Father, Faith, and Finding My Voice- Debbie Feit

In the latest episode of "The Mountain in Us," host Taran Singh interviews Debbie Feit, a marketing expert and author who found an unexpected voice as a poet after experiencing a significant personal loss. Debbie recounts her childhood in a conservative Jewish household in Brooklyn, highlighting the cultural traditions, Hebrew prayers, and strict rules for keeping a kosher home that influenced her early years. She shares a touching story about her father’s considerate flexibility during a visit to McDonald's. This moment showed his respect for her choices and foreshadowed larger themes of faith and identity that would appear later in her life.

The conversation shifts as Debbie shares her story of her father’s sudden death, which became the catalyst for her foray into poetry. She recounts how he passed away in Jerusalem, a city he loved dearly, after a lifetime devoted to his faith and community. This grief ignited a wave of creative expression in a new poetic form. Debbie describes how this burst of poetry grew into her upcoming chapbook, *The Power of the Plastic Fork: A Daughter's Highly Unorthodox Kaddish*—a collection that reimagines the traditional Jewish mourning ritual through ten deeply personal poems, each representing one member of the minyan.

The episode concludes with Debbie reading her poem, "Ode to the potted plants…," which uses the vivid memory of purifying un-koshered utensils in houseplant soil to explore themes of cleansing, loss, and acceptance. Through this personal sharing, the conversation highlights how stories of grief and faith can resonate universally, crossing cultural and religious boundaries. Debbie’s journey—from strict tradition to unorthodox expression—serves as a potent reminder that even in our most individual struggles, we often find shared meaning and connection.

Personal website

debbiefeit.com

instagram.com/debbiefeit

Pre-order "The Power of the Plastic Fork"

porkbellypress.com/forthcoming/kaddish

Quotes from the episode that stayed with me:

“It felt like my head cracked open and all this poetry came pouring out.” — Debbie

“As a writer, I couldn’t have written a better ending for him myself.” — Debbie

“Not everything can be made new again, no matter how deep it is buried.” — from her poem

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www.inkofsingh.com

Transcript

Welcome to The Mountain in Us, a podcast where the journey gets its voice. I am Taran Singh, your host. Here, we greet the thrills, jolts, ascents, and descents of our uncharted adventures. Good morning, everybody.

Today, my guest is Debbie Fiet. Debbie is a marketing professional, author, and now a beaming poet. It is my pleasure to have you on The Mountain In Us, where the journey gets its voice.

Debbie Fiet: Thank you so much, Taran. I'm really honored to be here with you. And I'm really excited to talk about Father, Faith, and Finding My Voice.

Taran Singh: Thank you, Debbie. Thank you. And we will kick it off right from your early beginnings in Brooklyn, New York. Why don't you take us back to your early childhood home and paint us a picture of your family?

Debbie Fiet: Yes, I would love to. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, the oldest of two sisters, with my mom and my dad—an upper-middle-class family. I don't know how much I appreciated it at the time, but looking back, I know I was so lucky, really, really so lucky with both my parents.

We were raised Jewish in a conservative Jewish household, and we were brought up with a lot of the culture of the religion. We celebrated Hanukkah. We lit the menorah. We went to services on the high holidays. There are a lot of customs, a lot of traditions associated with Judaism. And we grew up with all those things. My sister and I attended Hebrew school, so we got that education.

Taran Singh: Talk about Brooklyn and where the Jewish community was very strong, right? And as you look back from today, where you are in Michigan, to where you were... you said you went to Hebrew school, right? And language is such an important component of faith and of just "finding my voice," being a poet. Talk to us a little bit about if you remember anything from your Hebrew school that you can share with us English-speaking people.

Debbie Fiet: All right. Let me think about that for a second. I would be interested in talking about, you know, the shift from Brooklyn to Michigan, but Hebrew school... as a kid, that was not a fun thing. It was regular school all day in a public school, and then there was religious education after that. So it wasn't necessarily... I think most kids probably don't love that extra cultural religious education. But again, as an adult, looking back, really glad I had that baseline.

