Book Review & Discussion - All the Rivers

okay okay you're good to go Joel okay hi everyone my name is Joel grman and along with Ethan P who you can see on the

screen we're going to be discussing a book by darit rabinyan called all the rivers and before I start talking about

all the rivers I want to just ask how many people may remember Mrs Fields Cookies anybody remember Mrs Fields cookies okay so if you remember Mrs

Fields cookies you you may remember that they didn't sell them in the supermarket next to the Oreos Mrs Fields had stores and lots of shopping malls and she had

absolutely delicious very large chocolate chip cookies and the best thing about Mrs field cookies is that when you went to the

store on the front counter there was a big bowl full of pieces of one of the cookies and they were free samples and you could just take a free sample of

this delicious chocolate chip cookie and so our main goal tonight Ethan and I we will be those broken off pieces of Mrs Fields cookies we are free samples

tonight we want to give you some understand standing of the wonderful Israeli writer dorit rinon and talk about her best known book and Ethan will

explain why that's her best known book uh when he talks a little bit later uh because what we really want to do is encourage everyone to come to the first

ever bar link scholar in Residence weekend which is going to take place beginning on October 28th a little more than a month from now and after all of

theim so we're going to get you a free sample a little taste of what the writing of dorit uh is like but of course for the weekend it won't be Ethan

and me speaking it'll be dorit herself talking about her writing talking about literature uh especially Israeli literature in general and I feel there's nothing like the real thing you could

listen to a movie critic talk about what a great actress Merill Streep is but how about if you have to see Merill Streep in person explaining how she knows how to act so that's what we're going to

have so I hope you enjoy our preview tonight but please everyone we really want you to make sure that you sign up for the weekend I believe in the chat

Terry Cohan link has put in uh the way to sign up it's the temple betham website tv.org link a scholar and I think you probably

went there just to sign up for this program so um that's our our biggest goal tonight is to get people to think about this work think about D rabinyan

and her writing and come to the weekend which is coming up as I said October 28th so now I'd like to just say a little bit about myself and ask Ethan to

say a little about himself and then we'll start talking about the book as many of you know I've been a lawyer for about 40 years but before that some people don't know uh I was an English

major in college and I went to a graduate program in English at UC Santa Barbara uh where I was teaching freshman English for several years and working on

a PhD in English which to my mother's great dismay I never finished so I never became Dr Grossman but I have always maintained a great interest in

literature and also a great interest of course in Israel and so Israeli literature is something that's very very special to me and I am also a member of

the bar link scholin president's committee as is Ethan and it's a great honor uh to be represented of my uh

wonderful friend bar um and a pitch this weekend which I think will be a wonderful way to a enjoy uh learning a lot about Hebrew literature but also

enjoy the idea of memorializing bar so that's me Ethan why don't you introduce yourself and what you do all right uh thank you very much uh

Joel I'm glad you put in the the plug for the ABD uh that's when it's academic Academia for when Joel made a probably

smart long-term life choice and uh I made a different choice so I'm um uh I uh teach literature Israeli and Middle

Eastern literature Arabic literature at uccla uh I'm a research fellow with the nazerian center for Israel studies at UCLA and I'm also as Joel mentioned on on the

committee and U very honored um to be to be participating in this and and to continue uh bar Link's Legacy I remember

just as kind of anonymous um I like aad like a lone soldier but that's what I was in my grad school years to go to betham for Yung kipur didn't have any family here the Grossman's welcomed me

and I would you know learn so much from bar um and his teachings then and and so this is a great way to to continue the teaching and uh I think I'll toss it

back to you Joel for the next part okay well uh what I wanted to do also is uh begin with you Ethan talking about dorit's

writing uh in general uh putting her in the context of other Israeli writers maybe some that a lot of us know such as

Amos o from an earlier generation and also talk a little bit about uh a little controversy involving this

novel okay yeah sure so um you'll all get to hopefully I hear dorit speak at length and I'll I'll leave um her her take on all this to her but I'm going to

try to situate her a little bit within like Joel said the context of uh Israeli literature of the present and in the recent past and so many American Jews

are are familiar with these names like Amos Oz and David Gman who who were uh they came of age in the 60s and 70s they

were called the the new wave of Hebrew fiction and they had a a public stature um and for o and ab Hua both of whom passed away in recent years uh you know

it was a public SP stature akin to uh a politician or you know our our biggest celebrities here I don't know how to compare it and there was a great deal of

gravity that was attached to their writing both their fiction and also they would write non-fiction they would write op-eds and and express political

opinions in in the Public Square you could say um the generation that's come after them so let's say Israeli writers who are currently say in their 40s or

