Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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author
Raaya Admoni
In most novels, it is customary to say either at the beginning or at the end that any resemblance between the characters in the book and between living people, or people who once lived, is complete...view moreIn most novels, it is customary to say either at the beginning or at the end that any resemblance between the characters in the book and between living people, or people who once lived, is completely coincidental and that all events related in the story are merely the author’s imagination. In this case, the opposite is true. The central characters that are described in this novel did indeed live, and their names have also been kept unchanged.
The whole novel started with a guided study tour, one of the many that the Israel Broadcasting Authority used regularly to offer its staff. During the long coach journey, my friend and colleague Menachem Peri told me of an incident from the life of Sarka, his maternal grandmother. He said that when she was only thirteen years old her family forced her to marry an elderly widower, the rabbi from the little town of Belzitz, where they lived. It had come about only because her mother had a dream in which her eldest daughter married the rabbi.
This tale of the young girl’s plight gave me no rest. In my imagination I entered into this poor child’s thoughts and feelings, and I knew that there would be no peace for me until I had written the story.
As I began to write, I was drawn to other stories from the Peri-Friedman family. I would grill Menachem again and again, wanting to know any details he could remember.
This was how this narrative, written over the course of several years, took on its flesh and bones. I felt a moral obligation not to change the names of the main characters, and to make this book into a memorial for them for generations to come. I hope that my writing has not harmed them at all, but rather, how they have been described has done them the justice they surely deserve.view less