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Light Fell by Ellen Wernecke
EDGE ContributorWednesday Jan 30, 2008 Rabbi Joseph Licht once hid whimpering and afraid in a Cambridge, Massachusetts bathroom while two men trysted in the stall next to his. Growing up Orthodox Jewish, he had never known anyone who was gay, and even his years studying at Harvard couldn’t erase the stigma he felt had been placed on them. Then he met and fell in love with a charismatic teaching rabbi, and their secret meetings - known to all the world as study sessions between two married and devout men - affected everything he never questioned about his life in Israel.
Twenty years later, as Light Fell opens, Joseph is preparing a reunion dinner for his five sons, who because of the terms of custody have never been together since he left them with their mother. His sons have spread out among the diverse paths of Israeli society: Daniel is a successful plumber, Ethan fell into an army career; Noam lives a secular life while Gidion has married and become ultra-Orthodox, and Gavriel lives on a kibbutz but is in love with its leader, his best friend.
"Light Fell" builds in slow crescendo, accumulating sympathy both for Joseph, lonely and living with an unfaithful man, and for his sons who were stranded without his guidance. While the novel doesn’t provide the same insider perspective on Orthodox Judaism as an inner-circle book like Tova Mirvis’ "The Ladies Auxiliary," since Joseph himself broke with his Orthodox practices, it paints a compelling and anti-judgmental portrait of modern Israel and the challenges of faith. Fallenberg tangles with the rifts caused in this case by adherence or rebellion against adherence in a manner easy for non-adherents to understand without taking away from the enormous power that growing up in Israel and belonging to a Jewish community has had over his characters - none more so than Joseph, whose love and work exacted a terrible price from him.
by Evan Fallenberg
Soho Press, $22
Ellen Wernecke’s work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and The Onion A.V. Club, and she comments on books regularly for WEBR’s "Talk of the Town with Parker Sunshine." A Wisconsin native, she now lives in New York City.
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