Jewish books: Kin by Dror Burstein
Nov. 20th, 2012 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidfcooper"Kinship is a central theme in Israeli writer Dror Burstein's novel Kin, which is published today in Dalya Bilu's English translation by Dalkey Archive Press. The book portrays the inner life of Yoel, a senior citizen, widower, and adoptive father who decides to find his adult son Emile's biological parents and reunite him with them."
Kinship is a central element in Judaism along with the revelation at Sinai, the Torah, and observance of laws derived from the Torah. Performing traditional customs and rituals connects us to earlier generations of Jews. Our identity is in part defined by our genealogy going all the way back to the patriarchs and matriarchs. Indeed so important is this genealogy that conversion to Judaism ritually severs the convert's previous genealogy, and he or she is ritually referred to as a son or daughter of Abraham and Sarah.
When we play Jewish geography we are not only tracing degrees of separation, but we are also determining whether or not we are related. And if we trace our genealogies back far enough nearly all Jews are in fact related. So central are bloodlines in Judaism that prior to the 20th Century traditional Judaism had no ritual to mark adoptions and the Hebrew language had no word for adoption (the modern Hebrew word is ametz).
Kinship is a central theme in Israeli writer Dror Burstein's novel Kin, which is published today inDalya Bilu's English translation by Dalkey Archive Press. The book portrays the inner life of Yoel, a senior citizen, widower, and adoptive father who decides to find his adult son Emile's biological parents and reunite him with them.
In my New York Journal of Books review of Kin I describe it as "sad and beautiful" and "a nonlinear impressionistic series of vignettes, flashbacks, inner monologues and apocalyptic dystopian fantasies/dream sequences." Making sense of these varied elements is the reader's job; Mr. Burstein doesn't spoon feed, but this book is certainly worth the effort.
Emile's complexion is noticeably darker than that of his adoptive parents. When people see Emile and Yoel together they assume Yoel's wife and Emile's mother Leah is Sephardi, though in fact both adoptive parents are Ashkenazi. Americans are used to seeing adopted children who do not resemble their parents. This is less common in Israel.
For the first 50 years of its existence Israel did not allow overseas adoption and domestic adoption was and is segregated by religion. As in America, in Israel there is a chronic shortage of Jewish babies available for adoption resulting in six year waiting lists for prospective adoptive parents. This may explain why when Yoel and Leah's first choice among the babies in the orphanage turned out to be unavailable they hastily chose Emile; having reached to front of the line they didn't want to lose the opportunity to adopt by dawdling.
Since 1998 it has been legal for Israeli Jews to adopt foreign gentile children, but they are required to convert the children to Judaism. Israel's Haredi rabbinic establishment requires parents of adopted foreign children to either be Orthodox or adopt Orthodox practices as a condition for converting the child. This requires secular Israeli Jews who want to adopt to live a lie. This may explain why in Israel, a country of eight million people fewer than a hundred foreign born babies are adopted every year, whereas in America, a country of 300 million people, over 19,000 foreign born babies are adopted every year.
After that digression I would like to close with one more point in my role as a book reviewer. I am beginning to lose patience with fiction authors who withhold psychotherapy from their emotionally troubled characters. Yoel's state of mind makes for fascinating reading, but shouldn't he be sharing his disturbing thought processes with a licensed clinician?
Also see my New York Journal of Books review of "Kin": http://goo.gl/gAtWg
