Songs for the Broken Hearted by Ayelet Tsabari

I waited to read this book my whole year. After reading Ayelet Tsabari´s eyes widening memoir and few of her short stories, I knew that this author will be on my TBR for ever. Israeli of Yemeni origin, she is openly sharing stories telling stories that were rarely shared before: the Yemenite babies affair, the cultural clash, the denied identities. 

I was able to fulfill my bookish fantasy this week, except that I did something much better: I got the audiobook which is read by the author with Yossi Zabari and Assaf Cohen, starts and ends with an original song sang with the inflections of the Yemeni dialect, with names pronounced with the right accent. It added so much value to the average reading experience.

Songs for the Broken Hearted is a beautiful secret love story, of Saida, a Yemeni married woman, who met his love Yaqub in the immigrants´ camp in Rosh Ha´ayin, had to leave once their affair discovered only to meet again 40 years after. Love can be so strong and remain lit no matter how many times separate from the encounter. Zohara, the rebelious daughter, is called from Thailand to her mother´s funeral and got enthralled in the search for the secrets of her estranged mother. A typical story of mother and daughter, taking place in the incertainties and tensions following the Oslo Accords.

Every detail of the setting is a revelation for the reader; the ways in which the characters are built, their ambiguities and unexpected private episodes; the political and social context and the ways in which the new identities - Yemeni, Mizrahi - are reshaped, decades after the first arrival and many disappointments that did not diminish however the deep attachment to the land of Israel. Songs for the Broken Hearted is a human chronicle which unfolds in the most genuine possible way. 

Some stories shall be told and once aired they may change completely the way one looks at life, history and love too. Life will be completely different, poorer, without those stories, I am convinced.

Rating: 5 stars

Book Review: The Memory Monster by Yishai Sarid

´Don´t you know people are murderous? It´s in our nature´.

Some books invites you to the journey but let you take the rest of it by yourself. Sometimes, the journey means that you are faced with your own fears and misconceptions or beliefs. Sometimes, your only companion is the memory monster.

The Memory Monster by the Israeli writer Yishai Sarid - a name that I previously mentioned on the blog many years ago - is a short book but long enough to wake you up. That´s why people write and read books, in order to be faced with new realities and exposed to new ideas that may contradict their average ways of thinking and being. I´ve read the English translation from Hebrew, beautifully rendered by Yardenne Greenspan. 

Written as a 1st person account of a PhD in history, former guide to the concentration camps in Israel, who writes his report to the chairman of the Yad Vashem after being dismissed. After years and years of guiding people from a camp to another in Poland, the memory monster wants its share. 

The unnamed author of the report, the character of the book who writes at the first person, was ´drawn to the technical details of the annihilation: the mechanism, the manpower, the method´. His PhD topic and the subsequent book were on the topic of: Unity and Distinction in German Death Camps. Methods and actions during WWII.

Over and over again, he repeats a story that soon will take him over. It´s a mechanical repetition focused on the process, the mechanisms, the balance of power - ´to gain any kind of social standing, man must be capable of killing´. This acknowledgement of the mechanisms of power, repeated over and over again, obliterates the person, leaves place to imagination only. It forgets the persons, many of them anyway forgotten with anyone left to tell their stories. Most importantly, it amplifies the victimization stories and confirms the victory of the murderers. ´The chamber was connected to the motor of an old tank and the people inside were posoned with carbon monoxide, the guide continued, using phrases that glorified the process´. 

But what about the yearly ´March of the living´ bringing young Israeli to visit the deserted places of the concentration camps, wrapped in the blue and white flag, singing songs about how life will always prevail? Who won, in the end, those left with multi-generational trauma to cope with, or those who lost the war but are nowadays in the position to study and analyse and film what their grandparents did and visit Israel and found the country ´interesting´? Whose narrative won - the victims´ or those who made them victims? Is the fact that the murderers were in a position of power when they killed 6 million people perpetuate in fact their victory? How to read the fact that the oppressor´s pattern is considered an example worth following by some of the young participants to the tours? Sooner or later, we will be all eaten out by the memory monster.

