Writing a Jewish Life: Memoirs - Softcover

The son of Holocaust survivors, Lev Raphael was one of the first of America's Second Generation writers and started publishing short stories about children of survivors in 1978. Many of these stories were collected in his award-winning book, Dancing on Tisha B'Av.

Raphael is the author of 13 other books including two novels about survivors, Winter Eyes and The German Money, and a collection of Jewish memoirs and essays, Journeys & Arrivals; and nine other books. Raphael's fiction has been widely anthologized in the U.S. and Britain, most recently in the anthology Criminal Kabbalah, which contains Lev's latest story featuring a child of survivors: "Your Papers, Please."

Raphael has published dozens of essays, articles, and stories in a wide range of Jewish publications: Midstream, Hadassah, Psychology and Judaism, The Forward, Reform Judaism, Reconstructionist, Agada, Commentary, The Baltimore Jewish Times, The Detroit Jewish News, Inside, The Jewish Exponent, Jewish Currents, Tikkun, Jerusalem Report, and Shmate.

Widely in demand as a speaker, he has keynoted two international Second Generation conferences where he received standing ovations, as well as appearing at over 125 invited lectures and readings in Israel, North America, and Europe at Jewish Book Fairs, Jewish Community Centers, synagogues and universities. Featured in two documentaries, he has been a panelist at London's Jewish Film festival. His stories and essays are on university syllabi around the U.S. and in Canada; his fiction has been analyzed in books, scholarly journals and at scholarly conferences, including MLA.

I grew up in a minefield," writes Raphael movingly in the title essay in this collection of 11 short memoirs, referring to being a child of Holocaust survivors who never knew when he might "say or do the wrong thing." In just over 20 pages, Raphael gives us a frightening and unsettling portrait of how the ravages of war and genocide can be passed from one generation to the next. In clear, concise sentences devoid of sentimentality, Raphael writes of how he learned to deal with his early trauma by writing about his life as a Jew and later as a gay man. Novelist Raphael (Winter Eyes) has a fluid and compelling style, and these essays—blending personal experiences with literary references and homespun psychological insights—are enjoyable to read. The author can write smartly about a number of topics—gay life in Israel; growing to love a pet dog—and can be extremely affecting, as when he writing about losing his mother to a slow terminal illness. Yet the emotional range of this collection is not broad or deep enough to sustain a reader's undivided interest. (Feb.)
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