Author and poet Govrin to speak Nov. 11

By Seth Mandel
The Jewish State

The daughter of a Holocaust survivor and an Israeli pioneer, celebrated Israeli author and poet Michal Govrin relishes the opportunity to explore her parents' heritage and confront the challenges posed to her generation by their roots.

"I think that the generation before lived extraordinary events," Govrin said. "How are we going to articulate it, how are we going to transmit it, how are we going to make it part of another narrative, which is the Jewish narrative, the Israeli narrative? I think that's an open question to my generation."
 
Govrin's award-winning novel "Snapshots" has been translated into English and will be released in the U.S. next month. She will be conducting a book reading and question-and-answer session on Tuesday, Oct. 23 from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. at Ocean County College's Solar Lounge, Toms River.

Govrin is a part time writer-in-residence at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and splits her time between New Jersey and Jerusalem. "Snapshots" reverses the order of Govrin's life somewhat, and starts out in Jersey.

The death of the novel's protagonist, Ilana Tsuriel, an Israeli architect, takes place on page 1, and begins the telling of the complicated, romantic life she led. The news of her death comes via her husband, Alain, to her friend, Tirtsa. Tirtsa becomes the books narrator as she unravels Ilana's life through her letters to her father, her diary, and other writings.

Tirtsa's reading of Ilana's notes begins with a familiar New Jersey scene: a trip from Edison, up the New Jersey Turnpike, past Elizabeth, the power plants of Newark, through Hoboken, and into the Lincoln Tunnel.

It is only the beginning of a book heavy with material to which American readers will relate. The story exposes Ilana's respect for her Jewish religious traditions and her desire for modernity, as well as the place Israel has in her heart, as both an escape and the impetus for escape.

She is married to Alain but romantically involved with a Palestinian man named Sayyid, and her descriptions at times seem to represent her belief that the two worlds she inhabited should not only not be mutually exclusive, but even compliment each other. "We passed the etchings one by one under the lamp, with Sayyid's quotations from the Koran, with my interpretations from the Midrash, shrouded in the pleasure of thinking together," reads one of Ilana's letters.

Ilana also tries to balance a possible reconciliation with her father while still attempting to figure out what she wants from all of the people in her life. Ilana's life is full of experience, but still somewhat empty of concrete ties to any one place or person.

The illusory nature of Ilana's perceived control over her life in New York, Paris, and Jerusalem is exposed during the Gulf War. Govrin said that the effect of a war in which the Israeli army wasn't participating directly, yet forced Israelis to live in bomb shelters, is both frightening and humbling to a writer, who is used to controlling certain environments.

"In the last century, so much of our lives, at least in Europe and Israel, we were helpless in front of history -- with a capital 'H' -- that wrote our lives," Govrin said, referring to a sentence in the book that describes history as the author of life, not the other way around. "So, that has been felt for sure even in a more extreme way during the Gulf War, where the nation was so passive, and was that way before the last Lebanon war, where a million people immigrated from the Galil. So these were phenomena that were not part of the narrative in Israel, the narrative of control and the narrative of being powerful."

Govrin's father was an Israeli pioneer and a skilled storyteller, she said. Her mother, a Holocaust survivor, had a beautiful voice. While Govrin insisted she had a "normal" and even "boring" childhood, her parents' dramatic flairs and affinity for the arts gave her a strong background in storytelling from the performer's perspective.

"That was the sweetest thing one can imagine," Govrin said. "I was an only child, and quite alone, and suddenly I stepped, by the power of words, into this imaginary world where all these adventures do happen to me, or at least to my characters."
She said literature had an almost religious dimension in her family life growing up, and family trips to the theater and cinema were common.

"So there was a lot of life and laughter at home, which rescued us," Govrin said.

Govrin said her father's memoirs were published a few years ago, and now, 20 years after his death, serve as a method of self-exploration, as well as a tool to better understand her father.

"It's retrieving the silent story from legend," she said. "It's very invigorating."

Govrin said that she plans to write a book about her mother, as well.

"I think it's very urgent for your own identity in the world? to open the stories that brought you into the world that did not, somehow, have a place in our life before," she said.

But the past is only part of her experience writing "Snapshots." The book can also connect the current generation of Diaspora Jews with their own identities, Govrin said. Many will move to Israel, and many will not, but both can explore what Israel represents for them in today's world.

"Facing the difficulty, and facing the dream, and also the thick thread of how many stories will take place? and also I think what the book does is it's a book which is almost trying to think: What does it mean to be a neo-Zionist?" In other words, she said, "What would be a dream of today, not the dream of yesterday?"

Govrin said she considered calling the book "Loyalty and Betrayal", because Ilana has a desire to betray her Israeli life and identity, but finds out that she is simply incapable of doing so. Despite how much fun it is to rebel, Ilana discovers that it is just as difficult to follow through with her rebellion.

"In spite of the desire to run away from that, the power of the meaning of being part of it -- which is overwhelming -- is encompassing her again, and then there is that move to dream again," Govrin said. "Because I think being in Israel is always a choice to dream."

Govrin, who is married with two daughters, has made a career of both writing poetry and adapting it to theater. She is a teacher at the School of Visual Theater in Jerusalem and the academic chairwoman of the theater department at Emunah College.

Additionally, Govrin is the founding editor of the poetry series "Devarim Yerushalayim", which means "words of Jerusalem" and also "things of Jerusalem." The double-meaning is intended, she said, in keeping with the spirit of the kaleidoscopic holy city.
"I think that choosing that location has been a very crucial part of my life," Govrin said. "The tension between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is almost a metaphor for what Israeli culture stands for. So by choosing Jerusalem I chose the multi-layered culture."

It wasn't necessarily an easy choice, either. Govrin was born in Tel Aviv and also lived in Paris, where she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Paris.

But her decision to live in Jerusalem has clearly affected her writing, she said, because the danger and the city's sacred nature are both a sacrifice and a privilege.

"It's a very rich, ongoing challenge, being in Jerusalem," she said, adding that those that remember Israel prior to its military success in 1967, and its subsequent confidence, understand the feeling of waking up and being thankful that the country is still there.

"The fact that it exists is a continuous miracle," Govrin said.
The book reading and question-and-answer session are free of charge. "Snapshots" will be released by Riverhead Books (the Penguin Group) on Oct. 18.