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To Their Customers and Friends r r SLAB FOR 2 $2 OFF $2 OFF Includes: 2 Potatoes, 2 Slaws and 2 Garlic Breads L • 1 Coupon Per Order • Dine In or Cany-Out • Expires 4-8-99 3/26 1999 BBQ CHICKEN FOR 2 Includes: 2 Potatoes, 2 Slaws and 2 Garlic Breads JN 1 Coupon Per Order • Dine In or Carry-Out • Expires 4-8-99 JN ORCHARD LAKE RD. SOUTH OF 14 • Farm. Hills • 94 Detroit Jewish News With or Without Skin 851-7000 ALS O GOOD AT OUR UVO NIA LOC ATION ON PLYMOUTH RD. Mixed Media Sometimes he bribes the waiters in the dining cars to play classical music. "I board the train, and instantly I'm borne aloft on the wings of the wind," Siegelbaum muses. Appelfeld comments that trains — which have been "engines of death" for the Jewish people in this century — like life, can be both monstrous and soothing. "For years I tried to write about my interior and exterior lives after the war. A life on the trains seemed to epitomize them best. ... There is a feeling that life is not stable or safe anymore, and that the best place to be is on a train that lives in motion." Like his character Siegelbaum, the author apprecia.tes silence. "The unsaid is sometinies more important than the said." In the Bible, he points out, there is a lot of silence, between sentences, between paragraphs. "Jews have forgotten that a bit." He recalls being in the forest during the war with "all kinds of people on the margin, many criminals. I learned from them to be silent. This was one of my schools." Appelfeld embraces the label of "Jewish writer" without ambiva- lence: "I write about Jewish people, in a Jewish language." Explaining that the Holocaust isn't his sole focus ("I'm writing about 100 years of Jewish life"), he says his interests include "Jewish religion, Jewish nationality, Jewish character, Jewish wisdom, Jewish stupidity, Jewish innocence.'' He adds, "I'm probably the only Jewish writer in Israel. I've been living there for 52 years, still dealing with Jews." The others, he explains, are Israeli novelists. "It's not because I've chosen it. It has chosen me." A testament to the universal quality of his vision is that he has readers in countries where there are few Jews; critics often compare him to Kafka. In Israel, he's also unusual as a writer who stays out of politics. But that doesn't stop his fellow Israelis from accosting him in the street. "Appelfeld, why are you criticizing the Jews," strangers ask when they recog- nize him. "You should write about good Jews," they advise, vigorously. Appelfeld is unabashed in his love of Jews. "I'm after the Jew. Wherever they are. I follow them," he says. He's troubled when he meets "wonderful, highly intelligent Jews" and sees how their Jewish knowledge is so small — "how much their Judaism has been deteriorated." Appelfeld's 12th novel in transla- tion, The Conversion, was published in the fall. The Ice Mine was recently published in Hebrew. Last summer, Appelfeld went back to Czernowicz for the first time to do a piece for the New Yorker magazine. "I'm went home," he says, then catches himself. "To what was my home." — Sandee Brawarsky Passover Plotz Mendy Comics of Brooklyn, N.Y., has just published a Passover comic book called The Adventures of Mendy: Grandmother's Seder Plate Is Missing' ($9.95). The 32-page color comic book presents the traditions and history of Passover in a humorous story featuring Mendy Klein, his sister and parents, and their seder guests, the Klutz family. Barry Grossman and Stanley Greenberg are the comic book artists and the story is by Laibel Estrin, who was associated with the company's original 14-title series, Mendy and the Golem (1982-1985). Tani Pinson is president of the newly revived Mendy Comics, which is corn- ing out with an interactive CD-ROM, The Adventures of Mendy and the Golem: Lost in Prague, in time for Chanukah. The Passover comic book is available locally at Borenstein's Book & Music store in Oak Park, Spitzer's Hebrew Bookstore in Southfield, Esther's Judaica Gift World in West Bloomfield, or on the Internet through the compa- ny's on-line store at www.mendy- comics.com. The Web site includes a Fun Page for kids and more. — Esther Allweiss Tschirhart /1.COKE: Line ( TaFF•li WON, • f.1: ANY PLATE,:r „ 41 CUR 1 5e91::<"! A new comic book for Passover.