I would be curious how those questions and dilemma reads out by someone who does not have any connection - emotional or historical - with the Shoah. For those for whom those connections exist, 

For those who do, this book open up beautifully so many memory wounds. Could it be that keeping them open is the best antidote to the memory monster?

Rating: 4 stars

Book Review: The Drive by Yair Assulin

The Drive by Yair Assulin is NOT a book against the compulsory military service in Israel. Is NOT a book written from a leftist perspective - although the author is a regular contributor to the Haaretz, the fanion of the left in Israel. The Drive is instead a book about chronical depression and masculinity misunderstood.

An unnamed young man is driving with his father to the WHO (Mental Health Office) at Tal Hashomer in Ramat Gan. He is a non-combat unit after being discovered that he has asthma. His family, especially his father, although is fully supporting him, cannot understand what is happening to him and keep outlining the risks of leaving the army altogether. The further integration into civil life in Israel depends at a great extent of the evaluations one got durin the military service. Being officially stamped as mentally unfit means not only a stigma for life, but also a very limited chance of professional achievement and for finding a partner as well (especially in the religious circles, as the narrator of the story is religious too).

But he cannot ignore for ever what is happening to him. ´(...) I knew that someone looking from the outside could not even begin to comprehend the suffocation that filled me each time I took the train to the base, the insurmontable pain I felt when I walked through those gates, the fear of something I cannot describe or define, the horribly cramped sensation that was unrelated to anything, certaninly not to a particular place or space´.

As the story evolves, so it is the story of the chronical depression, through the eyes from his family and people he is in touch with at the military base. ´I looked at Dad. He saw my look and put his hand on mine. I told him I was sorry, and he said that was nothing to sorry about, that he knew I was telling the truth, but all he was saying, again, was that he could not understand what was so bad for me than, and that he throught or feared I wasn´t telling him everything, because if I was then he simply could not understand what it was so bad´. 

He is banging his head against the wall, he is crying, he is about to jump in the front of a car. His interest in politics and the surrounded reality is disappearing. There is no more ´us´, it is only him and his pain and anguist. He feels trapped inside himself. Meanwhile, he is surrounded by arrogant and self-important people, keen to humiliate the others. He is turning madder and madder from a day to another, but it is not enough for the other people to notice the pain. ´(...) that betrayal of words, the capacity of people to say things without really meaning them, or to say things or take them back, or even to say them and deny they´d ever said them - that betrayel drives me mad´. ´My soul was genuinely threatening to explore at any moment. I really wanted to die. Every morning I wanted to die when I woke up and saw that miserable gray room with its four bunk beds, and the other soldiers getting dressed and polishing their boots, and I realized that another horribly normal day was about to begin´.

The emotional pain and restlesness are described in the smallest details and it is written depression all over the pages. The torments of the mind and of the heart are heartbreaking.

The army system in itself, with sometimes false gratifications doesn´t satisfy him, it deepens his pains and alienation. ´I repeated that the army was suffocating me. I said that all around the world, this was the age when a person shone by flourishing and I felt as if I were dying in the army. Why did we Israelis have to do that? I said I was dying, that I couldn´t breathe in that place´. They say in Israel that army is the school of life, that it makes you grow up fast and mature faster, For many, the friendships made in the Army lasts a lifetime. Everyone knows from an early age how their life will be after finishing high-school: the psychometric tests, the medical evaluations, the army service. This is the duty as it is the miluim, the reserve duty. Those few who actually skipped for different reasons the army service do not share it. But unless one has rich parents to set up a company for them, applying for work without the army service is a recipe for long time unemployment. The very religious who are not going to the army by principle do not deal with such issues, as they are supposed to spend time learning Torah in the kollel anyway. 

It is a complex issue, but this is not the aim of the book. Depression is a lifelong companion and its fights are by far harder than the ones fought in the army. The Drive is a testimony of the terrible true of this disease, no matter where and what context.

At first, I was a bit disappointed how abruptly the book ends. But, after all, the book it is called The Drive and it ends when the drive is over and the military psychiatrist put him on extended leave. 

I´ve read the book, that was awardede Sapir in the English translation by the excellent Jessica Cohen, the artisan of all the good Hebrew books translations.

