Becoming

By Malkie Gordon Hirsch Magence

Long ago, before I became the person I am today, I was just anybody—a person who belonged to everybody but herself.

Wherever I went, I would introduce myself by whatever name I was using at the time. When I first got married and my name was Hirsch, I became something of an enigma because most people could not trace the origin of that generic-sounding Jewish name.

They would exchange pleasantries, but I usually didn’t bother offering more information.

It was freeing to simply be me, not someone’s daughter, sister, wife, or friend.

Just Malkie.

And I wondered if that would ever be enough.

But more often than not, introductions came with a frame of reference:

“Esta and Larry Gordon’s daughter.”

“Nachi Gordon’s older sister.”

“Yochanan Gordon’s sister.”

“Dini and Eliezer Franklin’s sister or sister-in-law.”

It’s mostly practical—people like to connect the dots—but it carries a funny combination of pride with a smattering of annoyance.

After all, what do their accomplishments have to do with who I’ve become?

I’m certainly not getting songs written about me, or free advertising on a podcast, or any of that maple Greek yogurt unless I grab it before it sells out at Seasons.

We’re related and we genuinely like each other, but we don’t share identities.

I can’t churn butter, I don’t write music, and I’m not interviewing anyone behind a microphone.

It makes me wonder if we’re unintentionally teaching our children that coming from a particular family means something substantive about the person himself. That when you look at a person’s shidduch résumé, and you see all the right schools, shuls, summer camps, and neighborhoods, that you’re getting an accurate measure of the person’s character.

Is it possible that someone can have all the “right” things on paper and still not be the person they present themselves to be? That some people ride the coattails of the family members that came before them—and not much else?

Why do we care so much about someone’s last name if they haven’t proven themselves through their own merits?

And are we doing the next generation any favors by signaling that being born into an influential family gives them influence of their own?

As someone who grew up in the shadow of truly esteemed individuals, on the Lubavitch and Navardok and media sides of my family, with grandparents who survived the Holocaust as sole survivors of large families, I’ve found that being born into a family like mine is a double-edged sword.

There are expectations that come from telling people who you are and where you come from.

I can’t count how many times people who knew my grandfather’s writing would tell me how essential his words were during the years he worked as a journalist, and how his voice shaped their Jewish identity.

To me, he was just Zaidy, the man who woke up at ungodly hours when I slept over, who wore ribbed sleeveless undershirts and brown leather suspenders, who had freckled arms that held me.

His Shabbos morning breakfast was a tart grapefruit sprinkled with sugar that he would urge me to eat with a serrated spoon (I always spat it out), and he had cold feet that I’d snuggle up to as I fell asleep in my grandparents’ bed.

To others, he was a gifted writer whose words resonated deeply, representing the voice of an Orthodox Jewish generation.

I’ve never grasped the Yiddish language well enough to understand his work firsthand, but I grew up with a father who eventually carried the same torch, though it wasn’t on his original path.

It came to him organically, the way these things tend to, as our family became part of a fledgling frumcommunity in the Five Towns during the ’90s.

If there’s one thing I appreciate above all else, it’s that my parents never forced us into a particular mold.

We were free to find our own way professionally, no matter who came before us.

And now, looking back, it’s no coincidence that many of us ended up doing what we do, living our lives in the public eye, exploring different corners of human experience.

Maybe the stories my father told us about his family worked as a subconscious pull, nudging us in the directions we took.From observing my mom I absorbed her flair for fashion and overall artistic acumen.

Whether it’s in our DNA or simply through witnessing the colorful opportunities that writing and media brought to our parents’ lives, something guided us, each in his own time, to orbit the same industry.

I still swell with pride when someone realizes I’m related to pioneers of the American Lubavitch movement.

But it doesn’t define me. It doesn’t go past that moment of recognition. And to be honest, it shouldn’t.

In the end, we are the sum of our parts: the family lore, the stories we absorbed subconsciously, the heritage that shapes us quietly.

But we also become who we are through the choices we make on our own.

So, when someone introduces me to a stranger and whispers that my younger brother runs that successful media brand, I smile.

I’m learning how to take those experiences and make them my own, how to build something that someday—generations from now—someone might proudly point to and say:

“We come from her.” 

Malkie Hirsch-Magence is a native of the Five Towns community, a mom of 5, a writer, and a social media influencer.