r° r st 6 o CC P. • Gift Baskets • Sweet Trays • Muffins • Soups • Cookies Arts Entertainment On The Bookshelf Everything :'lade Fresh Daily `Sunday Jews' Nonagenarian author Hortense Calisher explores a family united in blood but divided by ideas. Try oar Chapels Bread! $1.00 Off Any Bread Order 1 coupon per order Expires 8115102 ' not good with any other discount or special offer 24-hour notice please on specialty items (some exceptions) 6879 Orchard Lake Rd. in the Boardwalk Plaza 248-626-9110 MORE THAN OMELETTES GEST OMELETTES Four Star Rating/Detroit News & Free Press Full Breakfast & Lunch Menu 1/2 OFF Purchase one entree and receive 50% off second entree of equal or greater value COUPON Notvalid on Sunday and Holidays • Children's Menu • Non Smoking 39560 Fourteen Mile Road (248) 926-0717 F, CLICK, CALL, DATE it's that easy www.detroitjewishnews.com click on "Personals" Questions? 800.694.2269 8/ 2 2002 78 SANDEE BRAWARSKY Special to the Jewish News y ou have a Jewish meniory," Zipporah Zangwill Duffy's father told her, as they spoke of inter- marriage, assimilation and Jewish identity, topics frequently bubbling to the surface in Hortense Calisher's latest novel, Sunday Jews (Harcourt; $28). She recalls her father's words —"still the best said to her on the subject, by anyone" — many years later, as an anthropologist and matriarch of a large family with many of mixed backgrounds. Calisher is often described as a "writer's writer" for her stylish prose, with long sentences that take their time, moving to a graceful literary beat. A past president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and of PEN, she states, "I write for a reader I respect." Over a long and distinguished career, Calisher, who is 90, has written many novels, novellas, short stories, essays and two autobiographical works, comprising more than 20 volumes, many of them set in New York City. Sunday Jews is her first novel to deal with Jewish themes. her anthropological research. The truth is that he is suffering the beginning stages of dementia and doesn't want his family, friends and col- leagues to see him in this ever-deteriorating state. On that Sunday, they learn of the murder of Lev, a fre- quent guest whose late wife was a Boston cousin of the family. And then they meet Debra, his fiancee, who ulti- mately travels with Zipporah and Peter, and then mysteri- ously disappears, to appear again later on in the novel, years later, when she is tracked down by a favorite Duffy grand- son who has become a rabbi. SU NDAY E WS. Family Saga Zipporah's Boston parents were Reform Jews, secure in their heritage; they "wouldn't deny what they were, but they were flattered if you had to ask." While Zipporah is at the center of the novel, her children, grandchildren and friends are also portrayed, in the details of their lives and their Jewish identifica- tion, or lack of. One son, Charles, whose wife is Chinese, is a physicist and a judge who hopes to be named to the Supreme Court. Another son, Gerald, is a banker who's very involved with his synagogue; his wife Familiar Milieu Feigele insists on being called Kitty. In an interview in her Manhattan home, Zach, the youngest, who's an artist, has Calisher explains that among the things two wives. Erika, a museum curator who that prompted her to think about writ- works with Judaica, is the keeper of the ing Sunday Jews were "comments, fairly family's Jewish heritage, and Nell is an invidious, from Orthodox Jews about Calisher's work has been compared attorney and single mother whose chil- assimilated Jews, that we would prove with that of Eudora Welty and dren have different Jewish fathers. the annihilation of the race." Henry James. The Duffys' neighbor and close friend "I know about as much about assimi- Norman, an attorney who's a widower, is lated Jews as anyone else would. My family has been here at once self-conscious and confident in his Jewish identity: for a long time. We have intermarried and we have not. By He never goes to synagogue but plays cards with those who and large, we're still Jewish," she says. do, and leaves a considerable sum in his will to the temple As a novelist, she continues, "what you do is you see a he left. He gets very annoyed when the word "assimilated" world and you want to write about it." She says the book is is applied to him or to Jews with habits like his. not autobiographical, but this is a milieu she knows. Throughout the novel, there's much conversation, reflec- The bold title refers to Zipporah's habit of gathering her tion and argument about issues of aging, relationships, intergenerational clan for informal Sunday afternoons in family ties, faith and Jewish continuity. - the West End Avenue Manhattan townhouse where she and "All cases of assimilation are special. That, Zipporah her husband Peter, a philosopher and self-described lapsed reflects, is what distinguishes us from the Orthodox." Catholic, raised their six children, one of whom died. The phrase is also used "half-fondly" by an Israeli woman Jewish Identity named Debra; for her, "Sunday Jews" is a reproach obser- vant Jews might direct toward their less observant co-reli- As the plot moves ahead, it also spreads deeper, as Calisher gionists. plumbs the inner lives and thoughts of her characters. The At close to 700 pages, the novel is an old-fashioned fami- book has the feel of a painting in process, with details filled ly saga. It opens on one of Zipporah's Sundays, with all of in with a nonlinear style of strokes both subtle and intense. the family gathered. Soon after, she and Peter will depart, There is humor too. The whole work of art is visible at with plans to revisit many of the sites where she has done the end. Its impact is life affirming.