A friend once told me I was a ​“Fid­dler on the Roof and bagel Jew,” mean­ing my under­stand­ing of Judaism came from a movie and some food. I couldn’t take her words as an insult; she wasn’t far off. I did go to syn­a­gogue — once. At four­teen, I attend­ed my step-cousin Gary’s bar mitzvah.

I knew my sis­ter and I were dif­fer­ent. We didn’t go to Brown­ies, Girl Scouts, or tem­ple. We hung out on the fire escape, played on the street, and raised our­selves. I yearned for inclu­sion. I want­ed to dress up and go to syn­a­gogue. If not that, could I at least fit in like my best friend Kathy Mur­phy, who wore a plaid Catholic school uniform?

At least then I might have a chance at heav­en. Kathy reg­u­lar­ly warned me that because I was a Jew­ish kid, my only hope was pur­ga­to­ry. The unbap­tized, she said, lived for­ev­er in that lim­bo between heav­en and hell. I imag­ined an eter­ni­ty of weary bore­dom, float­ing in a tepid soup of the unforgiven.

I had no clue about reli­gion. All I had to weigh against Kathy’s omi­nous pre­dic­tion was a tiny year­ly Passover seder at my grandmother’s small Brook­lyn apart­ment — walk­ing dis­tance from our own cramped apart­ment. Every­thing I gleaned about Judaism came from our hur­ried read­ings of the Maxwell House Haggadah.

From that year­ly twen­ty-minute immer­sion, I learned that Jews were slaves, first­born sons were spared the plague, and Moses part­ed the Red Sea. What stuck with me was the evil­ness of slav­ery, the luck of first­borns (which I was not), and the impor­tance of know­ing how to swim (which I did — thanks to the New York Fed­er­a­tion of Jew­ish Phil­an­thropy, who saved the lives of my sis­ter and me by send­ing us the sleep­away camp.).

And then there was the word dayenu.

That’s what clung to my brain from the Hag­gadah: dayenu. I can’t remem­ber whether we sang the seder song that goes with the word (unlike­ly), but some­how, I learned that dayenu meant ​“it would have been enough.” With­out for­mal reli­gious edu­ca­tion, that phrase became the back­bone of my Judaism.

Be grate­ful, I learned to remind myself. Thank God it’s not even worse. At least you’re only half an orphan. And books! Dayenu for books.

I wasn’t so much a lone­ly kid as an alone kid. My moth­er worked by day and dat­ed by night, leav­ing my sis­ter and me to fend for ourselves.

Luck­i­ly, she found a way to send us to camp each year. Dayenu!

Luck­i­ly, I could walk to the Kens­ing­ton Branch of the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library. Once I devoured every­thing in the kid’s sec­tion, the kind women at Kens­ing­ton let me drift into the adult area, where I explored my obses­sions, from slav­ery to the Holo­caust to every injus­tice I could find in print.

Fast-for­ward many years to when I became a nov­el­ist. My debut, The Murderer’s Daugh­ters, is a decades-long tale of the after­math of domes­tic homi­cide. And set for release in Octo­ber is my nov­el The Many Moth­ers of Ivy Pud­ding­stone, which fea­tures men and women whose extreme devo­tion to social jus­tice caus­es unin­tend­ed con­se­quences, bring­ing harm to their children.

I real­ized with this book how much I’ve steeped every nov­el I’ve writ­ten in dayenu.

Dayenu col­ors my life and every word I write — and in The Many Moth­ers of Ivy Pud­ding­stone, I saw, dur­ing a final edi­to­r­i­al revi­sion, that it didn’t appear in just an alle­gor­i­cal man­ner. I’d used the actu­al word at a piv­otal moment in the story.

Dayenu.

When I closed the final page of my man­u­script, I reflect­ed on the opti­mism in the word — the hope — the reminder that even in the most extreme cir­cum­stances, we can search for shreds of aware­ness of what we do have.

Some­times, that’s a com­plex, almost impos­si­ble task.

I remem­ber hear­ing the words of a sur­vivor on taped audio at the Holo­caust Muse­um in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. In speak­ing about his expe­ri­ence in a con­cen­tra­tion camp, he relat­ed a sto­ry about being crit­i­cized by a fel­low pris­on­er for praying.

“Why are you thank­ing God?” the indig­nant man asked, point­ing around him.

The prayer­ful man looked toward a guard. ​“I am thank­ing him for not mak­ing me him.”

Being an enslaved per­son, a con­cen­tra­tion camp internee, a Pales­tin­ian fear­ing for one’s life and fam­i­ly, or an Israeli pray­ing for the return of hostages and hop­ing to nev­er see anoth­er tak­en — these are all horrors.

It is anoth­er hor­ror to be the victimizer.

So, though I grew up with­out a com­mu­ni­ty or house oth­er than the Brook­lyn Library, I am for­ev­er grate­ful to have learned the prac­tice of dayenu.

Per­haps my bat mitz­vah came from Maxwell House — but at least I had that.

Dayenu.