I learned a lot of the prayers in Hebrew school, but I also... a big part of my learning prayers was through the repetition of being in situations so many times that these prayers were being recited, and I kind of learned it by ear. Part of the reason I was immersed in that goes back to how I grew up. My dad, his nine-to-five job was as a social worker for the city of New York. And in addition to that, he worked with a Jewish youth organization. And that really was where his passion was.

So as little kids, my sister and I grew up attending different activities and conventions. We traveled a lot. We didn't necessarily understand what a convention was; I'm nine years old, I don't know what's happening in these meetings. I just know, "Oh, we're in Atlantic City, we're going to go get some taffy now," or "We're in Florida, I'm going to Disney World." But part of these conventions included saying a lot of the prayers. There was a blessing after the meals, every meal. So I was constantly hearing that. And then there's morning services... all different types of services. So it was kind of the backdrop, in a way, for a great deal of my life, to have the Hebrew around us.

Taran Singh: And my 12-year-old son, who goes to Punjabi school, I think in the same ways... what you said, when the language is not the majority language, suddenly it becomes a background noise because the evaluation of that language doesn't exist in the marketplace. But what you also said, which is such a beautiful thing, is that it opens up a lot of things that might be caged if you don't have that knowledge of that language from early on in your life. Because it just... it still seeps in, no matter how much background noise it was, it still seeped into Debbie. And I think a lot of which we'll discover in this conversation.

But I also wanted to focus a little bit on... you shared the story about McDonald's and your father, and I found it very practical and such a wise way to look at life. I would love if you could share that with our audience and just give us a glimpse of your father too as you talk about that story.

Debbie Fiet: I would love to. I do like that story and I'm happy to share it with you. I just want to clarify one thing. Maybe "background noise" wasn't the right term to use; maybe it was "backdrop." I didn't mean it as background noise like you tune it out. But you know, there's too many sides to this coin. When I was a kid and I'm sitting through services, and some of them can be pretty long—two hours, longer—you get kind of restless. You're right, it became background noise, but that's not how I meant it. I just meant it as it was part of my upbringing.

Taran Singh: As children, we do not know what it is. It's just that we are expected to follow our norm, and sometimes that norm can be overwhelming for us. I have a 12-year-old, your son, so I you know... and even myself, I can't sit more than 30 minutes at one place. So, so human beings, you know, and understandably. But let's get to the McDonald's one, because that is the one story that I just love to my heart.

Debbie Fiet: Yes, I'm happy to share that. So, growing up in a Jewish household, growing up in a kosher household... I won't presume that every listener will know what kosher means. But for us, it meant you could not eat meat and dairy together. And so that meant two sets of silverware, two sets of dishes. I never had a cheeseburger when I was a kid. I never ate Mexican food until I was in college because there's all this cheese and meat together. That was not part of our culture.

So growing up in a kosher household, certain things were completely off limits. We didn't eat anything from a pig. We didn't eat shellfish. So there are a lot of rules around food. And that's how I grew up. And my dad, this was important to him. My dad was more observant than my mom. But we kept a kosher kitchen.

And my dad used to take my sister and I to McDonald's. We would get the fish sandwich. So that was a treat, going out and the whole fast food thing and fish sandwiches. But then we get older, and now I'm in middle school when we're allowed to leave school and go have lunch off property. And there was a McDonald's nearby, and my friends would go to McDonald's, and those chicken nuggets looked so good. I did not want the Filet-O-Fish.

I mean, I guess I could have just eaten the chicken nuggets and not said anything to my dad, but that's not how we were. We weren't that way. So for as important as it was to him to maintain keeping kosher, he also was flexible and realistic and gave space to my sister and I as we were growing older—gave space to us making our own choices. His flexibility and his respect for the choices other people make meant a lot. I mean, we're talking about chicken nuggets right now, but there are other things in my life that apply to that as well.