50s um who came of age uh from the first in through the Oslo process and so on among them D rabinyan um there has not

been the same uh stature accorded to any one or even any three novelists like o Gman

yahushua and that um sort of is what makes what happened with rabinyan even more interesting because uh in many ways um the literary space while still very

important in Israel much more important than it is here in the US um the literary space has begun to sort of take on competition for people's attention

from television and film and um interestingly this novel is being adapted for like God Godot the Israeli actress has optioned this book to make

into a film um but we'll have to wait for that um so in the mean time I would say like a two or three trends that were going in Israeli literature leading into

the publication of this book uh one you had a lot of Israelis writing from ABR so this book is set in New York City in

Manhattan for the first two-thirds of it uh where darit rabinyan lived and she's very clear that it's based on her personal experience living there and um

very evocative about of the kind of Israelis in New York which we can we can talk about more um but this really throughout the 2010s I would say a lot of the prominent Israeli novels were

were being written and depicted uh depicting Israelis traveling in South America Israelis living in Germany or London um um and this book I think was

initially published sort of it fit into that General Trend that in many ways mirrored what Young Israelis had been doing for since probably the 90s much

more living abroad internationally one critic called it the the new Israeli as the old Jew like the wandering jew now there's the wandering

Israeli um secondly there was a a a great number of books 20 13 14 15 that really took an interest in what's going

on in the West Bank like what's going on over there um unlike uh grman and a lot of Israelis who grew up um pre- Oslo

when there was open traffic between Israel and and the West Bank and Gaza uh a lot of these writers um unless they had served there in during their military service had never been um to

the West Bank and so Dar writes about having grown up in Saba which is you know a 5 minute drive to kilia a Palestinian town but never having been

there of course uh with the the separation wall and everything and that's where I should also mention the Hebrew title of the book is gadaya which means like living border

gader is a really fruitful word it's border it's boundary it's barrier its fence it's what's used to describe the barrier in the West Bank and and so it's

like this living border is um how it's called in Hebrew in in English they changed it um and so now the controversy uh so the book is published in the

summer of 2014 it gets pretty good reviews um it's her first book since she'd written a few books in her when she was very young in her 20s and then

she took about 15 years off of writing um fiction until this came out and um in 201 15 there was a request made by an

association of principes and high school teachers to add the book to the isra high school curriculum so that it would be a book that you can read for the bug

root the matriculation exams and that um it was approved by the education Ministry um at first but then um naftali Bennett who uh at the time was the

education Minister now um was recently the Prime Minister um navali Bennett basically overruled the sort of internal Committees of the education Ministry and

um banned the book from being taught citing that the inter ethnic interreligious love affair between the main characters would encourage

assimilation that young people sort of wouldn't be able to handle that that they didn't like the way it depicted Israeli soldiers um and that um from a commercial standpoint was the best thing

that could have happened to the book because uh within a week the book went to the top of the bestseller list and everyone wanted to read what's this thing that's been banned and why has it

been banned um and so it is still banned um like one kind of anecdotal tidbit and then I'll um wrap this story

up but about a week after the ban um euk uh uh bie Herzog who is now the president of Israel at the time he was the head of the labor party and he

bought um a bunch of books for high for high school in stot and donated them sort of as a kind of a protest like he said are the people of the book afraid

of books and so it was um it was a very for many Israeli writers whether they liked the book on a literary level or not kind of became secondary to just the fact of this being a sort of a

unprecedented development um so on the one hand um and so DQ will can talk L about how it felt and the publicity and

um and everything that ensued from there um so I think that that kind of sets her up and sets the book up and from there I think um Julet you wanted to share it I

believe yes thanks very much Ethan and and father for those who who don't know her just to let you know the lovely woman sitting with me is my wife bran so for those who haven't read the

book or don't know much about the book I just want to give a very brief summary uh it is a love story between an Israeli

