She was supposed to learn about the causes of the world wars. But all I wanted to know was—how did those wars end? I was amazed to discover that what ended them wasn’t some strategic maneuver. It was, in the end, simply—exhaustion. I place this poem here also as a prayer—
*Studying for History Final with My Daughter / Maya Tevet Dayan*
In this book, every story ends
the same. No matter
how long the war lasted, how global.
In the end, the soldiers get tired. They long
for the little wooden porch, the coffee cup.
And the cat. They say they can’t
go on. And in an instant, history
turns. This time, in your favor.
After you nearly vanished from fear,
didn’t know where to run. How
to save yourself. Even the walls
of your house gave you nightmares.
For so long, the air
was bitter. Terrible things were done to you,
for you, in your name. No more.
Now all the exclamation marks
are replaced once more by doubt—
the familiar kind. blessed, soft as grass.
And life softens. Home is home again.
History bows her head,
says: I truly don’t know
what happened to me. Why it came for me again.
And once more, you believe her. You surrender.
You place what happened behind you.
With your last strength, you open a new page with her.
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So I release my Wandering Jewess into the world with love. You can now find it in Hebrew in pre-sale on my website, with 20% off. In its honor, all my other books in Hebrew are also discounted. I hope you’ll find comfort in it, words for this time, and maybe even walls of support for the soul—just as I did.
And may we all have a peaceful, quiet Shabbat,
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*Maya Tevet Dayan*