Taran Singh: Yeah, yeah. Chicken nugget is probably the lowest bar of acceptance, probably. The funny thing you say that... you know, when I first went to a McDonald's, for the longest time, I didn't eat any meat. And when I went to the McDonald's, I said, "Give me the cheeseburger without the patty." That's the only thing I could eat. I didn't even eat fish. So the bun, the tomato, and the cheese, that's the only thing. And, you know, now my son enjoys the McDonald's patty, right? So it's like... life is in many ways, you know, acceptance comes in many shapes and forms, and sometimes it's the form of chicken nuggets.

Debbie Fiet: Yes, you're absolutely right. Yes.

Taran Singh: Yeah. But you ended up... you ended up in Michigan. And, you know, talk to us a little bit about Michigan because I went to school in Michigan, so I can't miss that question.

Debbie Fiet: You probably said this with me the last time we spoke, but where did you go?

Taran Singh: Kalamazoo. I went to... oh, Kalamazoo.

Debbie Fiet: Yes. Yeah. So I, yes, I attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and pretty much never went back. I had internships in New York for a couple of summers, and then I just started spending my summers in Ann Arbor. It was the quintessential college town, and I really enjoyed it there.

At the time that I was in school, the most number of students attending school were from New York. So large New York population—I mean, this is decades ago, I'm sure it's changed—and definitely a large Jewish population. But those were not the people I ended up connecting with. Most of my friends, a lot of them were from small towns in Michigan, with like a graduating class of 60, compared to my graduating class of 805.

So I was, for some of my friends, I was the first Jewish person they had ever met. I was the first person from New York that they ever met. And it was confusing to them because all they knew was what was presented in the media. They thought, when they heard Brooklyn, they thought the Lords of Flatbush, you know, street gangs. And I didn't present as an intimidating figure by any means. And the Jewish thing also... So I was usually in a mode of teaching others about the customs and the religion. And I was happy to do that.

Taran Singh: Yeah. Michigan people are curious and warm. And my experience living there has changed me a lot. I've kept that same warmth of saying hello to everybody, even though in California, nobody cares; they find it awkward when people say hello to strangers, right? But Michigan is definitely way warmer. And yeah, that was such a great thing to be able to do.

And you've been able to accomplish a lot. And recently you published a poetry chapbook, a genre that you have really never explored or might have alluded you in the past. What happened?

Debbie Fiet: Well, let me just back up a little bit. The book is not technically published yet; it'll be published next year. But you're right. I've been a professional writer my entire career. I've worked in advertising. I've worked for magazines; I freelanced for national magazines writing features and essays. I've written a book of prescriptive nonfiction. I've worked in marketing communication. Like, just about every aspect of writing I have covered.

And that includes spending 20 years trying to write a novel—trying to write two novels, not at the same time, about 10 years on one, about 10 years on the other—and getting as far as having an agent request the manuscript, but never getting representation. And it never really went anywhere.

And I was in the middle of procrastinating another round of edits when I learned that my dad died. And I get... sorry, your question is how did it come to be that I wrote this chapbook? The short answer is that my dad died and it triggered something in me.

Taran Singh: Not to cut you, but you know, this is such an important moment when you said, you know, you lost your father, but he left us in a place where he wanted to... You don't have to share it now, but at least as you tell us.

Debbie Fiet: It's an important part of the story, right?

Taran Singh: Yeah.

Debbie Fiet: So... my response, in my grief, my response was to write. And there's nothing surprising about that. I've been doing that my whole life, whether I was writing in a journal or writing essays. I've written essays on personal topics and had them published. And I've written about personal things on Instagram. So that's my go-to: to process my feelings is to get it on the page. One, to get it on the page, and two, knowing that somebody will connect with it, even if it's one person and they see themselves in my situation.

