A Novel
Approach

The first fictional book to
explore the lives of Israelis in
America, 'Yordim' focuses on
two brothers' struggle with
the problem — and each other

ERIC ROZENMAN

Special to The Jewish News

T

he first fictional account of the
Israeli emigration problem has ap-
peared, in the form of a novel,
Yordim, by Micha Lev (Woodbine House,
Washington, D.C., 366 pages, $14.95), a
Jewish Book Club selection.
The author, Marshall Levin, an Ameri-
can with Israeli citizenship who lived in
Haifa from 1974 through 1979, tells the
story of two Israeli brothers.
Nissim Lvov, a young officer in the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF), and his older brother
Yosef — actually an adopted cousin — are
modern sabras, native-born Israelis. For
Miryam and Barukh, their parents and
Holocaust survivors, Israel is a haven, a
miracle. But to the brothers the state is a
given, at least in their daily lives. Nissim
fought for it, saw his best friend consumed
in the pyre of their burning tank in the
Yom Kippur War, and as a professional of-
ficer feels the burden of constant readiness.
Yosef combines an older brother's self-
centeredness with the frustration and im-
pulsiveness of a less-loved "outsider?' He
moved his wife and handicapped young
daughter to the States to the advantage of
a rehabilitation program for the little girl.
The move was to be temporary, for a spe-
cific reason, for a fixed period .. .
When the war erupted in 1973, Yosef
hesitated, then contacted the Israeli con-

Eric Rozenman is editor of Near East Report.

sulate, only to be lost in a bureacratic cul-
de-sac. He never got back in time to fight.
Afterward, Yosef's absence from combat
eats at him, and corrodes Nissim's feelings
for his brother as well. Their relationship,
already strained, grows more difficult.
Miryam, the mother, suffers from a re-
curring nightmare; somehow the demons
who live in her subconscious, the ones who
tried to murder her in Europe and now
threaten her sons in the Middle East, steel
the boys from her and her husband,
Barukh. The nightmare becomes real — in
a mundane way — whdn Nissim announces
during a rare appearance for Shabat din-
ner at his parents' Haifa apartment that
he is leaving the IDF. He plans to go to col-
lege in the United States. A lieutenant col-
onel at 25, weary of the claustrophobic in-
tensity of Israeli life, demoralized by the
way the politicians — his own and the
Americans — let the IDF fight and die but
not win in 1973, Nissim says he needs "to
get some distance on things .. .
"All I know about living is what it's like
here, and to be honest, right now I'm not
thrilled by the prospects. If I'm going to
ever see what it's like somewhere else in the
world, then I've got to do it now, while I'm
young enough, before I have to settle
down."
When Nissim joins Yosef in Philadelphia,
where the older brother attends college
part-time and drives a taxi over-time, the
contradictions between their personalities
emerges. In one particularly well-written

