Eight Chosen Heebish Six-Word Memoirs
[caption id="attachment_883" align="alignright" width="233" caption="HEEB Magazine"]
[/caption] This Hanukkah, SMITH teamed-up with Heeb Magazine, to choose a different Six-Word Memoir on The Jewish Life winner each night, a contest. Each of the eight winning scribes will get a free copy of our upcoming book, Oy! Only Six? Why Not More? Six Words on the Jewish Life, which will be available this March.
Here are the eight winners, as chosen each crazy night by Heeb editors, in chronological order:
"We bonded over our deviated septums." - Alessandra Rizzotti
"I've got more complaints than Portnoy." - David Wolkin
"I have a fetish for altakockers." - AmySohn
"Bar mitzvah video used for blackmail." - Jon Papernick
"Shortened my name and my nose." - George Kaplan
"Smash the idols, mend the world." - j2232554
"Latkethon at my mother's gynecologist's home." - PaleOfSettlement
"A pronounced weakness for smoked fish." - StringJuggler
We put the names of each winner into a shtreimel and randomly pulled one out to receive a bonus, the Six-Word Memoir Game. And the game recipient is David Wolkin. In addition to being a brilliant short-form writer, we've learned that Wolkin is executive director of Limmud NY, a multi-day conference-meets-festival celebrating Jewish life.
Heeb and SMITH are mishpucha by way of our comics-editor-in-common, Jeff Newelt, aka JahFurry. His six words on the Jewish life, of course, "Hid comics inside Hebrew School textbooks."
"Catholic kills at Jewish memoir reading." Our Six-Word Story Show, Sept. 21, 92YTribeca
Walter Mosley at the Six-Word Story Show. from SMITHmag on Vimeo.
Our fourth Six-Word Story Show, "Oy! Only Six? Why Not More?"—Six Words on the Jewish Life, on September 21 at NYC's 92YTribeca started with a tribute to Leonard Cohen and ended with a song from Godspell. In between what followed was an unforgettable evening of storytelling.
Realizing our show was on the same day as Leonard Cohen's birthday—is there a better storytelling Jew?—I enlisted my friend Doni Gewirtzman, a constitutional law professor with the gift of song, to open the evening with an unannounced rendition of "Dance Me To the End of Love." And then the storytellers took the stage, one after another, telling brisk, intense, funny, and inspirational backstories to a Six-Word Memoir on
the Jewish life. Lynn Harris (watch her video, above) told a hysterical tale about being a born and bred New England girl addicted to lobster and falling in love with a rabbi. Rachel Sklar, accompanied by Francesca Garrard, sang a funny ode to Jewish camp boyfriends past in a piece called, "Summer Camp: Good for the Jews." Writer and PEN American Lifetime Award winner Walter Mosley (video, 
above, at top) spoke movingly about being an outsider as both a black and a Jew. Deborah Copaken Kogan (video, below) recalled the morning of her Orthodox father-in-law's funeral, and the amazing moment in which her 13-year-old daughter led a "bloodless coup" against the rabbi who tried to stop 40 mourning women from walking to the gravesite. Watch the video here: