Laurel Snyder Responds. I Was Inaccurate, and Mean-Spirited. (Oy)

[T]hough I appreciate that you think I'm pretty, your physical description of me didn't make me feel any better and it didn't seem terribly relevant. If nothing else, I feel I should be allowed to correct the inaccuracies of your blog post (i.e. that my son had a hospital circumcision , that I "chose" Judaism, etc) I'm not sure how/where you got these ideas... but they're untrue , and anyone present at Makor on June 22 could tell you that. I hope you didn't just dream them up to stregthen your remarks about me. That would be poor journalism I think. In trying to look past your creative revision of the event at Makor, I'd like to say that regardless of your dislike for me, I'm glad you enjoyed Maya Gottfried's reading. No matter how your blog might have hurt my personal feelings, there are bigger things at stake with a book like this, and if you got something out of the event, that's far more important than my little ego.

Maya is amazing and the Jewish world would do well to meet her, so thank you for drawing attention to her work. Regarding my status as a "natterpuss", I'm not going to argue that you're entirely wrong. There's a business to publishing and I'm admittedly trying to learn it. But I'll say that one does not take a year off from one's own writing to pour oneself into a project like this (on an indie press, for no money, I might add) because one enjoys networking. Particularly not when one has just become a mother, and would like to be home sitting on her nest). One networks because one believes that the book (and the issue) deserves it. If my mention of the Iowa Writers' Workshop (or BUST Magazine) bothered you, I'm sorry, but I'll remind you that they were mentioned only in my introductions of the readers, in order to describe how I met each author present. I hoped to communicate the idea that Jews from intermarriages are "everywhere." Specifically I was trying to show how Readerville.com and the internet led me to find a "half-Jewish geography"... though maybe I failed... I did not mean to name drop, and if the mention of such institutions distracted from the purpose of the event, I wish I'd presented each reader differently. In fact, I appreciate your comment, as it will certainly affect my future speaking engagements. Regarding the "spirit" of the event: he topic of the evening was not spirituality, though I'd happily meet with you for Torah study sometime. If you knew me, you'd know that I care deeply about spirit, and Jewish content, Torah, tradition, philosophy, and history, and it makes me sad to think I presented myself as uninterested in such things. I can't imagine why I'd go to such trouble if there wasn't a deeper love behind my work. More to the point, I clearly remember stating several times that one must, when discussing "how Jewish" a person is, consider that there are really two distinct ways of being Jewish: cultureally/genetically, and religiously. I think about this a lot, as I work often with younger Jews who consider themselves "secular Jews." Honestly, I wish the organized Jewish community were more concerned with spirit and less with bloodlines. Maybe if that were true, Maya's story would have been different. I want to tell you I didn't mean my comment on your blog angrily, and was surprised that you refused to let me correct your inaccuracies, as a print newspaper would have done. I would like to think that a blog is accountable in all the ways print media is accountable. But maybe that's not the case at the Observer. Again, I don't know how you heard what you heard at Makor... but maybe you'd do well to listen a little more carefully in future. To the "spirit" of what someone is saying. A blog can be dangerous, as a deadline for criticism can be harmful. The constant need for "something to say", and a desire for wit, leads bloggers (myself included) down a slippery slope. P.S. [Per Weiss comment "Baltimore is Catholic"] Maryland was founded as a Catholic Colony, and that (while there is a HUGE Jewish Community in Pikesville, a suburb) Baltimore has an extremely large Catholic population, particularly in the non-Jewish neighborhoods where I grew up. Not that it matters, but it came up.