“If I tell you my story, you will listen for awhile and then you will fall asleep.
But, if, as I tell you my story, you begin to hear your own story, you will wake up.” – Chassidic saying
Defending Israel has become a full-time job for many politicians and spokespeople with meager results. Literature has often been a more effective tool. But when real people represent causes and precious archeological artifacts represent history, the plea becomes far more eloquent.
And that’s what Ruchama King Feuerman does in her second novel, In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist, where holiness, borrowed holiness, and the great potential which lies dormant in every soul finds a place for expression. The entire mosaic of Israeli society gathers in the courtyard of the Kabbalist.
I tell her, “It’s like someone gave you an exercise to write a novel including every element of Israeli society and every hot topic and put them together in three different genres.”
This is Feuerman’s second novel, the first, The Seven Blessings (St Martin’s Press), deals with the problematic and delicate topic of finding one’s bashert. Not that this topic isn’t covered in her second novel as well.
Feuerman was born in Nashville, raised in Virginia and Maryland and at 17 came to Israel, like many young American women, to explore the country and her religion and ended up deepening her love for both. Having studied in Bar Ilan and living in Israel for ten years, she wanted to complete a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction. She returned to the States to attend Brooklyn College and today is married with children and lives in Passaic, New Jersey.
Her writing keeps her connected to Israel and makes her stand out both in her field and her genre. In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist was selected as an American Library Association Sophie Brody Honor Title for outstanding Jewish literature. A writer from the Wall Street Journal called it the best novel he read all year and it was included in a Buzzfeed list of “31 books that will restore your faith in humanity,” along with To Kill A Mockingbird and Life of Pi.
She has also written children’s books. Two of her more recent titles are The Mountain Jews and The Mirror and Bina Lobell’s Super Secret Diary.
When she’s not writing, she devotes her time to helping others by teaching and giving workshops. Her book, Everyone’s Got a Story (Judaica Press), is an anthology showcasing her students’ best work.
In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist was written in response to the systematic clandestine destruction of archeological treasures on the Temple Mount to which the Israeli government was turning a blind eye. This protest was transformed into a literary treasure about mining the holiness found in each one of us.
There’s a phrase in the book, “holiness by connection,” which refers to an association, residual holiness so to speak. But Feuerman seems to be writing about a holiness which results from a connection to one another.
“I wanted to focus on all the people you don’t want to look at, the people who are invisible,” she says. And in her book, a whole lot of people become visible to each other. And through that connection each character becomes an unlikely hero.
The book was published by an imprint of the New York Review of Books, a fairly left-wing publisher, which is ironic considering the very pro-religious and right-wing subject matter.
Another providential irony is that the imprint stayed in business only long enough to print her book.
Redefining both holiness and heroism, Feuerman depicts Jerusalem as a city of both and leaves no doubt as to whom the Temple Mount and its treasures really belong. We are, however, treated to a behind-the-scene glimpse through the eyes of one of the book’s protagonists, a tormented yet sensitive Arab, into the dangers that are beyond the scope of the media’s camera’s lens.