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Like Never Before'

Israeli-born author Ehud Havazelet explores
the tensions between two generations of Jews.

SAND EE B RAWARS KY

Special to the Jewish News

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8/13
1999

80 Detroit Jewish News

The grandson of his yeshiva's
founder, young David, who is "angry,
put upon, a boy who carries anger like
in a stone in his pocket to caress,''
escapes from detention into the free-
dom of the streets and subways,
yarmulke stashed away.
In later stories, he works as an
architect, marries a non-Jewish

Israel, raised in
Borough Park and Kew
Garden Hills, author Ehud
Havazelet now makes his
home in Corvallis, Ore., where he
teaches creative writing at Oregon
State University.
In his latest book, Like
Never Before (Farrar Straus
& Giroux; 23), a collection
of 10 interrelated stories, he
returns to the Queens
neighborhoods of his youth,
revisiting the tensions
between generations,
between secular life and
Orthodoxy.
Havazelet writes com-
pelling family stories that
are beautifully crafted, with
an edge of darkness. In its
first reviews, the book has
been widely praised, the
author compared to
Bernard Malamud, master
of the short story who also
addressed aspects of assimi-
lation and also taught at
Oregon State.
Ehud Havazelet:
Iri format, Like Never
Raising interesting questions.
Before is a kind of hybrid
between a novel and story
collection, with the consis-
tency of characters and style of a tradi-
woman, loses his job and his marriage,
tional novel, combined with the shifts
marries a second non-Jewish wife,
in narrators and uneven chronology
becomes a landscaper and car mechan-
more typical of separate stories.
ic and the father of two, all the while
Recently, Allegra Goodman in The
battling, disappointing, misunder-
Family Markowitz and Thane
standing and being misunderstood by
Rosenbaum in Elijah Visible also have
his parents.
written cycles of stories, where each
His father, Max Birnbaum, called
story stands alone, and also links to
simply Birnbaum, son of a prominent
the others to create a larger tale.
rabbi from Kracow who leads a
Havazelet says he prefers to have it
Brooklyn congregation, is a yeshiva
both ways" — novel and stories — to
teacher who translates manuscripts; he
keep the emotional attachment of
is not selected to succeed his father.
readers with the characters, but with-
"Lyon" is the story of Birnbaum's
out a continuous arc, thereby suggest-
World War II years spent in hiding.
ing that "life isn't a continuous narra-
Although he survived a close call, his
tive, where all the dots are connected,
brother did not, and he is haunted by
all the answers are given."
his inability to save him. As a father,
David Birnbaum, central character
Birnbaum feels great pain that his son
to the stories, is at first a young yeshi-
and daughter Rachel — who are far
va student, introduced in his long
more interested in the culture of the
Shabbat evening walks deep into
'60s than that of the synagogue — do
Queens with his father.
not live the lives he dreamed for them.

C