As I approach the end of the first draft of Book III - RACHEL and try to tie up all the lose ends, I realize I have so many characters that I don't remember their names [don't worry, Book III will have a family tree to help you sort everyone out]. Creating names for all these people was quite a challenge. First of all, many of them are historical figures and I wanted to use their real names, if I could find them, even for obscure ones like members of Count Thibault's retainers. But learning these real names caused new problems, because some of these folks had the same name (as in real life where I once attend a bat mitzvah reception where all five men at my table were named David). But readers become confused if several characters have the same name, so I felt compelled to avoid this as much as possible.
For example with Rachel's son Shemiah vs. Meir's study-partner Shemayah, I kept their real names and used different spellings. I had a different tactic for all the Samuel's; also using the Hebrew, Shmuel, as well as a nickname, Shmuli. Unfortunately, there were a few times when I gave up and made up a completely new name even though I knew the correct one. There were already too many Eliezer's (even with variant spellings), so I named Miriam's third son Elisha instead. I know that Rachel's daughter was actually named Miriam, but secondary characters with the same name as the leads would have been far too confusing, so she became Rivka. Of course, I made up that name for Rashi's wife, whose true name has been lost to us. Actually, I didn't just make it up. I read a legend that said he married a woman named Rivka, but the tale was clearly false because it had Rivka as a duke's daughter. Another legend gave his wife's name as Miriam, but of course that was also impossible. I knew that neither his daughters or mother was named Rivka, so I went with it.
When I couldn't find a character's real name, or the character was completely fictional, I still wanted names that were authentic for the 11th century and for the country they lived in. How I did that will be in my next post.
I want to wish all my friends and fans a happy Pesach. For those of
you who are curious to see a photo of me and my grandson, Nathan,
here it is.
As usual , Rashi's family is celebrating a different holiday in my
writing than I am in real time. I am writing about Shavuot, which is
when boys started their religious study in medieval times. Also, Rashi
has a drash/commentary on the Ten Commandments in Machzor Vitry, which
my hevruta and I are about to study. Then I can incorporate this in
Book III - RACHEL.
Today was a good one on several fronts. I received my first look at JPS's cover for "Rashi's Daughter: Secret Scholar." You'll have to wait a little until it's final and I can post it on my website, but I can tell you that the style is very different from the adult books. Also, I was invited to speak about Rashi's Daughters at the Hadassah national convention this July in Los Angeles, which is quite an honor. On the home front, my 14-month-old grandson Nathan started walking without assistance, suddenly taking five or six steps at a time.
After spending two weeks on it, I finally finished the first draft of a scene in Book III - RACHEL where Eliezer teaches from the first chapter of Tractate Rosh Hanshana and explains how the Jewish calendar is calculated. It's an extremely complicated subject and Rashi's commentary is one of the most abstruse I've ever seen of his, considering his reputation for conciseness and clarity. It took me weeks just to make sure I understood it myself before I could even begin to try to explain it to my readers. This will be one of my longest Talmud sections, which you'll find in Chapter 24. I figured that if I'm curious about how the Jewish calendar works, my readers will be too.
Boy, a month has sure gone by quickly. I was out of town speaking
in Phoenix and Las Vegas, as well as several local gigs. Always the
most popular question, as well as the most common subject of my fan
mail, is: When is Book III coming out?
My contract with Plume says "Book III - RACHEL" is scheduled to be
released in Fall 2009, keeping with the two year span between MIRIAM
and JOHEVED. I am trying to keep that deadline, which involves getting
them the final draft in November 2008, but life keeps getting in the way.
Last month Dave and I closed escrow on a new house in West LA, and
we're now attempting to sell our current abode in Glendale. So I'm
constantly being distracted by urgent real estate paperwork, not to
mention the upheaval of sorting, packing, and moving 30 years worth of
stuff. Once my housing situation sorts itself out, which better be by
Passover, I'll have to put pedal to the metal to finish RACHEL asap.