woman and a Palestinian man they meet in New York they are oh there it is all the rivers uh they meet in New York they have no connection at all before they

both get to New York and they kind of bump into each other by accident at a coffee shop and uh pretty soon uh they become lovers and so the book is a

definitely a love story and a lot of it is very moving it's a lovely love story but the book also is very very political and not throughout the book but in

certain places so it's a wonderful thing I and I I was wondering why the ministry uh banded from high schools and certainly one reason as Ethan just said

would be don't want to encourage uh Israelis to become involved romantically with Palestinians uh it's also a fair amount of sex in the books I don't know if

that's considered uh improper for high school students I wouldn't necessarily think so um but I think it's especially interesting in the America that we are living in right now that we are hearing

about all sorts of school districts Banning books and so the whole subject of book Banning is really of a great interest and great concern I think to

all of us in the fact that uh this book wasn't banned exactly and and as Ethan mentioned went to the top of the bestseller list um but it certainly was banned in in high school and I think

that um when uh when DED first sent our committee uh some potential topics one of them was the Prime Minister banned my

book and that was the time when NY Bennett was the Prime Minister of Israel and he had been the education minister at the at the time so um what I wanted

to do is is spend a few minutes and I hope that you will not view this um as a big spoiler so here's a spoiler alert you can uh go out of the room for five

minutes but but I'm going to uh focus on one scene in the book which is probably the most political scene and it happens

uh right in the middle of the book so the the Israeli woman who is the narrator of the book is named leot and her Palestinian boyfriend is named hilmi

and they have a few discussions from time to time about who's right the Israelis or the palestin Ian should there be a two-state solution should there be one state from time to time

they get into this and then they realize if they keep going this way maybe uh their romance will will be destroyed so they don't go too far but in this one

passage that I'm going to talk about Hill's brother comes into town Hill's brother

Wasim lives in Berlin and he comes to visit in New York and then they go out to eat at a restaurant with several

other people as well but but during the meeting in the restaurant that's where you really have the sparks flying

between Hill me I'm sorry Hill's brother Wasim and uh and leot feels very very outnumbered because everyone else at this meal uh is Arab or Palestinian or

partly Palestinian and she is the only Jew and the only Israeli before I get to that part of the restaurant I just want to show you what a good writer I think dorit is when she

is being uh descriptive because uh she describes before the people start talking to each other the scene in the restaurants I just want to read one short passage the

waiters all wearing colorful kons carry out endless pitches of sunre endless pictures of sria and bottles of wine

then in a vibrant aromatic parade of cinnamon Ginger chili and saffron they approach with a conical clay tangin of lamb and fish and steaming platters of

cuscus and pastilla which they set down before us to the sound of cheers and hungry murmurs so that made me hungry just reading that passage all over again uh and I I do like the way she describes

things you'll see if you read the book and I hope you will a lot of descriptions of places in nature of New York City of mountains and it's it's quite good

so um what happens in the book is that um Hill's brother her Lover's brother

really really goes after her I think in in a very very big way uh he says to

her of course I can't find the page right now but but uh he says to her you Israelis are all the same so so that really smarts when you hear something

like that because we've all had a situation where someone say you Jews are are all the same when you group of people like that it's uh it's hard it's

very very hard uh and he goes on and on then he says to her you Israelis do you know what your problem

is and leot says the narrator until now he' avoided looking at me over the course of the evening his eyes wandering around to other

people uh then he says you live in denial that's your problem you refuse to accept the fact that in the not so distant future you will be a minority in

the land he rolls a toothpick back and forth with his tongue and every so often he chews and sucks on it now I love that little introduction of the toothpick

which is not necessary for the scene or for the political but she makes several references to the toothpick so she she has a really good eye for small

details Wasim goes on to say to her you work so hard to push Palestinian history out of your Consciousness that you can't see ahead anymore you're in denial of

what is bound to happen in the next 30 or 40 years now I think we may all have heard this ultimate uh issue for Israel

is that there are going to be eventually uh so many Arab in Israel and on the West Bank and how can we govern all them and well would we

become South Africa again we're a small group of of whites is ruling uh a group of blacks and that's certainly where

