A Remarkable Kindness (29 page)

A
Remarkable Kindness
could not have happened if my agent, Steven Chudney, had not taken a chance. I'm indebted to my editor, Rachel Kahan; to Laura Cherkas for her thoughtful attention and care; and the team at William Morrow/HarperCollins, including Trish Daly, Serena Wang, Diahann Sturge, Emin Mancheril, Molly Birckhead, and Joanne Minutillo.

The following people helped me in important ways: Yehudit and Shlomi Gamliel, Shelley Goldman, Dr. Janan Farraj-Falah, Rabbi Yehoshua Hellman, Melody Kimmel, Noah Klieger, Sharon Blassberg Mann, Cindy Massey, Maureen Miletta, Rachel Reshef, Lori Schaefer, Dr. Maya Wolf, Dallal Zina, and Samia Zina. Thanks to Zeev Alon for always making sure I get to where I'm going. My heartfelt gratitude to the very special women who are members of Shavei Zion's burial circle, and to the late Margaret Corey Davis who introduced me to the
hevra kadisha
and got me started on my journey.

I am grateful to Mary Eldred who appeared from Alaska at just the right time; and Judith Ehrlich, Martha Hoffman, Kathy Jacobi,
and Ruth Lacey for their suggestions and encouragement during early drafts of the novel. For patiently answering my questions about toddlers and Boston, I thank Libi Wolf. For her wonderful ear for dialogue, writing skills, and sense of humor, I thank Libby Singer.

Kerri and Ralph Beaver, Anne McDonald, Margaret O'Hara, and Amy Pink all reminded me not to give up before the miracle. Jackie Bennett made sure I never forgot what was important in life. Joanne Wallenstein encouraged me. Sharon M. Osen has always been there for me. The memory of my friends, Janet Jacobson and Herb Sawyer, inspired me.

While I have fictionalized some details, the characters of Jacob and Esther Troyerman are based on the late Yehudit and Shaul Senesh. They trusted me with their life stories, profoundly impacting the way I see Israel in the context of Jewish history.

The character of Rachel is, in some ways, a tribute to the late Tal Twena, a beautiful, spirited young woman from Shavei Zion who died tragically a few days before her eighteenth birthday. I also drew strength from the memory of Michael Levin, who emigrated from the United States and joined the Paratroopers Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces, and who was killed during the Israel-Hezbollah War in 2006.

My mother, Gladys Bletter, died before she got to see this book in print. But my sister, Cynthia Bletter, and her children, Sydney and Ruby, rooted for me.

Finally, to my husband, Jonny Kuritsky, thank you for everything. I could not have done it without you. And to our absolutely amazing children, Libi, Nadav, Shlomie, Ari, Amalia, Libby, and Degetu: I am so-so-
so
proud of you.

About the author

Meet Diana Bletter

About the book

Discovering Remarkable Stories

Reading Group Guide

DIANA BLETTER'S
writing has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including the
New York Times, The Wall Street Journal
, and
Commentary
. She is the author of
The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women
, with photographs by Lori Grinker, which was nominated for a National Jewish Book Award; and a memoir,
The Mom Who Took Off On Her Motorcycle
. A graduate of Cornell University, she lives in a seaside village in northern Israel with her husband and children, and volunteers in a burial circle.

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.

I
T WAS A SUNNY DAY
in 2004 and I'd just taken part in a
tahara
, a burial rite. The ritual was held in the burial house, which sits in the corner of the cemetery in my small beach village of Shavei Zion, northern Israel. Four other women were there with me, all members of our
hevra kadisha
, traditionally translated as
burial society.
I've taken poetic license to translate the term as a burial circle, because this rite closes the circle of life. The ceremony never fails to be moving, humbling, and spiritually uplifting.

After finishing the ritual, I stepped out into the sunlight. Blue sky all around me, birds winging, the sea singing, the gentle swishing of the leaves in the eucalyptus trees. The thought hit me: This would be a good story. Since I've worked as a freelance journalist for most of my life, that idea came to me as a headline in all caps. THIS WOULD BE A GOOD STORY. No, make that a novel. I wasn't sure what this novel would be about, but I knew there would be four women—Jewish American women, because they're the kind of people I know best—who would discover (as I've discovered) that participating in a ritual for the dead would illuminate their journey through life.

I had no other conscious concepts, but I started writing like an explorer hacking through thick, unnavigable bramble in a forest. I wrote a lot, deleted a lot. In January 2005, my son Ari's close friend, Tal, was killed in a car accident. A few hours before her funeral, on a rainy, dark day, I went to the burial house for her
tahara.
Tal lay in the center of the room and her hair—wildly beautiful dark-blond curls—fell down off the edge of the table. Her mother, one of my good friends, had asked us to cut some of Tal's hair. That image stayed inside me as I wrote more of the novel.

I was drawn to write a novel about American women transplanted on a foreign land because this is my story. In 1991, I was living with my first husband and our four children in the very same house where I grew up, in a lovely New York suburb; but I wanted to step beyond the expected, the familiar. I chose to move to Israel because I grew up hearing about my relatives in Israel and the sacrifices they made to live there. I was inspired by their courage. I also hoped—really, I just assumed—that by the time our children would be at draft age (at eighteen, boys serve for three years in the army and girls serve for two) there would be no more wars. I'd been raised by a liberal, open-minded mother who took me out of school to demonstrate against the Vietnam War; another reason I moved was my desire to try, like Rachel in the novel, to change things and help work for peace.

