“From Operating Room to Oxygen Shortage: How a Young Doctor Discovered the Rhythm of Survival on Everest”
But what drew me in more than the above commonalities was the Jewish story behind this “woman’s story.” Every Jewish nod — both heavy and light — felt like home to me: the way the metal snaps of her beloved grandma Amama’s housecoat cool her skin whenever Zieman snuggles in her familiar lap; the pungent Passover-evoking smell of pike, carp, and whitefish emerging from brown butcher paper to later become the (polarizing) “oval-shaped patties” known as gefiltefish with their “mouthwatering scent of sea;” the way her dad “love[s] to sit like a king” at the head of the seder table, “leading songs and stories;” how she “promise[s] to return promptly” after her first transformative visit to the Holy Land as a teen; and how Hebrew, “the language of Jewish prayer, [with its] square sounds…emphatic consonants and sharp corners, seep[s] through [her] skin…chang[ing] the shape of her mouth, the roll of [her] tongue, the feel of breath in the back of the throat…[and] the tilt of [her] chin.”
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