Santa's Little Girl Comes Home
Do you remember the immense Kodak billboard advertisement that loomed over the east side of Grand Central Terminal? Installed in 1950, the Colorama, as it was known, occupied that space for 40 years. Kodak boasted that the 18-by-60 foot transparencies were the largest photographs in the world. In 1965, the Christmas season Colorama image was that of an adorable, blonde, blue-eyed toddler, the quintessential spirit of Yuletide joy. That little three-year-old was Dani Shapiro, the child of meticulously observant Orthodox Jews who abided by the innumerable customs and rules that governed every moment of their days, with two refrigerators and two dishwashers in the kitchen and mezuzot on every doorpost of their suburban New Jersey home.
The irony of this immense Kodak moment is hardly lost even now on Dani Shapiro, whose poignant memoir is centered on her mid-life quest for meaning and spirituality in the post-Orthodox life she has made for herself, having abandoned all those gestures and rituals in exchange for a secular life with its own rewards and regrets.
To read the rest of this review, and to read all of the magazine's first-rate content, subscribe to Moment's print or digital edition.
Katharine Weber is the author of five novels, among them Triangle, about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and, most recently, True Confections, the story of Zip’s Candies, a fourth generation family business in crisis.
|
