A is & Entertainment On The Bookshelf con Farmington Hills Knockin' On Heaven's Door 31005 Orchard Lake Road Just South of 14 Mile • 248-855-4866 • Open 7 Days • Catering • Kids' Menu • Dine-In or Carry Out Risa Miller's debut novel chronicles the life of a settlement town in Israel. SANDEE BRAWARSKY Special to the Jewish News Ansrtinie 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1.0%°TE 1 1 1 1 BILL Not good with any other offer One coupon per customer expires 5131/03 618110 I■ MIN MI MI MI veAl, / 4 4 . 1e,it- Aa4, lood a4,0144-tii .1 a OFF domm% 1 LUNCH 1 Dine in or Carry out ■ Expires 5/31/03 .•• —•1 --------- ■ •. 1 BUY ONE DINNER 1 GET THE SECOND FOR 1 1. 1/2 OFF Dine in only. Expires 5/3 UO3 ■ I IMM ------ a SAWASDEE T OPEN 7 DAYS ■ 248-926-1012 689440 subscribe today and save almost 41rOFF the cover price! 5/ 2 72 ined the Jewish immi- grant experience, setting their novels and short stories on the Lower East Side and places like that, where newcomers can forge their way to become Americans. Risa Miller's debut novel, Welcome to Heavenly Heights (St. Martin's Press; $23.95), is a different version of that story, with American Jews making new homes in Israel, reversing the exile. The transition can be more pressure cooker than melting pot, mixing ideal- ism, religion, bureaucracy, family com- plexities, shifting expectations, love and, never far away, violence. In this graceful and engaging work, Miller, winner of the PEN Discovery Award, succeeds in creating a world inhabited by religious Jews of different backgrounds, mostly transplanted Americans, living out the words of their long-repeated prayers to be close to Zion. She explores the many meanings of home, rootedness and community. Examining Israel Sunday 3 - 9 p.m. 6175 Haggerty, W. Bloomfield Between Maple & Pontiac Trail _ 2003 any writers have imag- A sampling of new titles about the Jewish state. RESTAURANT Mon.-Sat. 1 1 a.m.-1 0 p.m. 111 . Just as the characters in those earlier novels, set in tenements, had little pri- vacy, so too the families of the newly constructed Building Four in Heavenly Heights — with its dishwashers, built- in teak cabinets and balconies over- looking the mountains — know much about each other's lives. The stacked apart- ments are like -a vertical bungalow colony, with shared ingredients and stories, and the gang of kids playing outside. Every Friday night, when their husbands go off to synagogue, the women of Building Four gather on the largest porch "to shake off the weekday world," speak- ing the way women do when the men aren't around. Heavenly Heights is "close enough to Jordan that a combat tank starting out in Amman when you boiled your water for coffee would have you serving to its corpsmen before you finished your own first cup," she writes. The name has the 248.351.5174 SYBIL KAPLAN Special to the Jewish News OTAL JIHAD by Eric L. Rozenman (RavensYard Publishing; $17.95 paper- back) Those in the Jewish world may rec- ognize the author's name as executive editor of B'nai B'rith's International Jewish Monthly magazine from 1997 to 2002. Currently, he is Washington director for CAMERA: The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. All of this is by way of credentials for a very fine first novel. Without revealing too much of the plot, the year is April 2007. From 1993 to 2003, there has been progres- T sive dismantling of Israel until the War of Arab Unity, which leaves interna- tional monitors in Judea/Samaria, the Golan and the Islamic . Republic of Greater Palestine of which Israel is a part. The key players in this adventure novel are U.S. Rep. Jonathan Marcus, who knows a lot of things going on inside Washington and wants to save Israel; Rabbi Jeri Levi, a Virginia Reform rabbi fired for enrolling her children in a day school and for inciting her congregation to support Israel; and Admiral Fogerty, the pro-Israel born- ring of other suburbs where many Jews live, like Shaker Heights. A commuting neighborhood north of Jerusalem — a "settlement if you needed to be technical" — it is home to many new immigrants whose mort- gages are underwritten by "an unidentified do-gooder well-wisher godfather who wanted Judea settled and settled now." Welcome to Heavenly Heights is a literary novel of characters and place rather than a story driven by plot. It is unusual in its knowing depiction of an Orthodox community, from the inside, with empathy and without satire or ambivalence. "I don't know of any from lit- erary fiction that likes itself," Miller says. When she began the novel, she set it in the '80s, and it seemed timely then, but as the world was changing, she shifted the time and updated it, shad- ing in some of the violence and ten- sion. It goes up to the edge of the lat- est intifada, focusing mainly on Tova, again Christian who sent the Sixth Fleet against Arab ships in the "36 Hour War," when the Palestinians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Saudis, Pakistanis, Syrians, and Egyptians attack what is left of Israel. A string of other characters include Prime Minister Meir Sarid, former ambassador to Jordan; Mahmoul Terzi, prime minister of Arab Palestine, who wants to get all the Jews out of the area; and Aharon Tabor, kibbutznik and - hero. If you're thinking this is the 21st century's answer to Exodus, you might be right. I wonder who's already trying to buy the movie rights. There is no question Rozenman knows his subject well. He spent six months in Israel more than 20 years ago and decided to write a novel on this thought: What if the Israelis lost? Before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, he completed the novel — then waited