All posts by Teri

You Don’t Know Me

Poetry


In honor of International Women’s Day, I rummaged through my writings this morning for something to represent my social, economic, cultural, and political achievements. I decided to share my lame attempt at rap.

You Don’t Know Me

You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. I barely know myself. Hell, I just recently found out that I’m a Syrian Jew. A Jew from my father’s side, a swarthy Syrian man I never knew. Because according to my mom, he was a hitman and gangster bad, so bad he couldn’t be a good dad, but not that long ago, I met his other kids, and they turned out fine, unlike me, who got screwed over by that pedophile stepdad of mine.

You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. You don’t know one thing about me. I come from the projects you see. Yet all you see is bright white, so you see easy, but my life has never been easy or bright. I get you, but you don’t get me because you’re too busy making your assumptions about what white is supposed to be.

I’m not even white; remember, I’m a Syrian Jew. I’m brown like you, but you don’t see brown at all; all you see is a Jew. And FYI, plenty of Jews aren’t white, but you don’t see that either. You’re as bad as those KKK whities who think every Jew is a tighty colonial miser.

And I don’t live in Israel, okay? I’m a hard-working, tax-paying citizen of the U.S. of A.

You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but you think I hate you because you hate me even though we come from the same kind of barely-surviving family. But all you see is that I dress so pretty and speak so nice; you don’t know that the snapping of the traps kept me up all night, breaking the necks of the rats and the mice.

I speak so nice because that mother of mine was afraid that if her rich boyfriend found out that we were poor, he’d slam our faces flat against the wrong side of the money door. So, she sent me—her persuasive carrot—to charm school to learn diction at night. So, yeah, I learned to speak nice, alright, but don’t F with me because the projects, the rats, and the mice will seep right out of me, and I’ll give you one stark-crazy hell of a fight.

Growing up, my little body lacked food, and it was full of worms, but I’m not telling you this to make you squirm. I’m just trying to help you to see that you don’t know anything about me. All you see is white; you don’t see my trials, my tribulations, and my messed-up strife. I’ve been jumping through hoops to prove myself to white people my whole miserable life.

I get you, but you don’t get me; you’ve got no clue. You think I’m fancy pants, but oh no, I’m not, not with the crazy shit that I’ve been through. So, take another look because sometimes what you see isn’t what you get, and what you think you get about white isn’t always true.

So, take another look. Do you still see white? Oh yeah, I see you looking at me with a new eye. Don’t worry. Don’t be shy. I’m not judging you. It’s alright.

Because I think you’re finally getting it—I’m not that white. Now that I’ve told you just a little bit about the hell that I’ve been through, I can see that I’ve got you thinking that I might be more like you than you.

Me Too: A Poetic Timeline

Me Too

My newest release, Me Too: A Poetic Timeline, just came out, although I’ve been writing it since 1967.

One of the impetuses for publishing my book of poetry resulted from a rough conversation with my best friend about my sharing MeToo much, which triggered an onslaught of emotions. Well, maybe not an onslaught—just four.

My first emotion was anger directed at my friend for hurting me. Then, I was angry at myself for being unable to control my mouth, followed by pride in myself for speaking out. The fourth emotion was more of a resignation—the knowledge that most people will never understand the why and how of MeToo and me.

Following that frank conversation, I took a critical look at myself, my MeToo pain, and my inability to shut up about it, which had me asking myself: When is MeToo too much?

The answer that immediately came to my mind is NEVER.

But now that I’ve finally published my book, Me Too: A Poetic Timeline—a compilation of journal entries I’ve been writing for fifty-seven years—I feel a renewed sense of myself.

My MeToo book of poetry allowed me the freedom to speak my truth and gave me a sliver of peace—an infinitesimal sliver, but I’ll gladly take it.

During my 2024 process of going back in time, combing through five decades and hundreds of journal entries and poems, I realized that my MeToo life played out in four painful but definitive life-altering phases.

Phase One: Shut it

Phase Two: Whisper it

Phase Three: Scream it

Phase Four: Write it

And now, I’m hoping to get to the final phase—the one where I know MeToo will never be too much, but to a place where I can keep it to myself.

Me and MeToo will always be one. You see, it’s at the heart of who I am.

At first, I thought the final phase would be like the phrase in the movie The Ten Commandments: “So let it be written, so let it be done.”

But now I realize that my Me Too nightmare will never be done, but at least now it’s written.

The Best and Worst of the Teri Tome in 2024

The Teri Tome - Top Hits and Duds

This blog post is longer than you may have the patience for, but I hope you hang in there.

