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November 14, 2003 - Image 69

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 2003-11-14

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

STEVE ALMOND

E

Israel as the respository of highly charged Jewish
longing is not new; it has been inspiring dreams of
glory of all stripes for centuries.

, just finish Tithe Olsen's "Tell Me a

which Kadish herself was for some months,

All of which raises an interesting ques-

adding yet another layer of complexity to this

tion: what about Israelis who are not new

already rich story of the immigrant encounter

immigrants or religious fanatics or

with Israel. Similarly, Melvin Jules Bukiet's

Holocaust survivors - in other words, the

tragicomic 2001 novel Strange Fire is told in

Israelis my writer friend was talking about,

the voice of one Nathan Kazakov, a blind,

Israelis going about their lives in something

gay, Russian émigré who works for a hawkish

resembling the everyday? Is anyone from

Israeli Prime Minister and takes a bullet in the

North America writing about them?

ear (and loses it) for his employer.

Riddle," a story that, it seems to me,

says just about everything there is to

say about how families live and die

together. The line that stood out for me

was "How have we come from our

savage past, how no longer to be sav-

ages - this to teach. To look back and

learn what humanizes - this to teach."

The answer is: some. In her finely

It's an oddly didactic moment in a

The North American Jewish obsession

wrought story, "Allog," included in the

with the Holocaust, not surprisingly, spills

Best American Short Stories anthology for

story that is otherwise rooted in per-

out into its fiction about Israel. In Kadish's

2000, the sharp-eyed Edith Pearlman

sonal forms of suffering. The point, I

moving 2001 novel, From A Sealed Room,

gives us a slice of contemporary Israeli life

think, is that the human condition exists

the poignant delusions of Holocaust sur-

in an apartment on Jerusalem's Deronda

as an object lesson in suffering and

vivor Shifra form a major thread in this

Street, a building peopled with all manner

endurance, and in the hopes of spiritual

complexly braided work. Several of

of Israelis, including - and centering on -

betterment. This has very little to do

Papernick's stories include survivors, and

the Asian- caretaker from an unnamed

with the question of belief. Olsen's

Simone Zelitch's 2001 novel Louisa, a kind

country who comes to work for one of the

characters are culturally Jewish, but

of modern recounting of the Biblical tale

families. Children, old people, a third-

emphatically secular. I'm in the same

of Ruth, tells the story of survivor Nora Gratz

generation Moroccan family, a Spanish

boat. I don't follow the laws of Moses

and her German daughter-in-law as they

soprano, a teenager whose parents are on

or Leviticus. I don't even believe in God.

attempt to make a life in the young Israel of

sabbatical in the States: these residents go

But I do believe that Judaism, in its

1949. Even Philip Roth, the scion of

to school, to work, take walks, repair their

best, most generous form, demands

American Jewish fiction, puts the

appliances, go shopping. Opening our

that we look back at history to learn

Holocaust on center stage in his 1993

eyes to an Israel we don't always see,

what humanizes. And that we obey

book, Operation Shylock: A Confession.

In

Pearlman's story gives us what we North

this wild half-autobiography, half-novel,

American readers may perhaps most crave

Roth has a character running around

nowadays, available at least in fiction if not

Jerusalem named "Philip Roth" positing

in real life: an Israel that seems, above all,

the "solution to the: Jewish Problem" as

normal and normative. No catastrophe,

Diasporismt a plan to send all the Jews of

no great drama, no hovering dark shadow

war-torn Israel back to the now relatively

of the past, or a grim future, hanging over

benign cities of Europe.

the door.

s lessons.

stely co ection,

e to ea

Metal is out in paperback. His stories have appeared in

the Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best New Stories

from the South, and, most recently, Lost Tribe:

ewish Fiction from the Edge. His next book, a work

of non-fiction about obscure candy bars, will be pub-

lished in the spring by Algonquin,

NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH CULTURE

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