Remembering the Old when the New sweeps us away (unnamed Midwestern university and Silicon Valley, California; present-day): The Hebrew Teacher is a literary gem, with universal appeal.
Brilliantly told by Israeli-American Maya Arad, Stanford University scholar and writer-in-residence at the Taube Center for Jewish Studies. The Hebrew Teacher is the only one of Arad’s nearly a dozen novels written in Hebrew English readers now have access to. A literary win since she’s considered, “The finest living author writing in Hebrew” outside Israel. You’ll see why.
The wonderfully accessible prose translated by multiple-award winning “Hebrew literary translator” Jessica Cohen deserves a shout out too for the “art and craft” of her work. Cohen also translated All the Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan, memorable seven years later (see: https://enchantedprose.com/all-the-rivers/).
“The whole point of great literature is connecting one human mind and heart with another,” wrote Eileen Pollack, creative writing professor emerita from the University of Michigan in Poets & Writer’s Jan/Feb 2024 “Inspiration” issue. You’ll feel those connections to Arad’s three older Israeli narrators now living in America who tell the three stories – novellas – that unite important themes and form the novel:
- Ilana, in her late-sixties. “The Hebrew Teacher” whose story earns the novel’s title.
- Miriam, in her early eighties, visiting America, California, for the first time in “The Visit (Scenes).” To see the son she hasn’t seen in twenty-years, his twenty-year younger wife of seven years, and her only grandchild, a loner toddler boy.
- Efrat, old enough to have a thirteen-year-old daughter and discover a deeply troubling online world where, “Everything happens on phones” in “Make New Friends.”
Each story presents conflicts and struggles between Old versus New worlds on a wide range of complex issues. Each nostalgic and melancholy, seeking acceptance when possible.
“The Hebrew Teacher,” the shortest at eighty-three pages, packs a gut-punch. Framing tough questions and differing perspectives, some carrying into the other two stories. Alluding to, suggesting, and exploring: literary, linguistic, cultural, social/sociological, philosophical, ethical/moral, mental health/identity, motherhood/parenting, and technological issues. It’s the story that lets readers sense that each word has been thoughtfully considered as to how much to say, imply, leave open for the reader to interpret and contemplate.
The first story also raises hot-button political controversies. Subtly, cryptically, reading between-the-lines, tip-toeing, trying to hold back from what becomes obvious, serious, offensive, and intensely upsetting to the teacher who built the university’s Hebrew language program from scratch, elevating it to the Jewish Studies program before it became integrated with the Middle Eastern Studies program. The story that defies acceptance, hitting the core of who Ilana is.
Note: Just as Ilana tells us she’s not a political person, neither is this review and blog. The essence of Ilana’s story is an ideological political divide when the university she’s devoted her American life to hires a hot-shot, thirty-year old, Yoad Bergman-Harari, appointing him Hebrew Professor, so it’s imperative to discuss political viewpoints.
Despite Yoad’s outright rudeness, condescension, and lack of respect towards Ilana (and her other colleagues), she tries to rationalize his behavior, going out of her way to welcome him and extend kindness. Until he makes it abundantly clear he’s fervently anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian to the extent that there’s no room for discussion, compromise since he views the conflict as black versus white. No vision for a two-state solution. He goads her, not only with his one-sided, fervent politics but his manners towards someone twice his age. Someone “who was Hebrew at this college.”
The generational divide between Young and Old – attitudes towards ageism, new ideas, customs, values versus traditional ones are at play. How to be valued by youth? How to protect what you’ve created? How to remember what happened, what survived, what millions strive to keep? Contrary to Yoad, there’s nothing black-or-white about these existential questions.
Ilana, a caring, sensitive soul, cannot believe Yoad was selected for a position titled Hebrew Professor when he’s not at all interested in anything Jewish. He doesn’t teach Hebrew or Jewish literature, only uses Hebrew documents as sources for the work he’s immersed in on Martin Heidegger, the German-Jewish philosopher who was a Nazi. One of Yoad’s comments, “I’m a Comparative Literature professor, not a summer camp counselor in the Catskills” belie anti-Semitism, or the perception of it.
He also raises other non-political questions on the nature of Jewish Literature, Comparative Literature, and teaching Hebrew over Yiddish (his preference). Hebrew and Yiddish are different Jewish languages. Yiddish conversational and tied to the historical European diaspora; Hebrew seen as biblical is the historic main language of the Jewish people. Ilana points out that learning Modern Hebrew is an avenue for understanding and peace.
You’ll appreciate the brilliance of the opening line when the story comes full circle. Reflecting far more than learning a language, it’s introduced in quick brushstrokes over decades of evolving and shifting attitudes towards Israel. Beginning in 1948 when it fought for statehood (same year Ilana was born) to the early seventies when, “Everyone wanted to know a few words” of Hebrew “before they visited Israel,” to today.
“It wasn’t a very good time for Hebrew” she writes. Four lines later she wonders if instead she should say, “It was not a very good time for Hebrew.” Forty-five years in America, The Hebrew Teacher “still could not write a simple sentence in English.”
Written soon after the 2014 Israel-Gaza War named Operative Protective Edge (see enlightening interview “Academia and Israeli Expats”), when support for Israel had changed. The writing feels prescient.
Ilana defends Midwestern academia as equal to East and West Coast schools (where Yoad comes from). Noteworthy too since Arad teaches at a prestigious California university and set the next two novellas there. Stanford is among the major US universities where students have waged their own war protesting the Israeli-Hamas War.
“A Visit (Scenes),” the 2nd novella, uses a clever writing technique dividing the 100+ page story into scenes or vignettes, creating a sense of dislocation, alienation, a dropping in. Anyone whose children don’t live near them, in this case a far distance, knows the angst of not being a close part of their children’s and grandchild’s life, while developing a positive relationship with your DIL.
The “scenes” are relatable and sad when the grandmother is awkwardly, achingly, repeatedly unwelcomed. Anyone who’s been a victim of MIL jokes knows they’re not funny. Most poignant is the lengthy estrangement between mother and son. What has she done so wrong he can’t spend a moment with her? What about gratitude for her love? The story also examines the plight of working mothers – the aloneness – and how hard it is to raise, nurture, and protect your children at every stage, starting with the preschool years.
Loneliness and relationships are deepened in the last story. “Make New Friends” also means how to keep them, applying to young and old. A story about belonging and competitiveness at school and at work that echoes the mental harm blamed on a digital world that doesn’t filter out cruelty, along with the cut-throat high-tech world.
Friends can outgrow each other. Contrary to this wise novel touching hearts and minds that won’t lose its importance.
Lorraine