1.
At the end of 2013, I solemnly announced here what was going to be the book of the year for 2014: 'Makimi 2'. That is, the sequel to the best-selling 'Makimi' by Noa Yaron-Dayan, which was to be published that year.
Last week, this book finally saw the light of day. It didn't come out until 2016, and it's not even 'Founders 2', but actually 'Founders 3'. The author made a brilliant strategic decision that no Arthur Finkelstein or Klughaft would have thought of: bypassing the "second book syndrome" and skipping straight to the third book.
Originally, she planned to write the much-needed sequel, about the adventures of a young Tel Aviv couple who become fascinated with Judaism and begin to live a religious life. 'Makimi' ended with the couple's emotional and elaborate Jewish wedding, and the next book was supposed to begin just after the wedding, with the descent into everyday reality.
In the draft she gave me back in 2013, she described how long, challenging, and wonderful this process is. For example, the heroine spoke about her and her husband's new life: "We thought we would switch sides and that was it. We thought we were a package that could be loaded onto a ship and sent overseas. My husband says that the hardest thing about repenting is starting to believe everything I'm used to laughing at, and starting to laugh at everything I'm used to believing in. From this we can learn how many layers and subcutaneous layers the change has to take place... I never dreamed in my wildest dreams that I had such a capacity for giving.
A wedding, a baby, and then another baby, and another. A family. All of these were a surprising turn in my life. A wonderful turn, but a sharp one. A turn that burns tires. It wears out brakes. And here we are swimming in very different waters. We follow mitzvot and good deeds. We keep Shabbat, we celebrate holidays, as if it has always been that way. As if we have any idea where we are going. As if we saw someone before us who walked this Jewish path. We lack any security except for security in Hashem, blessed be He. And security in Hashem, blessed be He - when it exists, then everything is good. And when it weakens or fades - Hashem will have mercy. Those who repent. Go and understand. It is holy and wild and thorny and humble at the same time. Those who have not gone through it, will still go through it. And those who have been blessed to go through it, laugh and cry with me.".
2.
That draft was shelved. Only a few excerpts from it occasionally appear in the new book (called "Shira Geula," published by Am Oved).
They appear in the letters that that convert writes to her daughter, Shira Geula, the heroine of the book. Because Yaron-Dayan, as mentioned, skipped a generation. The book deals with the daughter of that convert, who at the age of 17 leaves home straight for the streets. It's depressing, it's sad, and for parents with children that age - it's even a kind of horror book.
She sees none of the lights her mother saw, she sees only darkness. And from this darkness she flees into an even darker darkness. Zion Square, Cat Square, vagrancy, theft, drugs, violence, the whole package (by the way, in an era when it's so fashionable to be blunt, Yaron-Dayan should receive a special award just for her rare ability to bring the reader into this difficult atmosphere, without a single word of profanity).
The truth? Shira Geula didn't speak to me.
From the first page, I didn't connect with her hostility towards her mother and the whole place she came from. Her conflicts aren't my conflicts either. I'm not debating whether to become a drug courier so I can have some money and a place to sleep at night. And you know what, the people who pulled her out of this hell aren't really on my menu either. Because in the end, a bunch of nerds jumping in a rickety car are the ones who pull her out of the abyss back into the world of believing in goodness and believing in herself.
So if I didn't exactly connect with the problem and I didn't connect with the solution, what was the meaning of the tears that accompanied the reading? Why couldn't I leave her journey, and why is it still with me even in the days that have passed since I put the book down?
3.
""Me and all my friends and all the runaway children and the floating girls I met, we all had the same problem. We had everything – all the knowledge: halakha, hashkaf, Chumash, prophets. But what we didn't have was this chip that you just put in and everything lights up. The faith. The 'why?'. They didn't touch that. Not my mother, not my father, not my teachers. And without that, the smallest bump in the road is enough, and you're thrown to hell. A fire like that could have done me good.".
This is just one of Shira Geula's poignant monologues, which is why this book is so seminal in my opinion.
Shira Geula, meaning Noa, talks about the thing itself: Do we have it or don't we have it? Are we fighting for it? They go all out. This is not a story about a street girl who returns to her family, it's a story about a rebel who suddenly discovers that it's possible to rebel in the opposite direction.