According to the writing assistant Grammarly, I am a writing machine and “have my eye on the prize.” The cloud-based program has already analyzed over 102.8 million of my words since the 2015 launch of my blog, and based on my 2024 writing style, Grammarly has also dubbed me “A Powerhouse.”

I wouldn’t call myself a powerhouse, but in the nine years since launching The Teri Tome, I have been blessed with almost two million readers and four million page views. And in 2024 alone, close to 200,000 readers visited my blog, and I sincerely appreciate every one of them.

But it was Grammarly’s assertion that “I had my eye on the prize” that got me thinking:

What prize am I eyeing?

Is it readership, page views, uplifting comments, book sales, personal satisfaction, or something else? I thought about this question for a while, and then it hit me.

The prize I’m eyeing is that years from now, someone might read my work or come across something I’ve written that moves them. It might be a poem, a blog post, or one of my books that connects them to me. And whether they knew me or not, I hope they spend some time thinking about who I was.

So, that’s the prize I have my eye on: that my writing will help ensure that I’m still lurking around somewhere long after I’m gone. And that maybe my words will go a long way to ensuring my legacy, one letter of the alphabet at a time. And speaking of time, at 71, I’m running out of it, so now, more than ever, I need to make every word count.

Writing is my life, and I cherish the process, including my disciplined daily routine, which involves several hours of intense wordsmithing. Only after a grueling day of writing do I feel like I’ve accomplished something.

When words and ideas come into my head, I feel compelled to instantly jot them down for fear of forgetting them. My writing pattern includes scribbling jumbled-up sentences in the dead of night that I often discover on my nightstand the following day, with no recollection of writing them in the first place. And those unconsciously and frequently illegible words usually result in countless hours of scrutinizing and deciphering.

I’ve set down snippets of written phrases on ink-bleeding tissues and napkins, and I’ve been known to occasionally scrawl all over my arms and hands when there was nothing else to write on. Because once a thought or idea gets stuck in my brain, I’m on a do-or-die mission to write it all out.

2024 wasn’t filled with as many blog posts as in prior years, primarily because I was busy writing two books!

And I would be remiss if I didn’t take the opportunity to highlight both of them here. (Please don’t judge me for being long-winded.)


My newest release, Me Too: A Poetic Timeline, just came out, although I’ve been writing it since 1967. The impetus for publishing it resulted from a rough conversation with my best friend about my sharing MeToo much, which triggered an onslaught of emotions. Well, maybe not an onslaught—just four.

At first, I was angry at her for hurting me, then I was angry at myself for being unable to control my mouth, followed by pride in myself for speaking out. The fourth emotion was more of a resignation—the knowledge that most people will never understand the why and how of MeToo and me.

Following that frank conversation, I took a critical look at myself, my MeToo pain, and my inability to shut up about it, which had me asking myself: When is MeToo too much?

The answer that immediately came to my mind is NEVER.

But now that I’ve finally published my book, Me Too: A Poetic Timeline—a compilation of journal entries I’ve been writing for fifty-seven years—I feel a renewed sense of myself. My MeToo book of poetry allowed me the freedom to speak my truth and gave me a sliver of peace—an infinitesimal sliver, but I’ll gladly take it.

During my 2024 process of going back in time, combing through five decades and hundreds of journal entries and poems, I realized that my MeToo life played out in four painful but definitive life-altering phases.

Phase One: Shut it

Phase Two: Whisper it

Phase Three: Scream it

Phase Four: Write it

And now, I’m hoping to get to the final phase—the one where I know MeToo will never be too much, but to a place where I can keep it to myself. Me and MeToo will always be one. You see, it’s at the heart of who I am.

At first, I thought the final phase would be like the phrase in the movie The Ten Commandments: “So let it be written, so let it be done.”

But now I realize that my Me Too nightmare will never be done, but at least now it’s written.


I published Tarot for Beginners this past summer. I’ll keep the description of this book plain and simple: It is a unique, fun, and quirky way to add some amusing entertainment to a social gathering.

Now, back to my 2024 blog posts. Having spent the past twelve months writing two books, I only wrote 24 blog posts in 2024, although I’m proud to say they generated approximately 120,000 page views.

Additionally, The Teri Tome garnered close to another 300,000 page views for posts written before 2024. That’s a whopping 420,000 for 2024, way more page views than I could ever have imagined when I launched my blog in 2015.

