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ARTS: Shavuot Story
Novel offers
dramatic new perspective on an ancient tale.
Suzanne
Chessler
Detroit Jewish
News
Israeli author
Eva Etzioni-Halevy, like Jews around the world, turns to the biblical Book of
Ruth on Shavuot, but she hopes she can entice readers to take the story even
further with her help.
Etzioni-Halevy has used her imagination in writing the novel The Garden of
Ruth
(Plume; $14), her second work of fiction, to bring some logical endings to
what she considers unfinished text.
"My novel doesn't deviate from the Bible at all," says
Etzioni-Halevy, 73, the author of 14 academic texts addressing her scholarly
field, political sociology.
"What I write is in addition to the Bible, not instead of it. My mystery
novel comes from the mystery that is in the Bible itself. I'm unraveling the
solution."
While Etzioni-Halevy labels her book fiction, her instincts take her in a
different direction.
"I have a feeling that the way I write is the way things really happened,"
she says. "It's like I traveled back in time, and this is the way people
lived and talked. It's a very subjective, personal thing; but I think I'm
bringing the Bible closer to modern readers."
The author reminds readers of the narrative in the Book of Ruth as she
injects her own plot lines. Recalling the Jewish family that moved from
Israel to Moab, she tells about Naomi, who is left a widow, as are her two
Moabite daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah.
Naomi returns to Israel with Ruth, and the two women face poverty. Ruth
ultimately marries Boaz and becomes the great-grandmother of King David.
"The next of kin, according to Jewish tradition, was supposed to marry
Ruth; but he refused," Etzioni-Halevy says. "This opened the way
for Boaz to marry Ruth.
"The mystery is that the man who was supposed to become Ruth's husband
is never mentioned by name. I started asking myself how a person so central
to the story has a concealed name and wrote about that."
The author explains that the Book of Ruth is read on Shavuot - which begins
this year at sundown Tuesday, May 22 - for two reasons. First, Shavuot is a
harvest festival; and Ruth met Boaz in the grain fields at the time of the
barley and wheat harvest. Second, Shavuot also is the holiday of the
commemoration of the giving and accepting of the Torah; and Ruth, perhaps the
Bible's most famous convert, accepts the God of Israel and the Torah.
"I myself followed Ruth's example," Etzioni-Halevy says.
"After many years
of alienation, I accepted Torah in my
own life.
"When I was a child, I grew up in a religious boarding school; and I
expected religious people to be a lot better than other people. What I saw
around me was that they were just like everybody else, and I became
disappointed.
"Reading the Bible was part of my return to Judaism. I didn't discover
the Bible until late in life, when I realized that what I learned in school
was not the real Bible. I was fascinated by the rich personalities."
Etzioni-Halevy was born in Vienna, where she and her parents lived until
escaping the Nazi occupation in 1939. She spent World War II in Italy, early
on in an Italian concentration camp and later in hiding.
After her family reached Israel, she studied sociology at the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem and received her doctorate degree from Tel Aviv
University.
Married for the second time, the author spent a number of years studying and
working in the United States and Australia. She has three grown children and
six grandchildren.
"My first novel, The Song of Hannah, was a Rosh Hashanah book," explains Etzioni-Halevy, who turned to fiction as a chance to find readers
looking for entertainment and not academic enlightenment.
"In writing it, I was troubled. I felt the scripture did an injustice to
[Peninah], one of the true heroines of the story. I wanted to give her the
voice that the scriptures denied her.
"She was an unloved woman whose husband scorned her love even though she
had given him many children. The Bible describes her as the one who provokes
her rival Hannah (Peninah's childhood friend and husband Elkanah's second
wife), but the Bible doesn't explain what motivated her. I attempted to do
that."
Etzioni-Halevy, currently on a book tour, will release a new historical work
next March. She offers The Triumph of Deborah as a story of the woman she
considers most prominent in the Bible.
"I have been totally fascinated by the women of the Bible, and I
identify with them," Etzioni-Halevy says. "Even though they lived
thousands of years ago and so much has changed, they still are close and
similar to us in their fears, anxieties, hopes and desires.
"I want to take other people back in time with me and make them enjoy
this world. I also want them to read novels that have twisting plots and
stories of love, betrayal and friendship. Nothing excites my imagination more
than stories about the Bible."
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