Steve Albert and Robin Karlin I thank for graciously allowing me the use of a writer’s studio in their lovely Pittsburgh home when I needed space to write. I will always be grateful for your kindness and generosity. Having a place to go and write each day has made a huge difference to my writing life. Now my thanks go to Dr. Bernie and Esther Klionsky and to Daniel Klionsky for giving me a writing space in the Klionsky home; and to Gail and Joel Ungar for giving me writing space during the copy edits; and to Naomi Oxman, for suggesting that I find myself a writing studio—I will be forever in your debt.
I am so fortunate to have met writer L. E. Miller at Lan Samantha Chang’s summer writing seminar at the Tin House summer program in summer 2011. Laura is a fantastic writer, and a wonderful and generous reader and critic. She read the manuscript and gave countless suggestions that truly helped the manuscript reach its full potential. I cannot thank her enough for her contributions and discussions with me.
Shimon Adaf, an incredibly brilliant writer and poet as well as a wonderfully astute reader and editor, gave me a number of valuable suggestions on the seder chapter, confronting the question. His small tweaks, thoughtful questions, and deep comments made a big difference. He also read the last chapter and articulated places where the text was getting too closed—I hope I found in my revisions ways to keep it open. Shimon, I am grateful for and enjoy all your challenges that prod me to think more fully and carefully than I ever would be able to on my own.
My writing group in Pittsburgh—Jane Bernstein, Marc Nieson, and Lynda Schuster—has been a great support system and fun to hang out with! Though they didn’t help with this novel directly, they provided much needed moral support and a forum to kvetch. Jeff Rubenstein, Talmud professor and friend, read and understood the novel at a late stage, which was very gratifying.
When I was writing a description of the novel for the catalog, I had great assistance from Ron Krebs, Miriam Holmes, and Yitz Francus, talented wordsmiths all, who forced me to make it punchier! Valuable input also came from Dan Iddings of Pittsburgh’s great Classic Lines independent bookstore.
In Minnesota, I was fortunate to take classes at the wonderful institution that is the Loft. More than anything else, having a community of writers to discuss my work with helped me move forward in a way I could never have on my own.
I appreciate the assistance of Rabbi Michael and Tracey Bernstein and Rabbi Alexander Davis and Esther Goldberg-Davis for sharing their memories of the funeral send-off for the coffins of Matthew Eisenfeld hy”d and Sarah Duker hy”d, which shaped my writing of chapter 7. Ron Krebs read a portion of the novel on a plane to Israel; it thrilled me no end to think of my words being read in the air.
Aryeh-Lev Stollman, yet another fantastic writer, gave me early and wonderfully supportive feedback on one chapter and helped give me permission to create a gay character, which I wasn’t sure I could do successfully. Melvin Bukiet was also kind enough to read that chapter, after I met both of them at a Bar Ilan conference on creative writing in 2003.
Jacob Press, my first and for a while only friend in the exile of North Carolina, shared stories of being a gay American man in Israel, which inspired both Noah and Todd. Jacob’s book Independence Park, on the lives of gay men in Israel, was also a very helpful source for both of these characters.
Brian Morton’s summer fiction class at Sarah Lawrence was extremely helpful in teaching me many things and providing great feedback.
Nancy Reisman and the Fine Arts Work Center class let me know I had the structure of the novel in place, but I needed to paint and put up furniture.
Thank you to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, Virginia, for giving me a residency at just the right time for revision. So glad to be finishing up in the South, where I started this work, yearning for the East and Jerusalem. While writing this novel, I also had residencies at the Corporation of Yaddo and the Ragdale Foundation, which deserve my thanks.
Before I left Minnesota, I gathered a group to read the novel and discuss. Judy Victor, Dori Weinstein, Paulette Donath, Beth Gendler, Ed Rapoport, Louise Ribnick, Naomi Oxman, Judy Marcus, Judy Snitzer, Judy Shapiro, Tamar Marmor—I knew that even if it wasn’t published I’d succeeded in reaching some readers. Discussing the casting for a movie version—who would play Noah and Uri?—helped me realize that I could create a new world in my writing.
Ann Pava read, liked, and believed in this novel at an early stage. I have always wished I could have an older sister just like her, but she is a great substitute for the real thing!
Rabbi Gershon Sonnenschein told stories during weekly Talmud class about his time as the student assigned to Rav Joseph Soloveitchik one year, and a visit they made to the Lubavitcher Rebbe that made their way into Atarah’s reminiscences.
The writing of Daniel Boyarin and Rabbi Steven Greenberg generated ideas about Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish.
Sheva Zucker has been the greatest friend I could ever hope for; she listens patiently to all I confide in her and knows all my secrets. Thank you for being so supportive for all these many years, though I have not always taken your mostly-sage advice. Thanks for all your great stories and for being a great reader.
Aharon haviv—Jon—helped find me a literary agent through his insistence that we all that attend that twenty-fifth Yale reunion. You’ve supported and encouraged me all these years. Though at the outset of this novel I had conceived of Uri as a psychiatrist who creates healing narratives, it is truly marvelous that, over the years of my writing, you, my love interest, have moved into a similar line of work as a chaplain. I love you and am looking forward to many more years of creating the narrative of our family together, on the page and in real life. Though we have been arguing whether literature or life is more important from the time we met, I hope we continue to have large helpings of both!
About the Author
Beth Kissileff is a fiction writer and journalist who spent two years studying in Jerusalem and continues to visit Israel regularly. She holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Pennsylvania and has taught English literature, writing, Hebrew Bible, and Jewish studies at Carleton College, the University of Minnesota, Smith College, and Mount Holyoke College. Her fiction and nonfiction, on Israeli, cultural, literary, and religious topics, appear regularly in a variety of publications including the New York Times, Slate, Haaretz, the Forward, and the Jerusalem Post. She also edited the anthology Reading Genesis. She has received fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo, the Ragdale Foundation, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Lilly Endowment, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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