Let’s start with:

MY LEAST VIEWED POST IN 2024


CHIMERA: In analyzing my best and worst blog posts of 2024, I got chill bumps when I saw the date I wrote this one—4/18/24. It turned out that while I was writing this post about a nightmare I had at 3 am that morning, someone I once knew and loved was dying on that same day.

The chilling part is that I didn’t find out about the death until two months later, in mid-June. So, I can only assume that my dream was a sign, a vision, or a premonition on the day this person passed away.

While this post about an evil-looking, part-goat, part-lion-creepy-beast was my least viewed, it holds tremendous personal significance and meaning. That’s all I’ll say for now.

#1 HIT IN 2024


INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY: ME TOO, UNLESS YOU’RE A JEW: I assume this blog post was number one primarily because I posted it on several Jewish forums. Without my Jewish readership, I am all but certain that this blog entry would not have been as widely read, which makes me incredibly sad but also outrageously mad.

Here in the U.S. and all around the globe, women’s groups ignored, denied, and actually justified the rape of innocent women and children on October 7. That feminist groups whitewashed Hamas’s crimes is unforgivable, particularly when considering this terrorist organization mandates the hijab, has made it illegal to travel without a male guardian, and refuses to ban physical or sexual abuse within the family.

And speaking only for myself, I will never forgive or forget those people who defaced posters of kidnapped innocent people or their spewing of anti-Semitic disinformation about Jews that has poisoned the minds of so many.

And it will be a cold day in hell before I ever again go out and defend the rights of certain people who cared nothing for the rights of Jewish Americans.

#2 HIT IN 2024


THE ITSY-BITSY SPIDER FIASCO: This number two blog post made me smile. In a year when I was deeply troubled by the social and political climate, it was refreshing to see that my attempt at comic relief paid off. And leave it to our precious kids to say the darnedest things.

#3 HIT IN 2024


NOVA MUSIC FESTIVAL: THE SCREAMING GIRL: Once again, I think my posting this blog entry on several Jewish forums is why it garnered so many page views and took the number three spot.

The Nova Music Festival Exhibition in New York City—an in-depth remembrance of the brutal October 7 attack in Israel—was a heartbreaking reminder of that horrific day when Hamas terrorists and Palestinian civilian animals descended upon the rave and stalked, chased, massacred, raped, mutilated, and kidnapped innocent people.

Many of the Nova Music Festival survivors—especially the young women who witnessed or experienced sexual violence that day—have sadly recounted that over the past year, they feel like they are screaming into the void as they try to counter anti-Israel propaganda, antisemitism, and false, inaccurate misinformation online.

And I have to admit that I have kept my distance from my so-called friends for saying nothing—or worse—saying “but” in response to not only the sexual violence of October 7 but to the anti-Jewish protests that have been a disgusting, dangerous, and outrageous display of hate against Jewish Americans.

#4 HIT IN 2024


D-DAY JUNE 6, 1944: BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER: My father-in-law is a hero in my eyes, so I was especially gladdened to see that my post about him made it to number four in 2024.

Just a year or so before storming the beaches of Normandy, he and my mother-in-law had arrived in the U.S. after a four-year odyssey through Europe in their effort to escape the Nazis.

He helped to liberate untold numbers of towns and villages in France, as well as untold numbers of fellow Jews in concentration camps and helped to keep freedom alive for all of us.

#5 HIT IN 2024


HE HAD ME AT HUMBLE: It dawned on me when this blog entry made it to number five that four out of my top five posts were about Judaism, Jewish teachings, Nazis, and Jewish atrocities.

I can only surmise that all of the antisemitism I have witnessed over the past year subconsciously affected and motivated what I wrote about.

This post is about the teachings of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, also known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, regarding the unimportance of one’s importance and how the moon serves as the perfect example of humility and humbleness.

The moon’s light is not its own—it is merely a reflection of the sun’s light. And so the moon reminds us to be a graceful receiver of our shining, beautiful light, which does not belong to us but to a higher authority.

THE NUMBER ONE VIEWED POST OF ALL TERI TOME TIME (2015-2024):


WEDDING CENTERPIECES THAT CAN SAVE THE WORLD: For the past four years, this blog entry about wedding centerpieces (or the lack thereof) has been hands down my most-viewed post, garnering hundreds of thousands of page views. However, as the mother of a daughter who is getting married this June, I have come to the realization that florists will always win out over “in lieu of wedding centerpieces.”