""I don't know why," reveals Shira Geula on one of her trips around the country with the holy and strange group, "but suddenly something touched my heart. These are serious people. They don't even blink when they say these things. They don't stutter. It's a new world. They don't apologize for a penny when they follow the faith like children. When they miss their righteous ones. Something in their eyes. I had respect for this. I could believe in this.
Most people's routes are pretty circular and pretty similar. Traveling from here to there and back on toy train tracks that travel in eighths of a carpet. Same route, same scenery, same speed, same rhythm. From here to there and back again. And I, being the screw-up that I am, always got in trouble with those who couldn't travel smoothly, with those who went off the rails and looked for what was beyond the door.
The group of Breslov's arsonists were like that, but in the other direction, completely in the opposite direction, into holiness. If faith, then to the end. If Hasidism, then with all my body and soul. The opposite direction was never considered an option for me. Honestly, it breaks me twice. First time because I had never thought of such a direction in my life. And second time because such a direction even exists.".
4.
How much can we hear about the soldier from Hebron, and Roman Zadorov, and the gas plan, and Moshe Katsav, and Ehud Yaari, and Dana Weiss? Sometimes it seems to me that this is an escape from life itself. As if the media is broadcasting a reality to us, so that we don't deal with the real reality. So that we don't talk about the most important thing in the world: our hearts.
How much current affairs and how much sociology is pushed into our heads, just so that we don't deal with the essence, with the decision of Shira Geula that each of us must accept, even if we don't live on the edge like her: Do I believe in goodness? Is it worth fighting for? Do I have a soul? Is there a God? What is the connection between us? Shira Geula's first scenes of solitude, her speech to God - after 17 years of official "hiding" - are some of the strongest moments in the book.
Take a moment to examine which words are easier for us to say and what we talk about more: "sector" or "creator of the world"? "knitted" or "work of God"? "Haredim" or "faith"? Enough talking around, a song of redemption cries out to us, let's talk about the thing itself.
Keeping our commandments is not some side supplement that accompanies life. Not just a series of restrictions and prohibitions, like those of a celiac patient or someone who is sensitive to peanuts. That should be the main thing.
It is not for nothing that the motto that appears at the beginning of the book is a statement by Rabbi Nachman, precisely on this point: "It is true, you are kosher people, but that was not my intention. I wanted you to be like animals that growl in the forest all night long.".
5.
And besides all that, Noa Yaron-Dayan simply writes excellently. This is definitely not the fun, uplifting reading of 'Makimi' - because, as mentioned, this is a painful and agonizing story - but this time too, everything flows and is moving and touching.
I don't know if all creative people come to Breslov, or if after a few years in Breslov they simply start writing well, but it's a fact: most of the good singers, writers, and creators involved in this genre that so enriches our lives, come from there.
I'm personally a bourgeois who abhors dreadlocks, but I try very hard to surround myself with as many guys as possible, for inspiration. It pays off. In the case of the new book, Yaron-Dayan's writing is so immersive that it manages to turn even a bunch of characters from the fringes of society, the kind I would tell my children not to go near, into magical people you just want to join them and sail away together towards the horizon.
That is, to drive their Subaru to Miron and hope that there will be enough gas.
During the story, the heroine finds her other half (a repentant one, of course, who asks her questions she never thought about), and towards the end she also escapes from the police and is arrested, but all these elaborate plots are secondary.
The main plot takes place in the heart and mind of Shira Geula, and by the end of the book I found myself simply jealous of this foolish teenage girl, for having reached such a refined truth. For the fact that from now on she will live her life in a more genuine and profound way, and not on automatic.
And it's also a call to repentance: This photo was taken in a large parking lot in Rishon LeZion. If you're not disabled, thank God, but you're forced to park in a disabled parking lot, this sign calls on you, without the threat of fines, to simply think about it again - and fix it. Cellphone photo: Yedidia Meir
• The column is published in the newspaper on Sheva.
And it's also a call to repentance: This photo was taken in a large parking lot in Rishon LeZion. If you're not disabled, thank God, but you're forced to park in a disabled parking lot, this sign calls on you, without the threat of fines, to simply think about it again - and fix it. Cellphone photo: Yedidia Meir
• The column is published in the newspaper on Sheva.
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