Wasim is is coming from he says as I mentioned before if we look at simple logic at demographics alone it seems that as early as 20120

now this book was written in 2014 it seems as early as 2020 less than 20 years from now both populations are expected to be equal in size so he keeps

making this argument and she has a hard time she's having a hard time she's listening she doesn't want to insult her uh Lover's

brother but um she says um to him even the most moderate Israelis most

sober ones who are willing to make any compromise in any concession for peace to to withdraw from everywhere that kind of talk from our point of view is and

then he interrupts her he then goes on to say that the trend is now irreversible

irreversible I exclaim furiously and they all look at me do you think but Wasim changes or charges on without letting me interrupt and irreversible as 40 Years of military control and violent

oppression so this this conversation Becomes Of course Very uh very very political and I wanted to just jump to

one more thing uh where and I I I think dorit has really captured here um a very very liberal Israeli leot obviously is

not Al goodnik she doesn't uh follow BB Netanyahu she's very liberal person but even she is having a very hard time and they're not listening very much uh to

her so she probably makes um a mistake here's what she says how can we a democratic Jewish minority and a

majority of Muslim Arabs be sure that a catastrophe like the Holocaust won't happen again and as soon as she says the word holocaust immediately Wasim says oh here

we go and immediately starts criticizing her for bringing the Holocaust into the conversation so I could go on and on read some of these other passages from this section but I just wanted to give

you a little bit of the flavor of this very very tense and serious conversation that happens at the restaurant and how devastated leat the narrator is because

no one is coming to her defense including her boyfriend Hill me he is not interrupting or or in any way challenging his brother nor is

any anybody else who was at the table so I just think that darit has done an excellent job here in capturing what the arguments are presented by the Palestinians and what the Israeli arguments would be back and of course

there is no resolution there wasn't a resolution when she wrote the book there's no uh resolution today but but I really do appreciate her trying to get into the head of the different uh

parties here so that's one scene that I that I really thought was extremely well written and I'm going to pass it back to uh Ethan oh by the way I should say one more thing some of you may have

questions or comments which we would love to hear here uh but we ask you to wait till the end uh so we can try to get all of our points in Ethan

please yeah I I'll just I'll just also give a kind of example and and contextualize some stuff and then try to leave you know a good like 20 minutes for questions from people whether you've read the book or not and and if there's

a positive questions Joel I know Joel and I have other other passages to go to but um I I think just going off of um just to give you another point that um

should have me mention the book was published in 14 it set in 2002 2003 in New York so so it's New York very post

911 New York that's a big thing if anyone remembers or lived there I I I lived there at the time so it's very easy um to identify but she also as Joel mentioned great at evoking um sort of

the look and feel of New York particularly kind of like the West Village where a lot of Israelis congregate um and so of course that's

also the inap the second inata um going on in Israel in the West Bank so they're meeting during this time that back home things are very very

bad um and it's also interesting though that like those kind of explicitly political moments they really I mean so that's on page like 160 it's in the

160s you know the two of them go quite out of their way to not have those conversations um so like it's definitely not a book that's trying to Stage those over and over which is kind of what

gives that scene that Joel read a lot of dramatic um you know velocity when you when you come upon it um and I would also say yes she's certainly not right-wing but I wouldn't I don't know

if she's particularly leftwing either I think she's very kind of um kind of an every woman I think she I think the author does a great job of showing the

blind spots of a person who takes themselves to be quite liberal but or maybe not even quite you know takes themselves to be an open-minded person obviously she meets this guy and wants

to keep seeing him so she's not you know terrified of of that um though it comes up um but uh a place

where I think her blind spots the scene I want to read come through in an interesting way um and this will be uh well we can decide how how much we want

to spoil it but on um on on page 20 25 and 26 um she is talking about you know this is their first encounter and they're

walking around the West Village you know where do you live and she's you know like um I live in Tel Aviv and my apartment has a view of the ocean and

that really impresses him that she can see not you know the sea the Mediterranean SE

um and um she's surprised that he can't swim because in Her Imagination as with most Israelis they live close to the

water the water is such a big part of you know the vast majority of the population lives along the coast and so you live in this place how can you not swim and what she doesn't realize is

that for Palestinians and this is a really big issue um amongst Palestinians is the that he lives in rala you know 40 minutes from the sea um

from certain Vantage points you can see the sea um but he's not allowed to enter Israel proper and so like for for many Palestinians they born live and die and