But what was unusual about the poetry is that I never had any interest in writing poetry. I didn't have a single book of poetry in the house. I always felt it was not very approachable. I always felt that I must not be very bright if I'm having so much trouble understanding some of the poetry. I was never drawn to it.

So that's what was so surprising because—and this is how I describe it—it felt like my head cracked open and all this poetry came pouring out. And as a writer, nothing ever just pours. 20 years of trying to write a novel was torture. Nothing flowed freely. But I had all these ideas. I was getting up in the middle of the night. I was almost going through a little bit of a manic phase. I wasn't sleeping great, and I was writing in the middle of the night, and I was buying poetry books, and I was signing up for poetry classes. I was just drawn to it, almost like an addiction in the beginning. But I loved it. I loved the poetry. I think probably because it's a much more contained genre than a novel or even an essay—a thousand words, two thousand words. A poem, you could be done in 300 words. So that was satisfying to me.

Let me talk about... let me tell you how the circumstances of how my dad died, because obviously it's a huge loss to lose a parent. I had already lost my mother in 2011 through very challenging circumstances. We lost her to medical malpractice that led to a vegetative state. So that was a really horrific experience, a terrible way to lose your parent. It was the opposite with my dad. My mom... it took months to lose her, and his passing was very quick.

Not surprisingly, as a committed Jew, my dad loved everything about Israel. And he had spent a year during his college years living there. He had traveled there many, many times. He has taken groups of 50, 60 teenagers through the Jewish youth organization that he worked with for six-week trips in the summer and had done that multiple times. And my sister and I got the benefit of that also when we were little; got to go three times as part of that trip.

So he loved everything about it. And he was planning a trip with friends of his from his congregation, with some family members. He was putting the itinerary together himself. He couldn't talk about anything else other than this itinerary, which was kind of amusing and got to be annoying. But he didn't need a professional to put an itinerary together. He knew so much about it. He knew which places to go to and where the most interesting experiences would be.

So he spent all this time and energy putting together this trip. And then it was 2020, and nobody was going anywhere in 2020. So the trip to Israel got put on hold. '21, trip to Israel still on hold. Now it's '22, they're able to take their trip to Israel. I would say maybe there were 10 or 12 people on the trip.

And his first day there, I think he had dinner with friends who had lived in Israel. And then the next day, he went shopping for jewelry for my sister and I and for our kids. And that's just how my dad was and who he was. He liked to give gifts. And one of the jewelry stores is a place he's been shopping in for decades. They know him there. So it's a commentary on him that that was one of the first things he did, that he wants to make sure he had his gifts for his grandchildren.

And then the next day, the group, the whole group is together, and they're going to the Western Wall. And he is walking distance to the wall, and he just goes down, and he's gone. It was a cardiac event of some kind. No history of any cardiac issues, but he was a month away from 87. People perceived him as younger than his 86 years. There was a youthful energy to him.

So my sister gets a phone call at 6:30 in the morning. She calls me. So now we're all on the same call and we're being told that he's gone. And there was so much grief in that initially, and there was crying and sobbing, but there was comfort in the same moment as learning that he was gone. There was comfort in knowing where he was when he died. He could have just as easily been sitting on his couch watching a baseball game, reading the newspaper, and keeled over. And as a writer, I couldn't have written a better ending for him myself. He was in his favorite place. His favorite place really was anywhere his grandchildren were, but Israel... he loved it. So for that's where he died, it was just... it was poetic.

Taran Singh: And doing what he loved to do, connecting people back to... connecting them to their roots and giving them an understanding of the passage of life in many ways, right? Thank you for sharing that.

And, you know, the book that, the chapbook, the poetry book that is coming out is also based on this Jewish tradition of how, you know, Kaddish... and I would love for you to talk to us a little bit more about that. How did that concept come to you? And being a non-Jew with no understanding of this concept, just paint us a little bit more of a picture so we understand the "why."

