34
Friday, April 6, 1984
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Everschmaltz
BY PAULA SPAN
Special to The Jewish News
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I think I'll start with a
beautiful young heroine
who, amidst the familiar
squalor of her Russian
shtetl, dreams of America.
I'll call her, let's see, Ruth?
No, no, the heroines in these
sagas always seem to have
names that end in "a".
"Anna" in Belva Plain's
Evergreen. "Leah" in Gloria
Goldreich's Leah's Journey.
"Hannah" in Meredith
Tax's Rivington Street.
Stephen Birmingham calls
the headstrong young pro-
tagonist of The Auerbach
Will "Esther," so exceptions
do exist, but at least her
mama is named "Minna."
So I guess I'll call my gorge-
ous, yearning greenhorn
"Sheyna."
Shortly after an epidemic,
a pogrom and the loss of half
her family, my sensual yet
upright heroine finds her
way to America, the Gol-
dene Medinah (the Golden
Land). I've been studying
these books carefully,. and
I've learned that in suc-
cessful Jewish romances,
events move very quickly.
The rape by Cossacks al-
ways comes within the first
50 pages, for example. By
the time Belva Plain has
reached page 120 of her
700-page tome Evergreen;
she has already subjected
young Anna Friedman to:
the death of both parents by
cholera, the sundering of
the remaining family, arri-
val in the Lower East Side,
one marriage, one affair,
two jobs and two children.
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My Sheyna, surviving
Cossack-rape, comes to the
Goldene Medinah — a
phrase each of these books
uses fondly, usually with an
exclamation point — where
she marries a man she
doesn't love but comes to re-
spect while, simultane-
ously, struggling ineffectu-
ally to resist her lifelong
pull towards the idealistic
Zionist with the moustache,
feeding and clothing her
burgeoning family on four
dollars a week, rising to
undreamed-of wealth and
power, sending her daugh-
ter to Bennington and keep-
ing her figure. That's just
the first five chapters, you
understand.
Don't laugh. At first, I
did, too, amused at these
multi-generational family
epics that are just begging
to be made into ABC
mini-series, that toss in
every burning shtetl and
rags-to-riches cliche as
background to the really
burning questions like: will
she stick with her tiresome
husband or run off with her
dashing lover? I sneered at
the often-clumsy language
and the near-identical
paperback covers with their
montages of babushka-
wearers and mansion-
dwellers.
I wondered why Sarah
Levy, Tax's firey union or-
ganizer at the Triangle
Waist Co., never met Leah
Goldfeder, Goldreich's firey
union organizer at
Rosenblatt's (which, with
its locked doors and fatal
fire, greatly resembles the
former). And isn't it odd
that both Leah's husband
and Anna Friedman's
grandson die heroically
while saving kibbutz chil-
dren from Arab terrorists?
Goldreich, whose book
was published the same
year as Plain's, is racier.
She likes juicier sex scenes
and, in a nod towards con-
temporary sensibilities, she
makes her heroine a little
less passive and gives Leah
a career of her own as a de-
signer.
Tax gets the prize for his-
They all lived so close to toric accuracy. Her ac-
knowledgement page lists
each other, these women.
Neighbors, practically, on all the libraries she foraged
to come up with her myriad
Rivington and Norfolk and
Hester. Surely, they must details about the early
have bumped into one an- ILGWU and the Bund,
other once or twice while Jewish. gangsters and
haggling over a chicken at turn-of-the-century fash-
the kosher butcher's or, la- ions. She's also the most
ter, as prosperous explicitly feminist, with
Westchester matrons at -a characters that include suf-
fragettes and one quietly
hospital fund-raiser?
lesbian rabble-rouser. And
Maybe the shrink that she has the decency to end
Essie Auerbach's son saw
her story in 1917, sparing us
so much of was actually
the details of the poor-but-
Leah's psychiatrist hus- honest immigrants becom-
band? Perhaps Essie's
ing the mall magnates of
daughter's face lift came
Long Island.
courtesy of Anna's son-in-
Birmingham's the only
law, the plastic surgeon?
real writer of the bunch, the
one who can tell a story
But consider. Evergreen,
without
plodding through it
which introduced this gen-
chronologically, who under-
stands terms like irony and
humor. He produces char-
acters, not just victims of
circumstance, and the char-
acters include a genuine
bitch, an empty-handed
socialite and a sexually-
confused dilettante — a de-
lightful switch from the
others' earnestness.
Birmingham's The Auer-
bach Will, after all, follows
more than 20 previous
books (Our Crowd is prob-
eration of Hebraic Harle- ably Birmingham's best-
quins in .1978 by lingering known) and six novels.
for eight months on the New
Plain, Goldreich and Tax
York Times best-seller list, were all novices at novels;
went through 18 paperback
their inexperience shows.
printings before I picked it
But in the end, it's all
up this fall. Goldreich's second-rate stuff, the sort of
lesser-known 1978 novel
thing Margaret Mitchell
went through two
would have written if she'd
hardcover and three paper-
been a New York Jew in-
back printings. Both books,
stead of a romance-smitten
and Tax's, were Literary
Atlantan. Jewish romances
Guild selections or alter- sell because Jews buy
nates.
books, because Jews want to
The Auerbach Will was have their history cele-
number six on the Times list brated, because these books
and rising. So who's the reinforce certain values.
Hard work always pays off.
dummy here?
I've told myself it's time to Wealth is nothing to be
stop sniping and to start ashamed of if you work for
putting my ravishing-and- it. Marriage is destiny. (But
marriages to non-Jews are
ravished heroine's life story
never
happy.) Women who
on paper. Think "sweep-
ing," I tell myself. Think lived for their children
didn't waste their lives.
"passion." Think film
Spend a few nights with
rights.
one of these tales (Birming-
Of course, they're not ham's excepted) and you
really identical, these feel warm and glowy about
books. Plain always objects American Jewry's past and
when interviewers call her vindicated about its pre-
a suburban doctor's wife sent. It beats reading that
and grandmother because, nasty Philip Roth's ravings
even though it's true, she about his crazy family or
was always writing short reading about John LeCar-
stories while raising her re's sympathy for the Pales-
three children. But you can tinians.
see why the suburban mat-
My big problem now,
ron tag sticks: Plain writes since I'm sure there will be
like one. She's ladylike, re- more of these sagas, is how
strained, a bit boring.
to make my Sheyna stand
Evergreen people proc- out and be noticed. I'm
reate, but always in chaste thinking I should move her
language. Even the oblig- story off the East Coast —
atory rape (not of Anna, but that lode's been mined, God
of a childhood friend named knows — and have her move
— honest — Leah) is to Arizona with her hard-
working peddler husband.
tastefully rendered.
A report on the
phenomenal
success of Jewish
family sagas,
sometimes known
as Hebraic
Harlequins