![\"image](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/dec-20-cov.20.JBF-pre-event-Arad-The-Hebrew-Teacher-for-web.jpg\")
<\/a>The title story, \u201cThe Hebrew Teacher,\u201d is brilliant. When Ilana arrived in the United States from Israel in 1971 and started teaching, her Hebrew classes, both children and adult, at her synagogue and at the university, were packed: \u201cParents wanted their children to be able to chat in Hebrew, not just recite the prayers\u2026. Everyone wanted to know a little Hebrew before they visited Israel. They wanted to learn the new songs.\u201d Of course, those songs are far from new at this point in Ilana\u2019s career, yet she still holds them and their visions of Israel dear.<\/p>\nBut enrolment in the Hebrew-language university courses has been dropping for almost two decades, both because \u201cIsrael was a tough sell these days. It wasn\u2019t the fledgling little country of 45 years ago. Nor was Ilana the same beaming young woman who\u2019d arrived, thick copper braid over one shoulder, to regale the riveted students with stories about hiking from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee, working on a kibbutz, and firing an Uzi when she served in the Israel Defence Forces.\u201d<\/p>\n
Into Ilana\u2019s tenuous professional world \u2013 her husband has just retired from the university and other key allies have moved on \u2013 comes a new hire, Yoad Bergman-Harari, who\u2019d been born Yoad Harari but had \u201cadded on his father\u2019s original name, Bergman.\u201d When Ilana asks why, he responds, \u201c\u2018To negate the negation of the diaspora\u2019 \u2026 as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
The differences in their worldviews \u2013 particularly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict \u2013 and approach to collegiality are stark. While Ilana has taught at the university for decades, she holds none of the cards here, as Yoad is the latest newfangled intellectual thing, and a professor, so can pretty much write his own ticket, and does.<\/p>\n
In \u201cA Visit (Scenes),\u201d Miriam comes to the States for a three-week visit with her only child, Yoram, his wife Maya and their son Yonatan. Miriam makes the journey because her son rarely returns to Israel and she has yet to meet her grandson in person. In a string of short snippets, mostly from Miriam\u2019s perspective but also from Yoram\u2019s and Maya\u2019s, we are privy to what everyone is feeling \u2013 which boils down to a lot of unhappiness. The lack of honest, open communication contributes to the tensions and dissatisfactions, which build as the visit goes on.<\/p>\n
The final story, \u201cMake New Friends,\u201d is kind of mystifying at first, as we watch Efrat, an educated, successful woman with a good husband, start to spiral as she tries to protect their unpopular teenaged daughter from being hurt by so-called friends. She gets way too involved, even entering the teen social media universe, and it\u2019s only when Efrat realizes that she herself doesn\u2019t belong to any group or have any real friends that she begins to understand her reactions (and actions) to her daughter\u2019s situation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One review of The Hebrew Teacher<\/i> comments that Arad, in these novellas, \u201cprobes the demise of idealism and the generation gap that her heroines must confront.\u201d This is an apt description. And it could be said that Nevo also explores the demise of idealism in Inside Information<\/i>, which was translated from Hebrew into English by Sondra Silverston.<\/p>\n In \u201cDeath Road,\u201d while on a trip to Bolivia following the recent breakup of his marriage, Omri runs into newlyweds Ronen and Mor. Once back in Israel, he reads in the newspaper about the death of Ronen in a cycling accident in Bolivia. He decides to go to the shiva \u2013 as he drives there, his \u201cmind filled with more and more images of Mor\u2019s surprise nocturnal visit to my room two weeks earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n As Omri lays out the story, he proves an unreliable narrator. Nothing ultimately ends up being what it seems at first. More details become known. Questions arise. It\u2019s a thriller of sorts, but one that doesn\u2019t seem all that original or urgent. There are twists but nothing that\u2019ll stop readers in their tracks.<\/p>\n The femme fatale reappears in the next story, \u201cFamily History,\u201d this time in the form of a young medical resident who supposedly mistakes the ostensibly paternal gesture of the respected Dr. Caro for sexual harassment and files a complaint that threatens the good doctor\u2019s reputation. Even as Caro tells his story, he\u2019s trying to convince himself as much as us about the purity of his motivations. But he\u2019s a widower who obviously loved his wife, he seems well-liked at work and good at his job. He is a more empathetic character than Omri, and the twist in this story does elicit some surprise, and puts Caro\u2019s actions into an even darker light.<\/p>\n The last part of the novel, \u201cA Man Walks Into An Orchard,\u201d is a direct rift on the talmudic tractate about four Jewish sages who went into pardes<\/i>, which means both paradise and orchard, and only one came out unharmed. In Nevo\u2019s story, husband and wife Ofer and Chelli go for one of their regular Saturday walks in the orchard. This Saturday, though, Ofer needs to pee, so he gives his phone to Chelli and goes into the trees, while she waits on the road. And waits. He never comes back. He is never found.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The way in which Chelli and her two children work through their loss is emotionally engaging. She and her son become estranged, while she and her daughter become closer as they search Ofer\u2019s blogs for clues to his potential whereabouts. He had intended to complete 100 stories of 100 words each, and then publish a book. He had posted his 99th story the week before he disappeared.<\/p>\n There is something satisfying in this third tale, though it takes a detour into Chelli\u2019s drug-induced visions to somewhat resolve the mystery of Ofer\u2019s disappearance. It highlights our desire for things to make sense, to know what happened. When that\u2019s impossible, storytelling can fill in the blanks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Maya Arad and Eshkol Nevo event on Jan. 19 takes place at 1 p.m., at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. Olga Campbell gives a talk on her memoir (jewishindependent.ca\/a-multidimensional-memoir<\/a>) and its exhibit on Jan. 23, 7 p.m., at the Zack Gallery. The book festival and the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre present a talk by Roger Frie on his book <\/i>Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism and the Holocaust on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jan. 27, 7 p.m. The festival itself opens Feb. 22 \u2013 with Selina Robinson in conversation about her new memoir, T<\/i>ruth Be Told \u2013 and runs through Feb. 27. Events will be posted at jccgv.com\/jewish-book-festival<\/a> as they are confirmed.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Maya Arad and Eshkol Nevo are featured in the JCC Jewish Book Festival prologue event Jan. 19. The JCC Jewish Book Festival begins its 40th year with a discussion that\u2019s sure to be as intriguing as it is relevant. The two Israeli writers featured in the festival prologue event Jan. 19 \u2013 Maya Arad and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45680,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[20232,6133,4330,9857,23736,23737,22629,3825],"class_list":["post-45679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-eshkol-nevo","tag-fiction","tag-israel","tag-jcc-jewish-book-festival","tag-maya-arad","tag-novellas","tag-novels","tag-translation"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>The first two stories of the novel have similar plotlines \u2013 men who are led by their sexual desires to act in illegal or inappropriate ways. The main difference between the protagonists is that the \u201chero\u201d in \u201cDeath Road,\u201d Omri, goes mostly willingly towards his potential downfall while Dr. Caro, the main character of \u201cFamily History,\u201d tries to convince himself that he did nothing wrong.<\/p>\n