Midweek Notes from a Practicing Writer

by Erika Dreifus on February 17, 2021

Three quick notes from my desk.

1. Received this week: my contributor copy of Mishkan HaSeder: A Passover Haggadah.

page of Mishkan HaSeder on which my poem "Dayenu" appears. The poem reads:

Dayenu

At Passover, we read aloud from the Haggadah
and we mention four children.
When I was growing up, we laughed
as each found its match around the table:
the wise child, the rebellious, the simple.
But later, the laughter stopped
when we reached the child who is unable to ask.

We looked at him, this little boy whose brain and muscles
and vocal cords couldn’t always communicate.
Back then, we didn’t know when he’d be able to ask,
when he might utter intelligible words, let alone questions,
syntactically incorrect as they may still sometimes be.
Now, he sings Dayenu with all the other children.
Elijah smiles. Miriam dances. We applaud. — Page on which my poem “**Dayenu**” appears (albeit with an additional stanza break that shouldn’t be there, but I’m trying not to focus too much on that!)

2. You can also find “Dayenu” in my collection Birthright, which this week received a beautiful new review from book blogger/reviewer Angie Mangino.

3. As far as newer work is concerned—if you follow me on Twitter you may have caught a disclosure about my recently-completed picture-book manuscript. I was compelled to share it was part of last week’s #PBPitch event. So far, my tweet hasn’t seemed to inspire any agents/publishing people to reach out.

#PBPitch: Punished in his native Portugal for practicing #Judaism, Dr. Samuel Nunes escapes to London; in 1733 he sails to Savannah, Georgia, where he helps establish the new colony's first Jewish community—& treats patients felled by a pandemic. #NF #Jewish #biography #Sephardim
— Dr. Erika Dreifus (@erikadreifus) February 11, 2021

But I’m still waiting to hear back from the publisher who’s had the ms since mid-December, and hope springs eternal!