The Hebrew Teacher

January 29, 2024
Arad makes her English-language debut with an intelligent triptych of novellas that showcase Israeli women navigating their professional and family relationships in the U.S. The title story features Ilana, an adjunct professor of Hebrew at an unnamed Midwestern college whose support of Israel leads to a clash with a younger tenure-track professor. In “A Visit,” Miriam travels from Israel to California to meet her first grandchild. When she arrives in Silicon Valley, her son Yoram’s marriage and work difficulties come into focus. Arad alternates perspectives between Miriam, Yoram, and Yoram’s wife, Maya, providing a satisfying overview of the dysfunctional family dynamics and illuminating the reasons for Maya’s coldness. In “Make New Friends,” Efrat gets caught up in her middle-school-age daughter’s struggle to fit in with the “in crowd,” who tacitly accept her, but ignore her on social media. The plot thickens when the overprotective Efrat tries to intervene. Throughout, Arad offers an astute and heartfelt look at what brings people together and what drives them apart. Readers will be rewarded by Arad’s keen insights.

Starred review from February 15, 2024
Three Israeli women adjust to life in the United States. In the title story of Arad's latest book, an older Israeli woman reflects on nearly half a century spent in the American Midwest, where she teaches Hebrew at the local (unnamed) university. It's been a quiet life spent scrupulously building up an academic program in Hebrew and Jewish studies. Lately, however, enrollment in Ilana's classes has fallen: "What will happen," she wonders, "if Hebrew ends up like Hindi or Polish, with just a beginners' class offered every two or three years?" Just then, a flashy young professor--also Israeli--is hired, and Ilana is caught off guard: Yoad, with his complicated critiques of Israeli politics, seems intent on undermining not just Ilana's work, but also the comfortable assumptions on which she's based her life. It's a quiet, novella-length story, meticulously observed, with remarkable shades of subtlety and nuance. What could have easily become a political screed is, instead, a gentle inquiry into aging, what it means to be relevant, academic ambition, and, most particularly, the morality of Zionist politics. The other two novellas that make up this volume are just as intricately realized. In A Visit (Scenes), Miriam visits her son, daughter-in-law, and grandson in Silicon Valley, where she quickly discovers fault lines in her son's apparently stable family. Make New Friends tackles the insipid--and occasionally insidious--world of social media when Efrat tries to help her daughter adjust to middle school life. Each story is marked by the meticulousness of Arad's observations and the depth of her insights. While her stories follow traditional forms, unmuddied by narrative experimentation, the wisdom she culls from them is tremendous. The quiet subtlety of Arad's prose only pulls the strength of her insights into higher relief.

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