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36
Friday, May 24, 1985
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Israeli Author Speaks Out
BY JOSEPH COHEN
Special to The Jewish News
ALASKAN
ADVENTURE
Due to cancellations, 3 spaces are
now available for this once-in-a-
lifeti me opportunity. A 42-day bus
and camping trip for teens enter-
ing 11th and 12th grades.
For application, call or write:
Tamarack Camps
Fresh Air Society
6600 W. Maple Road
West Bloomfield, MI 48033
(313) 661-0600
The Cultural Commission of Congregation Shaarey Zedek
cordially invites you to attend
The Annual Peter and Clara Weisberg Concert
featuring
renowned piano virtuoso
RUTH LAREDO
Tuesday Evening, June 11, 1985
8:00 P.M.
at
Congregation Shaarey Zedek
NO ADMISSION CHARGE
Tickets may be obtained by filling out the reservation -
form below and returning it to the synagogue.
An Afterglow with Ms. Laredo, following the concert, will
be featured for Patrons. Patron Tickets may be purchased
by sending a check for $25 per person and enclosing with
form below.
No phone requests will be accepted
es =Please Detach and Mailammummm
Mail to: PETER AND CLARA WEISBERG CONCERT
CONGREGATION SHAAREY ZEDEK
P.O. Box 2056
SOUTHFIELD, MICHIGAN 48037
— TICKET RESERVATION —
❑ PLEASE SEND ME
tickets for the Weisberg Concert
❑ I wish to be a concert Patron. Enclosed is my check for
@$25 each
Please Print
Telephone
NAME
ADDRESS
CITY
ZIP
Please be sure to enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope
What is it about Israeli writers
that makes them so fascinating?
A year ago Yehuda Amichai came
to New Orleans and from the
minute his plane touched down
until he left a day-and-a-half la-
ter, he and I were in almost con-
tinuous dialogue.
So it was with A. B. Yehoshua,
who recently arrived at Tulane
University. His was a whirlwind
visit, a one week non-stop talking
spree that started in Boston,
moved to New York, and then in
succession to Kansas, Houston
and Austin, Texas, New Orleans,
and back to New York. If the pace
of his trip was exhausting, you
would never have known it by lis-
tening to him or watching him, for
he was all animation and lively
intelligence. His arms and hands
were in constant motion, perfectly
synchronized with his conversa-
tion to the extent that it was im-
possible for a listener not to be-
come entranced, caught up in a
lovely near-stereophonic sym-
phony of sound and action.
Our longest conversation oc-
curred in the several hours before
his plane left the morning after
his lecture. In our discussion, we
ranged back and forth from litera-
ture to life, from Israel to the
United States, talking about the
success in America of his most re-
cent novel, A Late Divorce
(Doubleday), its sources, his other
fictions, the craft and nature of his
writing, the directions in which
Israeli literature is currently
moving and many other matters
including the provocative speech
in Israel he recently made to the
Board of Governors of the Ameri-
can Jewish Committee arguing
forcefully for the return of all the
Jews in the Diaspora to Israel.
Yehoshua is a sixth-generation
sabra who makes his home in
Haifa where he is professor of
world literature at the University
of Haifa. His wife is a
psychoanalyst. They have three
children, two boys, 14 and ten,
and an older daughter who is a
radar technician on duty with the
Israeli Air Force.
The interview which follows is a
selection from our talks, a skim-
ming of the cream of Yehoshua's
observations:
Your family and forebears have
been in Israel for a long time. Tell
me about them.
My father belonged to an old
Sephardic community in
Jerusalem. His forebears had set-
tled in Palestine long before the
Zionists came. They had been
there so long the arrival of the
Zionists was a shock to them. My
father was an Orientalist and an
authority on the Palestinian
Press in the early part of this cen-
tury. He published twelve books
in the seventeen years before his
death on the subjects of old
Jerusalem, the Sephardic com-
munity and its relations to the
Arabs.
In your novel "A Late Divorce"
the protagonist is an elderly Israeli
who lives in America but returns
to Israel to negotiate a complex di-
Joseph Cohen is director of the
Jewish Studies Program at Tulane
University in New Orleans.
A. B. Yehoshua: Exploring new
literary roads.
vorce from his demented wife.
While he's there, he dies. Is any of
the material in that book autobiog-
raphical?
Not in any literal sense. I began
writing A Late Divorce about half
a year after my father died. He
and I were close, and I took his
death quite seriously. He was not
young, he was 77. Immediately
after his death I was blocked for a
time and could not write. Sub-
sequently, I did write a play about
a family after the death of the
father. It was really very per-
sonal. As a rule, I only use scat-
tered elements from my biog-
raphy, nothing recognizable.
Where did your father's
forebears come from originally?
Greece.
And your mother's family?
From Morocco. After her
mother's death, her father came to
Palestine in the 1930s for reli-
gious reasons, bringing with him
his two young daughters. He died
several years afterward, and my
mother grew up in Israel sepa-
rated from her numerous rela-
tives in North Africa. Once
grown, she saw that the impor-
tant element emerging in Israel
was the Ashkenazic Zionists, and
she subsequently steered my sis-
ter and me towards them. So in a
way I am a sort of an assimilated
Sephardi.
What is your view of the situa-
tion of the writer in Israel today?
A dramatic change is occurring.
There used to be a kind of
structured Zionist, socialist cen-
ter and writers wrote comfortably
from within its boundaries. This
center has now collapsed. We
have to find a new way today of
expressing the Israeli experience.
In what direction do you think
Israeli writing is going?
Ethnic concerns are emerging.
The oriental Jews who came to Is-
rael in the 1950s and 1960s did
not express themselves back then
about the traumas they were un-
dergoing in adjusting to life in Is-
rael. Now there is serious writing
about it. They went through triple
shock, moving from their Arab
countries to Israel, from restricted
lives in the Diaspora to indepen-
dence, and from oriental culture
to western culture. Ethnic writing
is more local. There will be less
panoramic writing, and more
writing of this kind which concen-
trates-on specific experience.
In what direction is your writing
going?
I am moving toward using more