never see the Mediterranean um and so on the top of page 26 she says

um uh or the end of um 25 he's saying you know I'm from Hebron there's no sea there then we move to rala there isn't one there either

yes but what about Gaza my voice came out high-pitched and awkward you guys have a sea in Gaza he laughed wearily the sea in Gaza then he enumerated all the ways the IDF makes it made it

difficult to get from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip the permits the months of waiting me ever since I was a kid he said and it seemed as though he could scarcely believe it himself I've been to

the Sea only three times three times my whole life and so then she gets embarrassed and realizes is that she you know didn't uh think about that ahead of

time and he says new come on he held out his hand with half a smile I'm not going to throw you into the sea because of it let's go and then they walk for a bit

and he says but one day you'll know he went on in surprisingly High Spirits one day it'll be everyone see and we'll learn how to swim in it

together um it's he's in some ways probably maybe the more optimistic um he's definitely not supposed to be kind of like the Everyman

of the Palestinians um and she uh by choosing to narrate it from her vantage point we have a lot more of what's going on in

her head between the dialogue oh I said this that was the wrong thing oh is he mad or or should I say this whereas with him we just sort of have the way he presents himself to her you know and

he's very charming and he's very romantic um so that's interesting um and it's extra interesting uh Joel I'll

leave it to you should we tell them the end the book no no no that really would be too much of a spoiler I think too much of a spoiler we won't tell you the

end but it uh when you get there if you haven't um you'll know why I picked that see um so yeah so this Romeo and Juliet

uh thing and um I think that's a uh maybe one last thing you know I would say like 90% of the sentences in this

book have no politics in them you know they're about the romance they're about um what it's like to fall in love

and what it's like to you know learn about another person and their Pursuits and whatever um but uh there are these

moments where the narrator is is aware um maybe not that of that the book would get banned but um there are some organizations in Israel um some of whom

are actually tied to naftali Bennett's uh um personally and Y shaked his former political partner that um there's organization called laava that has this

big publicity campaign about like the Arabs are trying to marry your daughters kind of protect your daughters and it's it's and she the narrator remembers

hearing a a radio advertisement for this group like watch out they're they're trying to take your daughters and it plays in her head and she thinks when I

heard it it was crazy but um you know she's constantly re-evaluating where she stands on this issue of cross National

romance and if it's doomed and if it can happen and and also knows that back in his toilet would be received very differently um you know it's this thing

with warn even though it happens extraordinarily rarely so um I feel like we could uh Joel if you're open to it we

can start taking questions or we could say other I want to do I want to just read one more short passage um because again I I think I mentioned before this is this is a love affair it's a love

story there is some politics involved of course between Arab and Israeli but she also just writes so beautifully and and um for those of you which is probably

many people online who have been to Tel Aviv and who love Tel Aviv um I just want to one passage where she has now left New York and is and is back in in Tel

Aviv this is uh and my I may have a different addition than you do Ethan I think some of the pages don't match up but anyway on page 222 towards the end

of the book she says as she's walking around lofty laidback languid Tel Aviv now if some of the credit I'm sure has

to go to the translator here but still I'm going to give Dory most of the credit with its thousand coffee shops always hopping and numerous breeds of

dogs on leashes with baby strollers and bicycle Riders benches and glorious Ficus line green book boulevards Treetops casting Shadows on the lines of

cars and mopeds florid self-absorbed Tel Aviv reflected in the display Windows of designers stores the city that embodies

hedonistic lust and Lively turmoil where summer vacation fills the streets with young men and women tourists and vacationers speaking English French and

German Tel Aviv of the midday Rush on kumus and schwarma stands of early evening iced coffee and cold beer sweet

indolent Tel Aviv of open balconies and Juice stands of gel gel gelas and convenience stores on every corner sweaty Tel Aviv sighing with

relief in the Twilight hours and blushing in the honey light of sunset so I I really like that and I think um gives you a real flavor of what it's

like in the middle of Tel bustling people all around coffee shops on every corner okay so we would like not to open it up for any questions or comments as long as it's just one one cave please we

don't want to have any political arguments here on who's right or wrong with the Israelis and the Palestinians but um we would love to hear anything especially anyone who has read the book