Rating: 4 stars

About Amos Oz

It really hurts me to know that Amos Oz is no more. That I will not have to wait another book or article or public position of him. Politically speaking, I might have shared a different perspective, but his sense of measure and balance belongs to a world that it is about to dissapear both physically and intellectually.

The dialogue he has with Shira Hadad - editor of Hebrew fiction and writer of TV drama series with a PhD about the works of Agnon - covers a variety of topics, most of them regarding his writing, personal history and experiences. I´ve read the German translated from Hebrew published as Was ist ein Apfel? (in English, What is an apple?), authored by Anne Birkenhauer, who translated into German also David Grossman, Aharon Appelfeld and Eshkol Nevo, among others.

People like Amos Oz are living history of the state of Israel, complementary to the political and military story. A story that at its very beginning counted among the elites no professional politicians, but people that grew up in old countries with a sense for literature and poetry but also with experience in the military combat. A completely mix of personalities that the new elites.

New times always require new elites and new characters and it is normal to be so. However, once you´ve had the chance to acknowledge differences, you will always be left with the taste of regret. Because you want to have someone to disagree with, that brings a different, moderate, anti-fanatical perspective. This book of conversations, published originally in 2018, the year of his death, shows Oz´s despise for fanaticism wherever it arises, not only in politics, but equally in literary field or the gender relations. Regardless of what you think about a topic, listening/reading to a different, more balanced opinion, helps from a critical thinking perspective.

In addition of the snippets of Israeli history, including his realistic memories about the life in the kibbutz, there are the slow stories about his writing process and how he was looking for sources of inspiration that I enjoyed the most. I can imagine him walking the streets slowly, observing other people, listening to their stories from afar, without interacting or disturbing. There are not too many people like him left.

Rating: 4 stars

Kibbuzim versus Settlements - The Hilltop by Assaf Gavron

Very often one can read in the media opinions, news and condemnations of the 'settlers', 'settlements' and 'hilltop youth'. Who are they, what do they believe in, what are they fighting for, and against whom?

Kibbutzim versus Settlements

Instead of thinking in terms of religious choice and ideological apologies, the literary setting is the best for an easy immersion into this new 'political soul'. At the very beginning of the state of Israel, the kibbutzim, with their revolutionary communist perfect social and political matrix were the main ideology. Money and children education and daily working tasks were shared among the members, whose membership was accepted only by a explicit decision of the va'ad - local committee. It was a fascinating adventure that fascinated not only the European Jews that escaped the WWII horrors, but also non-Jewish visitors from all over the world, inclulding the ayatollahs' advisor Jalal Al-e Ahmad who even wrote a book The Israeli Republic where he shared his enthusiasm about this political and social setting (more about this book on another occcasion). The members of the kibbutzim were deeply non- and anti-religious. Some religious kibbutzim - or rather moshavim, where a certain form of property was allowed - were later created in order to answer a newly need for religious expression. 

After the 1970s, with an Israel more self-aware and confident in its military strength and political identity, new religious waves, both among the locally-born Jews (the sabras, literally translated as cacti, with their rough character but with a juicy soul ) and the new immigrants, especially from America. Some might say that those ones brought from the exalted Evangelist communities a certain fanatical approach to religious fervor, introducing music and dance and outbursts of feelings as part of their new 'born-again' identity. The traditional Hasidic/Haredi Jews will rather stay away of those. Those 'born-again', among them highly educated intellectuals and rabbis, will rather prefer to settle themselves and their growing families in the 'settlements', communities created in Shomron, Gush Etzion or the late Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip that Ariel Sharon brought to an end in 2005.

Therefore, as the kibbutzim are slowly dying, and they lost their appeal, especially among young people, and many of them even went through a relative 'privatization', they are replaced by the settlements. A religiously-centered Zionism is what for many is the right vision of a country that against all odds insist to exist. Based on the religious learning attributed to the Rav Avraham Isaac Kook - as most of his learning was not written by him and during his lifetime, but collected and turned into volumes by his son Zvi Yehuda - the settlement movement infused a different layer into the original Zionism, with a Biblical basis and a spiritual direction. It is not the time and the place to delve into a deep critic/analysis of it.

