THE WITCH OF WOODLAND

A 13-year-old witch just wants things to stay the way they are, so who needs a bat mitzvah?

Zippy—Zipporah Chava McConnell—doesn’t feel very Jewish. Her parents take her to synagogue for the High Holidays and halfheartedly follow Passover, but mostly they’re just an everyday, White, American family living in Atlanta. What’s special about Zippy is that she’s a witch. She collects items that make her feel witchy: black candles, birds’ eggs, a blue penny. She makes up spells, mantras that settle her anxiety or vanish pimples. Maybe Judaism itself is a little witchy, too. Sure, Zippy’s bat mitzvah parsha—the Torah reading she will recite—says “Thou shalt not tolerate a sorceress to live,” but even so, the Hebrew letters feel so…magical. And has Zippy somehow summoned a Jewish angel? Or maybe a dybbuk? How has she learned Hebrew overnight, and why does she suddenly know how to play the piano? Zippy dips her toe into the Jewish esoteric, finding parts that seem comfortably familiar to her homegrown occult witchcraft. But the creature Zippy has summoned is hurting her. Zippy’s awkwardness, from her fights with her best friend to the way she dabbles in both Judaism and witchcraft, is painfully, believably genuine. And as the rabbi teaches her, her struggles with Judaism and her attempts to make it fit into her witchiness are exemplars of Jewish learning.

Authentically uncomfortable, a well-done modern attempt to explore self and community.