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Sharon Gutman Lightner
Nativity: A Nava Kalmansohn Novel
Nativity: A Nava Kalmansohn Novel
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"[Lightner] has captured beautifully the human side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I believe that anyone who is interested in seein Middle East peace com forth should read this novel. It is a story of hope, of love, of joy, of tragedy, of bedrock emotion." --Pat Robertson
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At twenty-four, Nava Kalmansohn is has already married and divorced. Feeling defeated, she leaves her ex-husband in New Jersey and returns to the village of her birth and ancestors, atop the Carmel mountain range in Israel, to the villa she grew up in and where her Holocaust-survivor mother still lives. She decides, with the help of old Fishburger, her trusty advocate from youth and intimate friend of her father, whom she never knew, to redeem herself by writing a book about her father’s life and death, both to heal herself and bequeath him a legacy. The finished product (which is Book 2 in the Nava Kalmansohn series), is, to her amazement, published to good reviews. Nava desperately wants to make her mother proud and to take care of her for the rest of her life, but they have never seen eye to eye. Nava finds her mother’s Holocaust-survivor mentality obsolete in this modern world. She meets a handsome and cultured older man, Elie, who sweeps her off her feet. He resists the relationship because he knows what she doesn’t: he’s a Christian Arab. Nava doesn’t care; in fact, she revels in it. The world of her mother is dead and buried. It’s the nineties and peace is breaking out in the Middle East. She convinces Elie to marry her. She will be a writer in and of a new age.
Elie works with his father in their two antiquities shops, in Haifa, Israel, and in Bethlehem, part of the West Bank. Nava gives birth to a son, Sami, but life doesn’t feel right to her. She believes that because her mother seems to reject her life choices, then all Israel does too, and compels Elie to move to the West Bank.
Life indeed becomes a beautiful dream, just as Nava planned it. Elie’s father gives them his charming villa in the hilly Bethlehem suburb of Beit Jala, on a crest directly in view of the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo. Nava and Elie are deeply in love, but Nava is unable to have more children – or produce another book. She pours her energies into her family and friends in the West Bank and thwarts all her mother’s efforts to reach out to Sam.
But life grows incrementally insecure when Arafat returns to reign over Bethlehem and the West Bank. Nava believes he’s changed; he’s a man of peace now. Soon however gangs of armed young men drive through their neighborhoods in jeeps, imposing ominous new rules on the population. The young, including Sam’s friends (and even Sam himself) are excited and indoctrinated in militancy in school and summer camps. Elie resolves it’s time to go back to Israel, but Nava thinks it will blow over. She ignores the new anti-Jewish murmurs of people she’s considered close friends for years. But when the militants appear on her terrace to set up their guns for shooting at Gilo, Elie realizes their days there are numbered. Things only grow worse, for Elie’s father in the shop in Bethlehem, for Sam who must be sent away, for Elie who becomes torn between worlds, and for Nava, who finds in the end her insistent, though hopeful, self-deception has led them to the brink of extinction. She must drive through a dark and misty night to save her family, amid the perils of terrorists on the watch. She’s paralyzed. But she knows the survival of her family depends on her. After a lifetime of self-deception, can she overcome her own instincts? Can she bring them to safety? She doesn’t know till she’s tested.
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"I've just read [Lightner's] 'Where Earth and Sky Kiss" in Green Mountain Review. It's beautiful and fresh -- D.H. Lawrence (I'm thinking especially of 'Sons and Lovers') would envy it." -- Cynthia Ozick, celebrated American novelist ("The Shawl"), essayist and critic.
========
At twenty-four, Nava Kalmansohn is has already married and divorced. Feeling defeated, she leaves her ex-husband in New Jersey and returns to the village of her birth and ancestors, atop the Carmel mountain range in Israel, to the villa she grew up in and where her Holocaust-survivor mother still lives. She decides, with the help of old Fishburger, her trusty advocate from youth and intimate friend of her father, whom she never knew, to redeem herself by writing a book about her father’s life and death, both to heal herself and bequeath him a legacy. The finished product (which is Book 2 in the Nava Kalmansohn series), is, to her amazement, published to good reviews. Nava desperately wants to make her mother proud and to take care of her for the rest of her life, but they have never seen eye to eye. Nava finds her mother’s Holocaust-survivor mentality obsolete in this modern world. She meets a handsome and cultured older man, Elie, who sweeps her off her feet. He resists the relationship because he knows what she doesn’t: he’s a Christian Arab. Nava doesn’t care; in fact, she revels in it. The world of her mother is dead and buried. It’s the nineties and peace is breaking out in the Middle East. She convinces Elie to marry her. She will be a writer in and of a new age.
Elie works with his father in their two antiquities shops, in Haifa, Israel, and in Bethlehem, part of the West Bank. Nava gives birth to a son, Sami, but life doesn’t feel right to her. She believes that because her mother seems to reject her life choices, then all Israel does too, and compels Elie to move to the West Bank.
Life indeed becomes a beautiful dream, just as Nava planned it. Elie’s father gives them his charming villa in the hilly Bethlehem suburb of Beit Jala, on a crest directly in view of the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo. Nava and Elie are deeply in love, but Nava is unable to have more children – or produce another book. She pours her energies into her family and friends in the West Bank and thwarts all her mother’s efforts to reach out to Sam.
But life grows incrementally insecure when Arafat returns to reign over Bethlehem and the West Bank. Nava believes he’s changed; he’s a man of peace now. Soon however gangs of armed young men drive through their neighborhoods in jeeps, imposing ominous new rules on the population. The young, including Sam’s friends (and even Sam himself) are excited and indoctrinated in militancy in school and summer camps. Elie resolves it’s time to go back to Israel, but Nava thinks it will blow over. She ignores the new anti-Jewish murmurs of people she’s considered close friends for years. But when the militants appear on her terrace to set up their guns for shooting at Gilo, Elie realizes their days there are numbered. Things only grow worse, for Elie’s father in the shop in Bethlehem, for Sam who must be sent away, for Elie who becomes torn between worlds, and for Nava, who finds in the end her insistent, though hopeful, self-deception has led them to the brink of extinction. She must drive through a dark and misty night to save her family, amid the perils of terrorists on the watch. She’s paralyzed. But she knows the survival of her family depends on her. After a lifetime of self-deception, can she overcome her own instincts? Can she bring them to safety? She doesn’t know till she’s tested.
========
"I've just read [Lightner's] 'Where Earth and Sky Kiss" in Green Mountain Review. It's beautiful and fresh -- D.H. Lawrence (I'm thinking especially of 'Sons and Lovers') would envy it." -- Cynthia Ozick, celebrated American novelist ("The Shawl"), essayist and critic.
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