Debbie Fiet: I would be... I'd be happy to. Thank you for asking about that. So in the beginning, I was just writing poems. I wasn't thinking I was putting together a book; they were just... whatever inspiration struck, I was writing poems. Grief, loss, through a Jewish lens—there was a lot of that in the poems.

And I was submitting them to literary magazines, and I was having some success getting things published. And a dear writer friend of mine said, "You have enough; you could put these into a chapbook. You have enough pieces for a chapbook." And I thought she'd lost her mind. I thought, "I don't have enough pieces here." And anyway, I was brand new to the genre. I mean, I'd been writing for decades, but I felt like I was a newbie when it came to poetry. I just started doing this. How am I publishing a book? That seemed crazy.

And I didn't think I had enough pieces, but I counted my pieces. I'm like, "Oh, I have enough pieces." And I kept writing more pieces and more pieces. And here's how the concept came to be.

So, let me talk about the title and the subtitle. So the title of the chapbook is The Power of the Plastic Fork: A Daughter's Highly Unorthodox Kaddish.

Kaddish is the prayer that's said when you lose an immediate family member: a parent, a child, a sibling, a spouse. And there are a lot of customs around that. You say it during that first week after the person passes, which that first week is referred to as Shiva. And that's when people come to visit the family in mourning and show their support and share stories. And you're also having services, prayers, and the Kaddish is one of them.

There's an obligation—for those who observe—to say the Kaddish every day for 11 months. And I saw my dad did this for both his parents; he did it for both of my mother's parents. So this was important to him, and I knew that. And so all my life I thought, "Okay, you know, when his time comes, my sister and I, of course, we're going to say Kaddish for him." How could we not say Kaddish?

So his time comes. We say Kaddish during that week. And then not really ever again. I never really said it. And if you told me this is what happened, I would have bet anything that I would be feeling really guilty about that. And so the crazy part is that I didn't feel guilty about not doing it. And I realized that was a moment... I realized that writing these poems and putting them into a book was my way of honoring him, was my way of saying Kaddish.

So the book is... the concept is that it's my way of saying Kaddish. And part of saying Kaddish, one of the rules is that you need to have 10 people with you to say it. The thinking is that you shouldn't be alone in your grief; you grieve with community. And you need 10 people. So that group of 10 is referred to as a minyan.

And that's what I had in mind when I decided this book is only going to have 10 poems. And these 10 poems are the 10 people of my minyan. And this book is my way of saying Kaddish.

Taran Singh: Yeah, what a powerful way to, you know, to put Kaddish in and give your father, you know, his life a celebration. But also, this Kaddish is going to live longer than any time frame, right? And that's such a beautiful way of putting it.

And when you wrote... you know, when you go back to this period and, you know, especially when you look back at yourself... and Kaddish is in Hebrew, right? That's what I'm imagining.

Debbie Fiet: It is spoken in Hebrew, yes.

Taran Singh: Did you experience any resurgence in your faith after this experience of losing your father, but also putting together this Kaddish that you had never imagined? As you said, if I were to put a bet on it, you would have said, "No, that's not going to happen." Did that change how you looked at your faith?

Debbie Fiet: So, I don't know if "resurgence of faith" is the language I would have chosen, but it probably is correct. I mean, I grew up to believe in God, and I did, and I continue to believe in God. I have faith in terms of believing in God.

I would say that the circumstances of my dad's death—that he died in his favorite place in the world—I mean, I think maybe that... it kind of brought a resurgence. I couldn't have arranged it; I could not have written a better ending for him. So there was a higher power at work there. And I was very aware of that. So in terms of how he died, yes.

But when I think about the time after that, I started turning to things that maybe I wouldn't have turned to before. I signed up to take a class about the Kaddish. I recently wrote an essay that's going to be published in an anthology of Jewish stories. Past traditions that I didn't practice on my own kind of started to come back.

