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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
In her memoir Rabbi, Your Cleavage Is Showing, Michal S. Mendelsohn details growing up in a New York City hotel apartment, where Jewish holidays are observed within a small household marked by family silence. Her mother, Charlotte, keeps Passover and Rosh Hashanah, but no other family members appear at the table. After Charlotte’s cancer and death, the author finds out that the relatives she believed were gone have been alive beyond the story she was given. A volunteer trip to Israel during the Six-Day War changes her plans, and Mendelsohn stays long enough for kibbutz life to become Hebrew study, then Israeli army service. Back in America, the author enters rabbinical school as one of its only women, moving toward a glass-ceiling-shattering ordination.
Michal S. Mendelsohn’s Rabbi, Your Cleavage Is Showing is a wonderful memoir on what it means to be a Jewish woman, a feminist, and an all-around trailblazer in a space that is not always ready for one. Mendelsohn’s strength as a writer comes through when she lets pain sit beside humor, especially during her first High Holy Day service in San Jose, where the congregants question her neckline before worship begins. That moment is where the title comes from, but it is everything leading up to it that makes it so spectacular. I love all the little stories, the standout being her finding forgotten ashes in a synagogue closet, researching their origin, then returning the urn to a family that had long wondered what happened. Thoughtfully written and enlightening, this is a memoir worth its weight in challah. Very highly recommended.
