Monday, October 29, 2012

The Secrets of Arab Men


Sayed Kashua has made a career out of being an anomaly: A Hebrew-speaking Muslim Israeli Arab. As a writer, he pens a weekly column for Ha'aretz, a major Israeli newspaper, and he writes the hilarious sitcom Arab Labor for Israeli TV.

His new novel, Second Person Singular, is about being Arab in a majority-Jewish country, and it's also about being a man, and a husband, and a father. In the set-up, an Arab lawyer from Jerusalem--we never learn his name--finds a love letter inside a secondhand book, written in his wife's handwriting. It's addressed to someone named Yonatan--a Jewish name. Consumed with jealousy, the lawyer attempts to track down the letter's original recipient, a quest which takes him across the country--ending in a poor Arab village, just like the one where he grew up.

Most of the book takes place inside the lawyer's head, but it's about very real conflicts--with the lawyer's wife, who was the first woman he ever dated (and whom he still doesn't know very well), and with Israeli Jews, whose upward mobility he identifies with, but whose social and sexual mores threaten him.

Second Person Singular is a startling novel about a culture in Israel that's all but invisible. As the lawyer becomes consumed by tracking down Yonatan, the pressure builds to a crescendo in his head--showing us the very real insanity caused by clashes of both relationships and cultures.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Are You a Member of the Scribe? You Can Become One


ABOUT MEMBERS OF THE SCRIBE

The latest in Jewish literature, culled from all ages and all genres. Members of the Scribe is a collaboration between MyJewishLearning and Jewish Book Council, a blog written by the authors of some of today's best new books. Each week, we'll have a different author helming the blog and writing about their book, their Judaism, their own favorite authors, and whatever inspired madness they choose to bring.

Storytellers

By: Stefanie Pervos Bregman 

 As a Jewish blogger and editor, I always say that the period leading up to Jewish Book Month is one of my favorite times of the year. So many books come across my desk for review—I only wish I had the time to read them all. Each author, each new book, is not just a potential article for my magazine or blog post. To me, every author—whether they write fiction or non-fiction— is a storyteller, adding their own piece to our collective Jewish story.

living jewishlyThis year the tables have turned, and I’m the one hoping and wishing that Jewish editors and writers will choose my book from among the great pile for review—the thought makes me feel proud, humble and frightened all at once.

In putting together my new anthology, Living Jewishly: A Snapshot of a Generation, I hoped to be a storyteller as well. In the Jewish world, engaging 20- and 30-somethings is a hot button issue—questions like ‘How do we get young Jews to feel connected to Israel? To affiliate with traditional Jewish institutions? To care about Jewish continuity, ritual and tradition?’ float around waiting to be answered.


Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The Jewish Don Quixote


Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote is considered one of the greatest books of all time. So it's no surprise that the epic is subject to plenty of parodies and spoofs, including a Jewish version, written by one of the founders of modern Yiddish and Hebrew literature, Shalom Yakov Abramowich, commonly known by the name of his most famous character, Mendele the Book Peddler.

In Abramowich’s novella The Brief Travels of Benjamin the Third, we're told the story of two "fools" from a poor Jewish town who get the travel bug in a major way—yearning  to find the Jewish kingdom that they have read about in the legends of the Ten Lost Tribes.

But like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Benjamin and his crony Sendrel don't make it very far. In fact, they barely make it past their own town limits before falling into hijinx after hijinx.

The title of the book itself refers to a well-known travelogue by the medieval Spanish-Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela, making Benjamin the Third a book steeped in the influence of other texts.