*Birthday | Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | April 3, 2026*
This week I read that the masses have begun to believe that Donald Trump and his son Barron are time travelers who have arrived here from some future. This belief is based on two books from the 19th century. One is called The Last President, and it contains events similar to Trump’s term in office. The other is called Baron Trump’s Marvelous Underground Journey, and it also features a character named Don. As if that weren’t enough, illustrations from the 19th century have been discovered showing flying celestial carriages, next to them the name “Trump.” Portraits strikingly resembling Trump have also been found in churches from the 15th century. And Donald Trump’s uncle, it turns out, was involved in research on time travel. With this whole jumble of data, the masses are looking at the American president as someone who carries knowledge from the future, or from the past, or from both.
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This week I watched Trump, watched the jokes he tells, his dances and a kind of hand game of his that mimics wrestling, and I thought to myself; there is nothing more delightful than time travel - to shuffle the cards in one era or another, and move on, to the past or the future, the world is your playground. If something doesn’t work, you can always jump to the 15th century - they had wonderful soup then - or to the 31st century, to be comforted in the arms of some robot.
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How wonderful it is to have an open door, to change the story from time to time. If needed.
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And when these thoughts ended/had gone, I returned to my own story, a story without doors. In my story, today is my birthday. I am 51, and missiles are being fired outside, and the world is having a wild tantrum, and often it is hard to feel the connection between what happens outside and inside: between what leaders say and threaten and the omelet on our dinner plate. Between straits and ships and millions of barrels of oil, and a marathon of Rummikub games with my daughter. And what does any of this have to do with a birthday at all?
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Every year, four days before my birthday, we light a candle for my grandfather Yaakov. This year, on his 15th death anniversary, I remembered something he used to say: he would say that he was lucky and that his life was good. He said it when he drank coffee on Oxford Street or rode an elephant in Africa, and also when he was hospitalized with gangrene in his leg in the days before his death. He said it all his life, even though from the age of 17 he was completely orphaned from his large family that had been murdered, he said it when he had money and when he had only half a loaf of bread. He believed deeply that he was lucky and that life was good. If you had opened a door for my grandfather to travel through time - and he loved to travel - he would have said, Mayuli, close the door so the cold doesn’t come in. My grandfather had an abundance of luck exactly where he was.
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When I remembered that this week, I was suddenly filled with gratitude to him for that sentence. How pleasant it is to remember someone you love without a trace of guilt. To remember that he enjoyed his own life and believed he was lucky regardless of circumstances. My grandfather gave this as a gift not only himself, but also to us. Those who loved him. Those who remember him.
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And I decided that this reminder would be my birthday gift to myself this year. That this is a sentence I want to say out loud to those around me, so that they too will remember me that way one day. And that it is a good sentence to say to myself, especially when the circumstances outside are so chaotic. Infuriating. Frightening. And makes you feel helpless. And I have a birthday in the middle of all this. To say I am lucky and my life is good - it feels almost subversive, rebellious, bold, and there is also something deeply calming in it. I saw with my own eyes my grandfather Yaakov saying it even in unimaginably difficult times. When I say it now, it calms the body. And it feels like the opposite of searching for a door into another story. Or someone, American or not, who might hold a key to such a door.
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Within my story, I can already remember 51 birthdays behind me. It took me time to understand that celebrating birthdays with parties and gifts and songs is not for me. On birthdays I actually like to gather into myself, to think something, to understand something, and for years now we have marked my birthday with a trip. Until I understood this, there were quite a few disappointments. And as a child, I often found myself crying in the middle of very big celebrations my sweet parents held for me, who did not understand what was wrong with their daughter.
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But if there is something joyful about growing older, it is understanding a little more who you are.
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When you are 51, you don’t need to be a time traveler for time to travel with you. Your different ages accompany you, continue walking alongside you. And so I end with a poem I wrote to Maya the child, when she still had bangs, when she still had a mother, when she had a grandfather who said he was lucky, and when she still had many years ahead to be confused. One of the pleasures of growing older is the ability to look back, and to understand that backward gaze, and what I wrote in the last line of this poem, which is also my reminder to myself almost every day this past year:
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*To Maya with bangs, in black and white / Maya Tevet Dayan*
[From: “The Wandering Jewess”]
One day everything around you in that picture
Won’t be there anymore. Not the wicker chairs
not the grass and not your mother’s friend
who carries to the table cold raspberry juice,
and not the raspberry juice, and not your mother.
Frightening things will happen: someone
will grab you in the playground
and they will barely free you from their choking grip.
Twice you will almost drown in the ocean. Almost
all your prayers for others will fail,
you will not save anyone you love.
Years will pass before you find a friend.
Before you grow used to your own face.
From love, you will feel only storms.
Three times your heart will break
for weeks you will not eat a thing.
You will be terrified: of poverty. of failure.
of being alone.
And then you will practice this with all your might -
to be very poor, very lonely.
and without success.
Again and again you’ll discover
that everything works out when you love.
By the time you understand this, you’ll already be
older than your mother and her friend in the picture.
You’ll have set aside the hardness of your heart.
You’ll speak with the dead.
forgive everyone who left you. Forgive
even yourself. For the stories
you told to hide who you are.
It will take many more years.
You’ll worry it will never arrive.
I am writing to you now so you’ll know:
you are going to hold on.
All of this will come together into something.
It will be worth it.
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If you need to receive a particular blessing, I invite you to write to me today so we can make use of the power of this day and I will bless you with love.
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Wishing all of us Shabbat Shalom,
*Maya Tevet Dayan*
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