8. “You’ll Think I’m Insane.”

See this print of the Daughters of Zelophehad? I came across it at an art auction in 1932. A copy is in the 1897 book called Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us. I’ve kept the print to remind me that illustrations of Bible stories are fanciful—and that what happened to Miriam Josefsohn Jacobowitz was extraordinary, but true.

I wish I could tell you that I believed the fantastical story that Mim told me back in the fall of 1916, when her mother sent the old teddy bear that had belonged to Dan...