we'd love to hear any comments or questions so unmute yourself if You' like to ask a question why don't want why don't we have people raise their hand and then we'll call on them okay a little bit

easier that way but Mike ozer had his hand up first so let's call on him okay great Mike go ahead unmute

yourself I uh I thought one one thing that I thought was interesting was how um leot could sort of

suspend time uh the time that she was in New York as though this wasn't really what was going

to happen in the in the end and because she wasn't in Israel and so there was this

distinction between uh um being away that she could do things she could have this love affair she

could time was sort of suspended I think in one part of the book uh it was it were um either she or it was referred to

a sort of ephemeral new New York meaning that you could you we could do what we want and it'll all be

over uh whenever we get back back to Israel and and uh and the pal and the Palestinian territories or or something

like that it wouldn't once she got back to Israel it would everything would be different I thought that was just F uh

an interesting uh yes way she looked at things yes I I I felt the same way comments on that Ethan um

yeah I would I just uh you know this voes she hears her sister's voice in her head a lot of like what what you know what would the family say and in both directions not just her family like

judging her but sometimes her sister is like making fun of her like oh are you gonna tell them about every like homest place you've ever eaten in a Jaffa just to show that like you get it you know um

so yeah I think that the book is very invested in uh you know what becomes possible in these diasporas you know that the other

brother lives in Berlin um I think darit ranan lived in Berlin after New York um these are pretty pretty huge communities of Israelis in these

places and not certainly not every one of them is going to go down um you know and I think there's something very unique about these two individuals that they're open to this experience even

even in New York it's not the standard experience probably for most Israelis and Palestinians there um but yeah I mean the the book is I you

know she's very I think um because again we have access to her thoughts and not his we hear about all of her you know well can can this really last can this

last here can this you know probably definitely not last there right you know they physically legally can't even you know wouldn't in that time wouldn't have been able and now wouldn't be able to to

see each other unless they met at like a checkpoint so um yeah that's interesting Dynamic uh Julie had her hand up

next hi there can you hear me I'm on my headset yeah um so this is this is a great program and also a great book I've blown through it over the last four days

and I'm an English teacher as well as a book group facilitator so I was super interested in the topic and I and I'm definitely going to pitch it to all of my book groups I brought it up with my students yesterday but my question is

for you and I don't know that all anyone will be able to answer both questions I don't know enough about Hebrew and how it works or certainly I don't know about

farsy and how it works I was struck as was jel by the language which is absolutely um it's it's Transcendent it's really really beautiful and I'm

sure part of that has to do with her writing but I'm guessing the other part of that has to do with the way those two languages work are are you able to address

back I'm gonna let the professor answer that one go ahead um yeah well It's tricky because she so it's originally written in Hebrew but they're supposed to be speaking in English like when they're in New York

they're speaking English he does you know they don't speak he doesn't speak Hebrew she doesn't speak Arabic but for a few words so it's actually probably easier for us to read the translation

and I think Jessica Cohen the translator gets a lot of credit and she's a very well-regarded translator of Israel literature translated um Edgar carrot

and some others um so uh so yeah but um and yeah there's a little bit of farsy in there but like basically it's supposed to be that when they're speaking to one another like pretty much

all the dialogue in the novel is supposed to be happening in English which is how that's would happen Palestinians in the West Bank don't um learn Hebrew um you know in distinction

from Palestinians and in Israel proper um so there they they have these jokes and they have some footnotes um and those are also in the in the the Hebrew Edition where there's like if he says

something in Arabic that she wants it to be the reader to read The Sounds it'll be transliterated and then there'll be like a footnote saying explaining what he said or something I don't know if

that answer the question not exactly the question I I understand that when they're in dialogue in New York and they're speaking English I'm definitely not talking about that I'm talking about

when lot is describing what she sees what she hears what she tastes what she experiences that to me is clearly uh in her thoughts in Hebrew and

the translator has uh moved it into English and yes did a phenomenal job but I I'm I just I can't help but think that it has something with to do with the way

that Hebrew functions as a language does that make more sense okay it it does it's it's a it's a very tricky question and this kind of a million dollar

question in Translation um I think that it isn't that particular kind of lyrical

descriptive style I think is equally possible in both languages like in Hebrew and in English but like you know I don't know Hebrew writers might arrive at it differently I could do the super

