22 Friday, August 30, 1985

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

OZ IN THE LAND

mos Oz is sitting in his hotel room
several floors above Park Avenue. For
several weeks, New York has been hit by
a hotel strike and the brutal and inde-
cipherable shouts of the picketers come up
from the streets below. Oz is talking about
being a foreigner in the country that is
"least foreign to me" the United States.
With the angry noise from below, it is not
difficult for a moment tir fathom why Oz
feels at home here: New York, never a
quiet city, has turned as noisy as Israel at
its Middle Eastern worst.
Oz, the foreigner, clearly has an Israeli
accent and an Israeli manner of dressing.
His shirt is open at the neck, his collar is
spread over his jacket lapels. His speech
has an Israeli's charm and intensity, filled
with a passion for ideas that come, for an
Israeli, not necessarily from their sheer in-
tellectuality but from the almost desperate
need for those in the Jewish State to sift
through the ideas and notions and palaver
that often pass for salvation. It is a search
for remedies that hold out at least some
promise of national quiescence, of stilling
this new Promised Land's incessant
bickerings with its neighbors and with
itself. Deliverance doesn't come easy in the
land of Abraham and Moses and David
and Saul.
Oz, this foreigner in Gotham, is nearing

the end of a year away from Israel. He is
surprised that he has been "painfully
homesick." The swprise comes not neces-
sarily from the homesickness, but from the
fullness of its pain.
"I never, never expected to feel like
this," he said. "I had a very hard time in
Israel. Israel has recently had a vary hard
time withltealf. I thought that
. going away
would be a relief. I thought I would nolo

certeinpeeple, I was sure' would nibesoy
friends, didn't aped to ids my mak
try the way I do, I=didn't aped folio,
sly revinspelitkilemokie the way fdo.

