AUTHOR & JOURNALIST
SATURDAY WALK
and other stories
Now available from all major retailers
Saturday Walk and Other Stories describes the author's coming of age as a rabbi's daughter in Perth Amboy, New Jersey while navigating the contradictions of secular and nonsecular life and struggling to develop an identity separate from her influential father.
Book details
Publisher: Bridge Books
Pub date: 2025
ISBN-13: 979-8-9905385-0-4
LOC: 2024915057
EXCERPTS
From “Saturday Walk”
When I was a little girl in Perth Amboy, New Jersey the “Saturday Walk” was an institution, a special weekly ritual shared by my father and me. Saturday was “shabbos,”our day of rest, [the sabbath] but it did not really begin for my father until noon, when he returned from his morning at the Temple… One day I found myself in high school; it was a new world, and this world revolved around the Saturday afternoon football game…. The bus trip was more than a means of getting to the game. It was a vital part of the whole ritual which culminated in victory or defeat and the bus trip homeward. Important things happened on that bus. Songs were sung. Cheers were cheered. Arrangements were made for obtaining players’ autographs during the intermission. In short, if there was one place a person had to be, it was seated on that bus Saturday afternoon, going to the game. Of course, riding on shabbos was unthinkable -- I don’t believe the possibility ever crossed my mind. But to miss the game was also unthinkable. So every week I walked the six miles to the game, alone. And slowly, inexorably, I became an outcast.
As an official hoopa [wedding canopy] holder, with several auxiliary functions such as glass-filler and cake-passer, I participated in hundreds of home weddings as a child. Sometimes these were expected for weeks; sometimes we would be unexpectedly routed out of bed in the dead of night and would grope for the hoopa pole with eyes full of sleepers. ...
From “Hoopa Holder”
REVIEWS
I just finished reading Judith Chasek Davidson's tales of her life as a rabbi's daughter, and I loved it. As Judy's college roommate and friend, I knew her as brilliant, questing, open-hearted, and warm-hearted, and all those qualities shine through in these deeply caring and breathtakingly honest recollections of family relations, especially with her remarkable, intellectually challenging father. This probing account, seasoned with tart humor, follows her growth and self-understanding as a daughter, as a woman, as a Jew.
—Judith Viorst
Judy Davidson Chasek expressed her life’s experiences and emotions in compelling fiction. It is a source of great satisfaction to [see] this collection. In these stories, she segues from a Saturday walk with her father to the journey of a lifetime.
—Flora Higgins
KEEP FOLLOWING THE STORY
EXCERPTS
From “Saturday Walk”
When I was a little girl in Perth Amboy, New Jersey the “Saturday Walk” was an institution, a special weekly ritual shared by my father and me. Saturday was “shabbos,”our day of rest, [the sabbath] but it did not really begin for my father until noon, when he returned from his morning at the Temple… One day I found myself in high school; it was a new world, and this world revolved around the Saturday afternoon football game…. The bus trip was more than a means of getting to the game. It was a vital part of the whole ritual which culminated in victory or defeat and the bus trip homeward. Important things happened on that bus. Songs were sung. Cheers were cheered. Arrangements were made for obtaining players’ autographs during the intermission. In short, if there was one place a person had to be, it was seated on that bus Saturday afternoon, going to the game. Of course, riding on shabbos was unthinkable -- I don’t believe the possibility ever crossed my mind. But to miss the game was also unthinkable. So every week I walked the six miles to the game, alone. And slowly, inexorably, I became an outcast.
From “Hoopa Holder”
"As an official hoopa [wedding canopy] holder, with several auxiliary functions such as glass-filler and cake-passer, I participated in hundreds of home weddings as a child. Sometimes these were expected for weeks; sometimes we would be unexpectedly routed out of bed in the dead of night and would grope for the hoopa pole with eyes full of sleepers. ...
"The pre-wedding preparations would begin in the parlor before the guests arrived. The hoopa, disassembled and collapsed, would be pulled out from its place behind the filing cabinet in the parlor. Then Dorie and I would help my father put it all together (each of the four poles consisted of two parts, which must be screwed together.) Sometimes I suspected that this was the part of the wedding which my father, who loved gadgets, relished most....
"And there it would suddenly bloom in the middle of our plain, modest living room... an elegant, sumptuous hoopa of heavy maroon velvet, worthy of getting married under. Immediately a very special mood -- festive, ceremonious -- began to pervade the room....My father, suddenly attired in skullcap and spectacles, would be sitting in the big French chair at the dining room table inquiring into middle initials and dates of birth.
"Then there would be the nervous scrambling for places under the hoopa, my father instructing everyone on where they should stand. The electricity that passed through the room at this point communicated itself even to children and professional hoopa-holders. Mom, Dorie and I immediately scrambled to our posts, behind our respective hoopa poles, and a fourth person was enlisted to hold up the remaining pole. The ceremony began.
"But, unfortunately, my mother comes from a long line of gigglers....The more solemn the occasion, the more irrepressible the giggle -- and Dorie and I, alas, had inherited the fatal affliction. Weddings were no exception. At the most sober and significant moment, when the hush was deepest, my mother's eyes would meet mine over the sea of veils and feathers and skullcaps, and we would be off..."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Judith Davidson Chasek was an accomplished writer of short stories, journalist, and teacher. She was born in 1930 in New Jersey, the daughter of a conservative rabbi and an aspiring concert pianist. Her short stories were published in numerous magazines, including Good Housekeeping, Seventeen, and Short Story International. She was a reporter for the Stamford Advocate and the Patent Trader, where she particularly enjoyed her beat on the local courts. She raised two daughters with her husband Norman Chasek, an engineer and inventor, in Stamford, Connecticut, where she also became deeply involved in desegregating the local schools, voting rights, and education issues.