academic thing and say you know fauler influenced yahushua and yosua influences this and so it actually comes from English originally but I don't know you know that that would be like such a

great question to ask Dar when she comes um because there's kind of a signature of this book is these really lyrical like what Joel read about the Tel Aviv uh and there's a bunch of those you know

for New York as well those really long lyrical paragraphs um is there something unique to Hebrew that that allows her to do that or is that just kind of her

creative genius outside language um oh so yeah we're start calling on people I think is what we were told to do um and I think RAB is

going to call on people so oh okay I I just told him that if you want this is a behind the scenes moment I just said to Ean that if you wanted to because you guys are doing the conversation I'd be happy to stop moderating but I'm happy

to if that'd be helpful whatever you want yes please okay Alisa your turn to go next and then Lori thank you um I I've been

listening to all this discussion about the language and the descriptiveness and and I agree she writes Beautiful descript and that they all seem to be

primarily they're from the point of view of leat um but I really felt reading this book that the you get more into the

depth of heal me uh you know he's thoughtful and he's creative and he's deep and he doesn't shy away from conversations or from hard situations

and he's a lovely lovely character um and I I felt emotionally that you really get closer to him than to her where you hear from her what's going on and what's

happening and you know the descript the descriptions of things but not so much uh you know her her soul and what's uh uh what she is about personally and um I

mean maybe that's because she's writing from her point of view and this is a person that she loves and she um in some way is painting a portrait of this

artist but I'm kind of curious uh when whether you or others had that same feeling as you read through the book Joel it's your turn you know I I

um I thought Hy was a wonderful character and beautifully portrayed and obviously from the point of view of somebody who is in love so I think D

maybe said this is how leot might talk about him for those of you who haven't read it yet he's an artist and gains a

some good uh recognition and um he just seems like a an absolutely wonderful and and loving and caring and very sensitive uh person although they do get into some

fights like any other couple does but but um I I agree that uh she has made him into a a very loving character and

sometimes maybe even a little more than uh than leot uh who sometimes just comes across as neurotic but but um I believe that uh you you've hit a good point there

about her portrayal of of Hill me and the one thing uh in the in the passage that I read from the meal at the restaurant where Hill's brother is attacking her um he he doesn't do

anything about it he doesn't object he doesn't try to protect her and and that leads to a a rift between the two of them but uh no more spoilers but he also

protects his family right he he he is sensitive as you said I thought I wondered whether Maybe of the Banning one of them there are probably multiple reasons but also could have been that he

is in some ways a more sympathetic character than she is and that's that could be hard given the mat yes yeah I mean I

think I think it's important obviously for Israelis to view Palestinians in general and Hill me is is this kind of a person as you know regular people just

like us and and they're not some kind of second class citizen or second class person and can have all the attributes

that you might want um in a lover okay do I have another question hi everybody thanks uh thanks

you thank you Joel uh and everyone else Ethan um I thought the book was was beautiful and and very difficult and um it's kind of like an

island in time you know the island of Manhattan like the only place where they really could come together and her perspective

that you know she imagined him growing up you know kind of like in a bomb shelter in the rubble or in a terrorist family like it it was very interesting

how it it showed what her biases were and how he didn't necessarily fit those biases um and I felt like it was a

little bit more sympathetic to the Palestinian side than the Israeli side um on the other hand I

um kind of reflecting on on what um Alisa said he was an artist and so I think if she if she really wanted to go public

with the relationship and perhaps live with him in his garden home I think he could have done it because he was an Innovative creative type

but I saw her a little bit differently I saw her thinking about the the real practicalities of it not just the politics but cooking beside her

mother-in-law and rala you know him being in their boisterous home on Friday night like there just was no way to bridge it

and um not to give anything away but you know that I felt like the ending sort of had to end the way it did I don't think there was any other I don't think had

any other options but it was it it was also a little bit um I don't know maybe maybe too easy

um maybe just make a quick Bridge comment here and this is I don't think this a spoiler because on the on the title page there's a dedication to a

person and she wrote in the guardian um in 2003 or something a letter to a real person that a real Palestinian man who she had an affair with um so you can

kind of look up darit rabinyan the guardian and find out how much of this is based on on a real

events um but uh but yeah I mean even just you're talking about being in the kitchen and Shabbat I mean I mean it it would like be legally not possible for

them to get together like they um full stop um uh and and I think going back to the previous comment that um and