As I said goodbye to 2024, I lost too many hours of sleep, fretting over the coming of 2025 and beyond. My New Year’s resolution was to remove my obsession with politics and all things Trump from my everyday life. And while I’m not a fan of Trump, my opinion of him will be forever changed and indeed elevated if he does right by Israel, the October 7 hostages, and Jewish Americans.

And lastly, my wish for you in 2025 is that you are in excellent health, surrounded by loving family and friends, and enjoy all the freedoms and rights we, as Americans, deserve.

Chrismukkah

Holidays

In 2003, the popular television show The O.C. coined the term Chrismukkah to describe the melding of Christmas with Hanukkah.

As a convert to Judaism, I welcomed Chrismukkah with open arms and an open mind. And while I never openly celebrated Christmas post-conversion, the holiday was always a poignant reminder of my childhood and forever in my heart.

The first night of Hanukkah has fallen on December 25 four times since 1900 as follows:

1910, 1921, 1959, and 2005.

In 1959, I was six years old and a practicing Catholic, and in 2005, I was fifty-two and a practicing Jew.

And now, with Christmas and the first night of Hanukkah falling on December 25 for only the fifth time in 124 years, it got me thinking:

Who am I in God’s eyes?

When I converted to Judaism from Catholicism in 1984, I kept this well-guarded secret to myself:

As much as I tried, I was unable to trade in one belief system for another.

My conversion was never the walking away from one religion to another but the belief that I was going to be protected by both at a time in my life when I desperately needed any iteration of God.

I sought refuge from the highest of highs at my lowest of lows. And I leaned on the purity and beauty of both faiths to survive each and every day.

You could say I hedged my bets by melding Judaism with Christianity.

In the middle of my conversion process, I sought religious counsel from both a rabbi and a priest. I needed their spiritual guidance and acceptance, although it didn’t matter what they thought because I had already decided to take advantage of the best of both religions.

As part of the conversion process, I was required to appear before a “beit din” for a hearing. “Beit din” is Hebrew for “house of judgment” and is a Jewish court system presided by rabbis.

On the morning of my hearing, I woke up to a snowstorm. Without a car that day, I had to take three buses, which took almost four hours to reach Brooklyn for my scheduled interview.

To say I was nervous walking into the cavernous room was an understatement. My beit din consisted of three rabbis sitting side by side at an elaborately carved oblong wooden table perched on a dais high above me. I recall thinking that this beit din was intimidation at its finest.

The rabbis began the hearing by asking me the name on my birth certificate, my former religion, my spiritual education, and my family history. As I spoke, they wrote assiduously.

Then, they asked me to recite the Shema Yisrael, a Jewish prayer that serves as the centerpiece for the morning and evening prayer services. Despite my anxiety that I would forget large swaths of it, I was proud and relieved that I could recite the Shema in Hebrew from memory.

The rabbinical hearing lasted over an hour, and I felt relatively confident about how it went. As the rabbis sat silently reading through their notes, I was praying that my Jewish proceeding was finally over, but to my chagrin, they asked me one last question:

Who is Jesus to you?

My first thought was: Oh boy. Here we go.

My second thought was: Don’t screw this up.

I nervously looked up at the trinity of rabbis and pontificated that Jesus was Jewish, a beloved rabbi, and a reformer of Jewish beliefs. I went on to emphatically describe Jesus as a great Jewish prophet.

Additionally, I explained that Jesus was a revolutionary Israelite, so for me, converting to Judaism wasn’t that much of a religious stretch.

I ended my long-winded rationalization by stating that since Jesus was a Jew, I felt secure in my decision.

I was shuddering with apprehension that one of these rabbis would ask me what role Jesus would play in my religious future, but thank the Lord Jesus that they didn’t.

But if they had asked me, I would have had no option but to tell them the truth:

Jesus has been ingrained into my brain, heart, and soul since the beginning of my time, and His teachings will forever remain a part of me.

Perhaps I would not have revealed that I will always feel Jesus’ presence and believe Him to be omnipotent, but maybe I would have.

Because I’m confident that those three wise men would have agreed that very few people could ever or would ever fully and ultimately walk away from their beliefs or eradicate their entire religious and spiritual upbringing.

But I’ll never know if I would have truthfully admitted that no amount of time or Jewish religious instruction could ever erase Jesus or my knowledge of His teachings from my psyche.

If my calculations are correct, Hanukkah will fall on December 25 for the sixth time since 1900 in 2035.

I pray to God that I will be around and in good health to once again celebrate the holiday melding—as a Jew or a Christian.