When I was in the midst of writing the novel's second draft in 2006, war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah. At the time, my two sons and stepson were all soldiers in the Israeli Army. One of them, Shlomie, was a medic commander in the Israeli Paratroopers. Though I knew he could possibly be sent into battle, I tried not to think about it. But I couldn't
not
think about it.

On a hot July night, despite the fact that Hezbollah-launched rockets were falling around us and most of our neighbors had left the village, my husband, Jonny, decided to have a barbeque. Jonny, a former Israeli soldier, has always refused to let fear stop him. In the middle of cooking, our telephone rang. It was Shlomie. “We're going in,” he said in a quiet voice.

I listened, trying to memorize his words, his voice, and I didn't say goodbye. Then there was the click of the telephone and silence rushed in. I didn't know what to do with myself. I ran upstairs to my sons' room and fell onto Shlomie's bed. I tried to breathe in a trace of his scent on his pillow. I was scared, so very scared, and the only thing I could do was pray. My tears and prayers were all I had.

A few days later, the telephone rang again. This time, an Army officer said that Shlomie had been wounded, but he was fine, and he was being taken to Nahariya Hospital, about fifteen minutes from our house. Because the hospital had already been hit by rocket fire, all its patients were now housed in a safe underground facility. We made the drive similar to the one I described in the novel. As we rode through empty streets, passing blinking traffic lights, I was acutely aware that at any moment a bomb could rip through the luminous blue sky and hit our car. I was aware of the click-click-click of sprinklers watering some flowers, aware that whoever had turned them on was convinced the war would eventually end and life would go on, as it must.

At the hospital, we found Shlomie— alive and mildly injured—who told us that his friend and fellow soldier, Michael Levin, a Pennsylvania native who had volunteered in the Israeli Army, had been mortally wounded. Shlomie had tried to save him but he could not, and he had carried Michael out of the war zone.

Right then, as I went through the motions of pretending to be brave, and doing all the things I had to do, my life took on a strange new dimension. I had already written about a war in my novel, and now I was living a life similar to my characters. I had been fictionalizing real life—and I was living a life that felt like fiction. My sense of reality was heightened as was my sense of the truthfulness of this book. I was writing what I experienced and felt. Sometimes, we can see ourselves more clearly when events turn us upside down. Sometimes, we feel uprooted and unmoored, even in our hometown, especially when we experience or attempt things that are completely different and unknown. Which part of our essence stays with us no matter what happens? Which part of ourselves comes along no matter where we go? “Our meaning in this life is found through following the guidance that beckons us toward new horizons, perhaps new friends, even new locations,” writes Karen Casey. I followed that inner voice when I left for Israel. I followed it again when I decided to write this novel.

The beach village where I've made my home for more than twenty years is similar to my invented one of Peleg. It is pastoral and lovely and, for the most part, serene. In constructing my own portrait of the local neighborhood, I wanted to offer a behind-the-scenes look at life beyond what one reads about in the media. Northern Israel is filled with a wide variety of people, including Christians, Muslims, Ba'hai, Druze, Bedouins, as well as an assortment of Jews from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan. Of course, like everywhere around the world, there are clashes and conflicts, but this is an astonishingly peaceful area where people live and work side by side, forming deep and abiding relationships that cross religious and cultural divides.

Which is why I've stayed active in a peace group consisting of Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Druze women— I won't give up my idealism. Maybe, come to think of it, that is one of the best things that America has given me: the idea that we can all get along, that there is reason to hope, and that change is possible.

There are the times, however, when I'm rudely awakened to a harsh reality, like the time I was getting my haircut in Nahariya and the bomb siren went off. “What should I do?” I asked Miro, who was in the middle of cutting my hair. “Well, if you're going to die, at least die beautiful.” So I waited for him to finish, and then I drove home. Despite these knotty moments, I cling to my optimism—and my sense of humor— while appreciating the joys of ordinary life.

The
tahara
ritual is gritty and not always pleasant—and yet, it's a circle of affirmation, the most intimate, precious way to honor life. On several occasions, I've gone with the other members of our
hevra kadisha
to pay a condolence call, telling the family yes, we took good care of your loved one. And we did. There's something beautiful in that. There's an inspiring line from Psalm Ninety, “Teach us to number our days that we may attain a heart of wisdom.” Being part of the burial circle has, indeed, helped me see my own life with fresh eyes, pushing me to be fully present so that I don't just skim the surface of living.

Writing has also helped me number my days and not buckle under fear, sorrow, and helplessness. We write who we are, and no matter what we write about—whether we place our characters in a far-flung galaxy or in prehistoric times—what we believe comes through. Lauren, Emily, Rachel and Aviva are all imaginary characters in a faraway place but I hope that their everyday concerns as mothers, daughters, wives, and friends are recognizable to you. I will always carry Lauren's steadfastness, Emily's spontaneity, Rachel's sheer joy and Aviva's strength, taking some of their virtues wherever I go. They have touched my life in a profound way and I hope they do yours.

“Look to this day,” wrote Sanskrit poet Kalidasa, “For it is life, the very life of life.”