By Betty Soibel
Growing up in secular Jewish household, Israeli literature was my most consistent and significant connection to my Jewish identity. I remember sitting in my suburban home in Los Angeles going on adventures with David Grossman in Someone to Run With and crying with A.B. Yehoshua in The Lover. But most of all, I remember the incredible complexity that Meir Shalev presented in his book, A Pigeon and a Boy. My mother and I both struggled immensely with the book, me with the love story, her with its representation of Israel.
It’s been years since I craved Jewish experiences and only had books to satisfy my yearnings. I’ve been blessed to have a strong community in school at Columbia/JTS, at camp, and in Israel. However, meeting with Meir Shalev brought back a flood of memories, blurry images from my childhood of how I imagined Israel before it became a reality before my eyes. It was a land that not only inspired Jewish storytelling but the place where they came alive, the characters very much real, conniving their way through small town life with endearing quirks and oddities.
Since I arrived in Israel, I feel as if that idealistic image of Israel I have always had has been chipped away bit by bit as I understand the various conflicts of Israeli society more in depth. However, I always see my critique of Ha-aretz arising from a place of deep love, and without knowing it, I had desperately needed Shalev to re-invigorate that love for me. In the most authentic Israeli manner I could have imagined, Shalev spoke of his own life as one village story, beginning from his parent’s unexpected love affair to his eccentric grandmother’s obsession with cleanliness. He saw the intricacies of his interactions with the world as a way to to bring Israeli culture alive for his readers. From the place I was standing on my Israel adventure, there was nothing that could have humbled and connected me more. He inspired me to think of the two old ladies, one dati and the other hiloni, who I had seen sharing lotion on the rakevet kala (lightrail) that morning instead of just the religious/secular divide. Or the Muslim taxi driver who made it his goal to ensure I made it home before Shabbat started when we were stuck in Jerusalem traffic, instead of simply grieving the resentment Arab citizens can feel towards the majority Jewish population.
Ultimately, I found meeting Meir Shalev to not only be incredibly exciting as an opportunity to meet an Israeli author of great fame, but also a re-kindling for my love of the people of Israel.