I D will probably elaborate about this whether she's more sympathetic or he's more sympathetic I think there's also the thing of like the lover and the the Beloved like inevitably you're going to

sort of see the Beloved in you know through the rose-colored glasses what no matter their nationality if it's a love story about from one to the second

person but um that that humanization is is maybe potentially what's so threatening is like the concept of you I me Joel said it really well um

yeah okay anyone else have question comment yeah Anette

Annette hi um I was um I I've only I'm only about 60 pages into it into this book but um I thought something that was

so interesting was that you know it begins with her being um you know interviewed by the FBI and because of the way she looks that she I I think she was identified in the cafe

as a dark person and then when she meets him me you know they have this discussion about you know you know has this never happened to you before I get mistaken for you know uh people of color

basically Pakistani I'm looking for the part where they they said and he and Hill me even says that he gets mistaken for being Israeli um and people have tried to speak to him in Hebrew and she

also I think at one point refers to when she was a little girl and had some um um interaction with an Arab little girl who

didn't realize that she wasn't Arab you know and I I kind of um it's interesting how you know there's other cultures where people aren't supposed to interact obviously other

interracial um linkings and in in this case you know they can walk around New York and nobody's going to look at them in a funny way because they both are dark they could both be the same you know it just something about that really

struck me and that I felt that if they were in Israel it would be somehow it becomes much more obvious you know that the difference between them so it's just interesting that they both could pass in

a way for one another so it's not really a question but it was just something I was thinking about it's it's a good comment thank you very much inette Rebecca you had your hand up did

you want to ask something now what I I wanted to say something but I'm a little worried that it's giving a little bit too much of the

book um I read it in 2016 so I I don't remember it very well but I kind of remember what I remember from it is this

very fatalistic feeling that's that sort of goes through the whole story where you know a little bit like Michael said they take these little islands of time

out of time but you know at least for me as someone who grew up in Israel you have this feeling that it's going in a certain direction and um and just you

know the the whole business with the o with with the sea with the ocean the beach that later comes back it's almost like you know seeing the um the person

who falls under the train in the beginning of anacara and then you know it resurfaces again at the very anount

so it sort of felt to me like a very fatalistic kind of um trip through time yeah it's interesting I my own comment is that uh I've spent a fair

amount of time thinking about whether you know that what what her message was is that Israelis and Palestinians can get along what can we do to to stop all

this uh Mutual Prejudice because here's these uh two people who are in love and they have so much in common as they realize it or or is the message the opposite Israelis and Palestinians

really can never get along so uh I don't know that either one of those is really the ultimate message in the book but but you could take both uh both parts of

that or both sides of that as you as you read and as you as you think about the book I don't see any more questions um

Terry yeah go ahead yeah no go ahead e oh I I got a message that maybe Eddie had was trying to raise his hand but would uh do it I Eddie if you had a question or a

comment um you know it was interesting um she seemed to be much more concerned about

the appearance of the relationship particularly among her family Hill me seemed to be more comfortable with having her and having her know his

family and the like uh she seemed to be very sensitive about not sharing with her family except maybe with her sister

uh what was going on in her relationship I don't know whether she felt she would be judged for that or not uh it also seemed that there was a timable for the

relationship and and yet you know there was no no effort to say let's stay in New York longer let's go live in Berlin

together let's go somewhere else and they see to think it seemed to set the stage for a relationship in time for a

certain period of time um that made made me feel like no one ever thought there was a future yeah that's powerful I think seems like a few people

are picking up on that kind of um on that sense um in I don't want to say more beyond that for

spoiler reasons but um was I I think it's a great comment and um are there any others just as we kind of probably about our time any other comments or

thoughts people want to sure well we we want to thank everybody for coming tonight and we also want to wish everybody sh have a wonderful sh

and um once again giving the pitch please we hope that everybody on this zoom and everybody who you know please tell about our weekend because I think it was

really be very very interesting to everybody uh to hear in person from darit and all the questions that have been asked tonight which I think are extremely good questions what a great

opportunity to ask them personally to D and I'm sure she'll be interested in hearing your views so thanks very much and we'll see you the weekend of October 28th

everyone