By Danielle Resh

The absence of community left space for imagining. The eastern corner of my bedroom became the Almighty’s throne. Whispered words materialized—God picking up the homeless from the streets, the Egyptian oppressors drowning in the sea, the pungent scent of offerings, forefathers passing like sheep. Layers of history peeled open.

In my own constriction, I connected to those who had struggled before. The holidays approached with trepidation and left filled with meaning. Torah learning transcended boundaries. The God of my ancestors became my own. In a time when I came to understand exile more than ever before, God gave me the merit of returning home.

Danielle Resh is an avid writer and lifelong lover of Jewish learning who is currently seeking publication for her magical realism novel about a shtetl in nineteenth-century Poland with a Torah that miraculously begins growing.