Meet the Hilltop people

This was a very basic introduction to the 'settlement' movement as a counter-reaction to the kibbutzim phenomenon, as The Hilltop by Assaf Gavron is mostly building his story along those lines. Gavron, which is considered one of the most important Israeli writers of the 'new generation', wrote part of the book in a cabin in a West Bank settlement. 

His people and their animals - a camel cow (whose milk is apparently kosher enough to feed the holy people) or a dog called Condoleezza - are populating a fictional community neighbouring an equally fictional community called Ma'aleh Hermesh. How they succeeded to settle there, survived and easily escaped several attempts to get evicted, only the complicated kafkaesque Israeli bureaucracy can answer. But when officials - of any kind - are appearing in the book, be sure that you are guaranteed a good laugh, exactly as in the everyday reality. 

The members of the community are equally hilarious and tragi-comical. Gabi, the born again Breslav, Shin Beth informers, teenagers 'bravely' fighting against Arabs in Second Life. Each of the characters present in the book are interesting, but I've find most of the time their interaction rather uninteresting, repetitive and relatively boring. It's like you have a lot of good cards on your hand, but at the end, the final combination is predictable. When the novel is over 400 pages, you might have a lot of good expectations, actually.

However, although the construction is relatively sloppy sometimes, and especially if you have a realistic and direct experience of life in the 'settlements' once in a while it is boring to tears, for someone not familiar with it, it might bring some good information and insights and a comical edge that is obviously missing in the (only) tragical media reports. 

Rating: 3 stars

Book Review: Homesick, by Eshkol Nevo

Back online, instead of focusing on the protests in Israel, or the forecasts for September or not even the Nine Days - not because of lack of consideration, but because my words are still looking for a proper shape to enter the real world. Instead, I would like to write about my latest literary discovery: Eshkol Nevo and its Homesick (translated by Sondra Silverston).

The author is the grandson of the former Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol and is teaching, among others, creative writing. I didn't know too much about him or his career before buying the book, driven by the double curiosity I always have when in a good bookstore in Israel: discovering a new author but also finding something new about the Israeli society.

Most part of the good Israeli pieces of literature are sociological accounts about the society and the people, in a country where history is always on the making. In other countries - I don't want to make nominations - you could have the luxury to meditate about love, time, friendship and relationship as absolute values - beyond time and geography. Based on the books I've read by now, I dare to say that Israeli literature is an example of producing quality works and creating a debate about eternal values under the pressure of events. The humans are changing and adjusting themselves in coordination or against the daily events, be it Rabin's death - the time frame of the book - or terrorist attacks.

The story of Amir and Noa is related with other stories of the people living in the building - all the accounts are mostly first person accounts of other stories. Their story is reflected and connected with other people's stories and they discover and abandon themselves through them. In this fragile world when your life is always under the threat of changes, you can't be alone and although you don't want to, you can't be alone. You need the others to re comfort yourself or they need you for a little piece of advice. You carry through the others your own stories and you are part of their stories as well. This is exactly the explanation of Modi's homesick: Amir's best friend present in the book by his backpacking stories from South America is longing for being home and for writing to somebody in his mother tongue. Noa's graduation project is about longing too. The Arab Saddiq is longing too for something his parents told him about and are longing about. Sima, the neighbor, is longing for a revival of her marriage, as his husband is hardly able to separate completly of his religious family whose comfort is longing too. The kid Yotam's family is also longing about his brother, Gidi, killed in Lebanon an event that dramatically disturbed the whole family universe. At the end, they will decide to leave for Australia and we can continue writing by ourselves their story of understanding the "homesickness".

The original title of the story, in Hebrew is: Arbaa baatim ve-gaagua - Four houses and longing, a sense kept in the German translation of the book: Vier Häuser und eine Sehnsucht, I prefer to the English choice.

What I appreciated about the book is the assumed neutrality role of the writer: you are presented histories and facts and connections. You are not offered political messages or any kind of subliminal messages. It is how a good piece of literature should be. A quality book recommendation for the summer.