HAKATA JAPANESE RESTAURANT a egt says that she wrote that first book in writer she would become. She speaks an attempt to figure things out and Dopenly about the rivalry and contempt /— got it all wrong. . I was 28." Then she she felt for her brother, born sickly. thought her family's problem was Although her father mostly ignored being Jewish. She has since realized her, she relished moments with him, that it was the "not being Jewish" that even as she knew of his philandering. was the problem. This time I've got She writes of leaving home, attending it right," she says. Sarah Lawrence and of her own first Her other novels include Up the marriage — choosing a man who, Sandbox, and Lovingkindness. unlike her father, was a writer but Her nonfiction titles include L., shared her father's lack of love for his Generation Without Memory: A Jewish wife — and her subsequent divorce. Blanche died of cancer in 1962, and JOUrilty Through. Christian America; A Season for Healing: Reflections on the Eugene promptly remarried. In 1966, Holocaust; and Frui t ful: My Real Life as as Anne Richardson, Roiphe published a Modern Mother, which her first novel, was nominated for the Digging Out, thinly 1996 National Book disguised autobio- Award. graphical fiction In the Jewish commu- about her mother's nity, one of the pieces she death in which she is best known for is a candidly described 1977 New York Times her father. He was essay, which also proved irate about that and to be a turning point in other of her writings her life. The piece was and later disinherited about being Jewish and Roiphe and her having a Christmas tree in brother from their her home, and it received mother's fortune. an unprecedented Eugene died 15 years /- response, which at first ago. The memoir, stunned Roiphe and then which finely captures inspired her to learn a an era in American Roiphe's memoir lays bare her great deal about Judaism shattering life with an anory Jewish life, con- and ultimately to become father, an ineffectual mother cludes with another more closely connected and a younger brother who death, that of her with the Jewish commu- brother from AIDS, paid dearly or his parents' nity. "I had never heard contracted in his lab battles, an looks at how being Jewish affected so many the word assimilation work as a physician. aspects of her amity's life. before," she recalls. And then she writes Now, she describes herself briefly of her own as an "intellectual Conservative Jew. If family and speaks of redemption. I could do it all over again, I would be Some members of her extended 3, an even more knowledgeable Jew, family see this book as a violation of says Roiphe, who writes thoughtful, their privacy and of family pride. often provocative columns for the While she understands and accepts New York Observer and Jerusalem that position, she feels that truth Report, and speaks frequently to Jewish telling is her obligation as a writer. As audiences. A supporter of the Israeli she writes in the memoir, "I am a peace movement, she says that one of writer and burning bridges behind me her "favorite lost causes" is the Justice is part of the cost of the work." Not for Jonathan Pollard committee. that she doesn't feel guilty, sometimes. The mother of five daughters and She has learned to live with it. stepdaughters, Roiphe has been con- Roiphe offers that she has been scious not to raise her daughters in her exploring the same family stories and mother's tradition. As a young mother, themes in much of her writing. She she was determined to do everything describes it as "the search for some herself, rarely leaving her child. "You kind of cultural and spiritual meaning, don't make the mistakes that your own a description of a failed assimilation." mother made. You make other mis- Going back over the same material is takes," she says. About her father, she "both a flaw and a virtue. Each time I says she tried very hard to understand write it I feel a little more at peace him and is no longer angry. "If I with it. That's part of why you write, could, I would have picked a different to make some kind of order." She's father," she says. "I hear my children not certain what she'll write next, but talk about their father, and I feel the she's sure she won't touch this subject. great love they have. I envy that." 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