Paper is White

Worth the Paper It’s Printed On

Everything I need to know about being Jewish I learned from The Nanny.

The gelt, the guilt.

The kvelling, the kvetching.

The catching of a fetching macher—preferably a doctor—to introduce to your mishpocheh.

But not all meshugenehs need a mensch.

What if your bashert, your chosen one, your matzo ball and chain—is a woman?

Fortunately, in the century after the Gay Nineties, we experienced the Lesbian Nineties.

To supplement Fran Drescher’s fine whine, we imbibed Ellen’s finer line: “Yep, I’m gay.”

But not every Ellen is so out-front. Or even out. Take Ellen Margolis, for example, the protagonist of Paper Is White.

“As much as I strove in true lesbian feminist fashion for openness and honesty,” she explicates, “I was a Jew of the late twentieth century, and silence was my legacy.”

The same can (and cannot) be said of the Shoah survivors Ellen interviews for the Foundation for the Preservation of Memory.

One such survivor is Anya Kamenets, whose testimony is not only unspeakable, it’s unorthodox.

The plot is tauter than the gartel securing a Torah scroll, the text and characters as textured as the mantel preserving it.

Anya is at once candid and cagey, effusive and elusive. Ellen suspects significant similarities between them: specifically, that their significant other is—or was, in Anya’s case—a woman.

Did the love of Anya’s life survive the Holocaust? If so, can Ellen reunite them? Equally exigent, can Ellen unite with the love of her own life, even if they’ll be unlawfully wedded wives?

Ellen’s facing an uphill battle—and not just because she lives in San Francisco.

Fortunately, in a city as famous for its hills as for its fog, on a queer day you can see forever.

Hilary Zaid’s debut novel is as revelatory and celebratory as a coming out.

In this work of contemporary historical fiction, Zaid shares a story that’s symmetrically Semitic and Sapphic. Reading it brought to mind—and redefined—the lyrics to a theme song from another turn-of-the-century sitcom, Living Single: “In a ’90s kind of world, I’m glad I got my girls.”

Zaid’s prose sings as well. She writes with agility, humility, chutzpah; clarity, sincerity, humor.

Far from paper-thin, the plot is tauter than the gartel securing a Torah scroll, the text and characters as textured as the mantel preserving it.

At various points during your reading experience, your eyes will light up like a menorah, your head will spin like a dreidel, and your heart will chant Hava Nagila.

That’s because while paper is white, Paper Is White is golden.