As a kid, we grew up; we lit candles on Shabbos. So the Sabbath for Jews is Friday night, Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. And my mom would light the Shabbos candles, and that's something I grew up doing. It was not anything I continued to do once I became an adult and I moved out and I had my own place. It wasn't a tradition I carried. But it became, after losing him, that became important. And so now my husband and I light Shabbos candles. And so I think it's a way of feeling close to him.

Taran Singh: Yeah. It's acknowledging the life and the love that he has given to you in many ways. And I think that's such a powerful way of seeing smaller things in a bigger picture.

And you've written all of these poems with a Jewish perspective. But let's say somebody who doesn't have that knowledge of Jewish tradition, how would they relate back to your experience of grief, acceptance, and healing?

Debbie Fiet: Anyone who's experienced that kind of loss will be able to identify with the emotions that are being represented. The publisher for my book, she said she was laughing and crying when she was reading it. And she said that a lot of it... she had lost her father when she was in her 20s. She's not Jewish, but my description of my dad made her think of her dad. So there was still... there's always going to be something you can identify with and take with you, even if the person's background is different than yours.

I read a lot of other work by poets who come from different countries and have different religions, and I'm moved by that. I can still feel... I may not identify with their lived experience and the challenges, but I feel what they're feeling. The emotion that comes through their work. And I'm really drawn to that. It's powerful. It doesn't matter that I am not the same race as they are.

Taran Singh: And you are totally spot on that when we strip the little things away from us, we are all the same. And, you know, it would be an honor if you can share a piece with our audience and also maybe explain what the piece means to you.

Debbie Fiet: Well, thank you for... I would love to share a piece. Thank you for asking. This piece, it's about the whole keeping kosher thing. And just to give you a little bit of background so it's not confusing for people who are not familiar with some of the rules of keeping kosher... I had said earlier that we had separate silverware for meat and dairy. And inevitably, I would goof up and use the wrong thing. I would grab a meat spoon and use it to eat ice cream. And that was just an honest mistake.

And the way that you would clean it, if you will, is to put it in dirt. So that was something that a lot of Jewish people would do. And you could see, you know, forks and knives or spoons sticking out of plants in somebody's house, which is a ridiculous sight, but it's okay. You cleanse it and make them kosher again; that's the custom.

And so that's what was in mind as I'm grieving his loss. So this piece is...

Ode to the potted plants on my parents' windowsill studded with silverware I've accidentally made unkosher.

Forgive me, for I do not remember your names,

but I recall the role you served in my life

as a child who understood the rules

about keeping a home kosher

and still managed to use a meat spoon

to eat her Haagen-Dazs chocolate chocolate chip.

You saved my ass.

And well beyond childhood at that.

Forks and knives and spoons,

silver-plated sentinels of the windowsill,

you holding them up proudly.

Me, somewhat penitent,

but always in awe of your healing.

How dirt from the earth could render the defiled clean,

could rescue the steak knife that carelessly buttered the morning's toast.

How silverware emerged unsullied from the soil,

each piece restored to its pristine form.

How I revere your powers of rebirth.

Sing your praises.

Acknowledge your limitations.

Yes, you nurture silver blossoms back to life,

but you cannot give root to the family tree

despite the richness of your soil.

Not everything can be made new again,

no matter how deep it is buried.

Taran Singh: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is amazing. Thank you. And thank you for sharing this. And thank you for, you know, coming to the podcast and bringing your voice to us. You know, it has been a pleasure. And I feel that this is... that through you, you know, through the Kaddish, we are learning the essence of being human. And this is beautiful. I look forward to getting my hands on the chapbook when it is out, and all the best for your new adventure. But thank you again for coming to the podcast.

Debbie Fiet: Thank you, Taran, for having me.

Taran Singh: Thank you for joining us on the conversation trails of The Mountain in Us podcast. Each episode here is crafted with love, adventure, and reflection. We hope you have enjoyed this one, and we welcome your thoughts on it. And if you want to be on the show, feel free to reach out.