As part of my research for "Book II - MIRIAM," I discovered many medieval Christian clerics who loved each other passionately and weren't ashamed to write about their feelings. Now, as I'm learning about the First Crusade as I write "Book III - RACHEL," I found a pair of young Jewish men, both sons of rabbis, from Cologne who could give those Christian fellows a lesson about love. Here's from a 12th century Jewish medieval account of their martyrdom in 1096:
Two young men, R. Samuel the bridegroom ben R. Gedaliah and Yehiel ben R. Samuel, were cherished in life - for they loved each other exceedingly and were not parted in death. When they decided to throw themselves into the water, they kissed each other, and held one another, and embraced one another by the shoulders, and wept for one another and said, "Woe for our youth ... Better to die here for the Holy One's great Name than the uncircumcised seize us and sully us with their evil waters. Yet I cannot bear to see the death of my friend." The pious ones ascended the tower, clasped one another by the hand, and threw themselves into the Rhine, and died together in the river. Thus they fulfilled the verse: "They were never parted in death." (sorry - I can't find what verse this is)
In light of my upcoming YA novel, I got an email from what has to be my youngest fan, a ten-year-old girl named Zoe from the Midwest. With her permission (and her mother's) I'm sharing what she thought about the adult content.
"Regarding the sex scenes, I thought they were interesting. I am interested in sex topics in general and thought it was educational the way you described the customs at that time. I did not find anything offensive. I had a pleasant feeling while I was reading the sex scenes. I was not shocked at all. They were presented very nicely. I never knew exactly what people do. Now I have a better idea. In our house we talk about everything. So I have the freedom to explore and ask about all sorts of topics that other families may find distasteful or taboo.
I thought there was too much discussion of Talmud. It was a little boring for me. On the other hand, having the Talmud intertwined throughout the story was cool because I like to learn about what the Talmud teaches. I thought it was really fun when bride and groom were advised to read certain things before the wedding night and for other relationship issues."
Some of my fans are aware that two years ago, JPS (Jewish Publication Society) approached me to write a YA (Young Adult) version of "Book I - JOHEVED." After some consideration, I realized that such a project would be interesting and not too difficult, and since many people have told me that they wish my book was more appropriate for preteens studying for Bnai Mitzvah, I agreed. I did most of the revision last summer, while "Book II - Miriam" was being readied for production, with the result that "Rashi's Daughter: Secret Scholar" will be out in June. Yes - this June!
"Secret Scholar" begins a year earlier than "JOHEVED" and stops at her wedding (without the wedding night). The YA version then ends with the birth of Rashi's grandson, as does the original novel. Much, but not all, of the Talmud study is omitted, as are the adult themes of the second half, as well as some of the minor characters. The flow of scenes is different, and hopefully better, as I made the chapters end with more cliff-hangers for example. I tried to use my improved writing skills to make "Secret Scholar" a better book than the one that inspired it.
This week I received the copy-edited version of "Secret Scholar" to check and make any final corrections. So I stopped writing "Book III - RACHEL," which is at Fall 1096, and went back 30 years in my Rashi family saga to the year before Rachel's birth - a rather disorienting experience. JPS is still thinking about a cover design, so if you know of a nice piece of art depicting a medieval girl, let me hear about it.
Again my writing life diverges from my personal life. While the world is celebrating (Hanukah, Xmas, Adha Eid, New Year's Eve, etc.) in 2007, Rashi's community is mourning the crusaders' massacre of German Jewry in 1096. For those readers who've appreciated (or been offended by) the explicit sexuality of my earlier books, you'll get to experience some explicit violence for a change in Book III.
With all the Jewish holidays I've described in "Rashi's Daughters" so far, I saved Tisha B'Av for 1096. The yearly mourning for the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem must have been particularly intense that year for the Jews of Troyes, who surely lost friends, colleagues and family in Cologne, Worms, Mayence and many smaller German communities that the crusaders decimated. I imagine it must have been similar to the Jews of America's response when learning of the Holocaust. Even more so since the French Jews sent a warning to their German brethren, who wrote back that they were safe in Germany, that their local bishops would protect them.
People who claim to be descendants of Rashi are a regular, and delicate, matter for me - especially if they announce themselves when I'm lecturing about my books.
First of all, speaking as someone who did serious genealogy for several years in the 1980's (which is how I honed the research skills I'd need later), there is no hard evidence for anyone's descent from Rashi. Several authorities have written articles on the subject in Avotanu, the Jewish genealogy journal and the difficulty is that everyone who claims Rashi as an ancestor relies on legends, because unfortunately, there is no historical evidence of what happened to Rashi's descendants in the 13th-14th century (Jews were expelled from France in 1306 and 1394). In short, those who claim to be descended from Rashi have no real proof of this.
However, if you do the math (2 parents, 4 grandparents, etc. giving every generation 25 years going back 900 years), you'll find that you have over 3 million ancestors at Rashi's time, far more than the number of Jews estimated to live in Europe then (approx 50,000). Thus you must have many of the same ancestors in multiple lines, and since Rashi had at least 12 grandchildren, all of whom had progeny, the odds are great that you, and nearly every Jew with European ancestors today, is descended from Rashi (we just don't know how exactly).
After finally returning from a grueling book tour for Jewish Book Month (see the schedule on my website), I have received quite a lot of feedback on Book II, and I was delighted to hear that for the most part, my readers were just as enthusiastic about MIRIAM as JOHEVED. I'd expected a great deal of flack for making Judah attracted to other men, but to my surprise, more people were concerned about Miriam becoming a mohelet (both scenarios were complete fiction on my part). But for the few people bothered by the homosexuality issue (nearly all of whom were men, interestingly) and for the others who were merely curious why I choice this issue, here's a summary of what I was speaking about in my recent lectures.
In my women's Talmud class back in 1992, Rachel Adler explained how you couldn't invent a more homosocial milieu than the yeshiva, what with adolescents and their raging hormones, separated from women, studying these exciting texts in intimate hevruta relationships. If ever a man was going to be carnally attracted to another, this was it. She pointed out several pairs of Talmudic sages who were passionately involved with each other, including Yohanan and Lakish. So when I outlined all three books in 1997, I decided to write about that world and its temptations in Book II. I had no idea that gay clergy would be on the front page of newspapers this year and that ordaining gay rabbis would be the source of much controversy in the Conservative movement.
As I did my research, I learned (to my surprise) that just as 11th-12th society was tolerant of Jews, of heterodox Christianity, and of educated and powerful women, it was also accepting of same-gender love. While sexual relations between men were a sin (as was all non-procreative sex for the Church), love and sexual attraction were considered normal, with a handsome youth seen as equally attractive as a beautiful maiden. The king of France at this time had a male lover and it didn't seem to be a big deal, and we have many examples of passionate love letters and poetry written by men about men, some by Jews.
I wanted to teach my readers about this aspect of medieval life, to create a character who would struggle with his yetzer hara and control it only at great personal cost. I wanted them to find him sympathetic and share his angst (and Miriam's). And from the outpouring of praise I've gotten from most of them, I've succeeded.
Usually writing Rashi's Daughters is an escape from real life for me. I may be writing about Hanukah during the summer or about a medieval wedding after attending a brit milah (I've actually attended 4 this year). But today is my mother's sixth yartzeit and I'm writing the chapter where Rivka dies, where I have to delve into her three daughters' conflicted feelings of grief and relief. So my life and my characters' lives are colliding and reinforcing each other. In some ways it makes it easier to write, but in other ways it's more difficult. It certainly makes me remember my mother, Anne S. Einstein, to whom Book I was dedicated.
If you believe in miracles, I may have participated in one this week. On my way to speak at Yussel's, a Jewish bookstore in Long Island, I got to the train station early enough to take a different train. Thus I arrived in Merrick, my destination, with almost an hour to spare. The weather was nice, so I decided to walk. As I wandered through a residential neighborhood admiring the fall
foliage, I noticed a pile of boxes and other stuff for the garbage to collect the next morning.
I was curious, so when I got closer I looked in one of the boxes and saw that it was full of old Hebrew books. Astonished, I checked the other boxes and they had even more, some dating to the 19th century. They were mostly different kinds of books, not a load of prayerbooks or something like that, and I couldn't believe that somebody was throwing them away. Surely some of these were valuable, and at least they should be buried in a Jewish cemetery, not in the dump.
So I called Michael, Yussel's owner, who drove over in his van to get me. He spent only a few moments checking the boxes before deciding to take the entire lot back to the store. Within the hour, rabbis from the community (whom he called) were pouring over the collection and leaving with armfulls of books. Michael took the ones he thought he could sell, and I took some old Passover haggadot that the original owner had collected (they were small and light).
By the end of the evening I learned who'd origianlly owned the books. Of course it was a rabbi, in this case elderly and living in a nursing home, and clearly whoever had cleaned out his things had no interest in what happened to them. So if I hadn't been early, if I hadn't accidently turned onto this street with its pretty trees, all these books would be in a landfill by now.
A miracle? coincidence? bashert? an accident? You decide.
