| Popis: |
Compared to other contemporary Jewish American novels, Jonathan Rosen's Eve's Apple is less blatant in its references to Judaism and thus has taken a back seat to writers whose works are clearly derived from an encounter with traditional Jewish texts, folktales, and traditions. But beneath the secular surface of the novel -- with contemporary subjects of consumerism, psychology, and eating disorders -- lies a work deeply concerned with Jewish ways of looking at the world. Looking at Eve's Apple through the lens of the Rabbinic figure of the yetzer hara reveals a complex portrait of characters struggling to balance the needs of the physical body with the desire to pursue spiritual and intellectual ideals. In the novel, as in Rabbinic literature, an outright rejection of the natural impulses of the yetzer hara has the potential to be just as dangerous to one's spiritual health as a complete submission to its desires. Jonathan Rosen's 1997 novel Eve's Apple has not fully joined the evolving canon of contemporary Jewish American fiction that seems to be enjoying a renaissance recently. In comparison to the works of Allegra Goodman, Nathan Englander, Steve Stern, and Pearl Abraham, Rosen's work is less blatant in its references to Judaism and thus has taken a back seat to those worthy writers whose works are clearly derived from an encounter with traditional Jewish texts, folktales, and traditions. Rosen did not grow up in an Orthodox home (as did Englander, Abraham, and Goodman); however, he does have a familiarity with rabbinic texts, as his recent The Talmud and the Internet makes clear, despite his modest admission that he is "far from being an accomplished Talmud student."(1) On the surface, the characters in Eve's Apple are more heavily influenced by intellectual Western culture than by the Talmud. One reviewer even declared Eve's Apple to be "not an overtly Jewish novel."(2) But beneath the secular surface of the novel -- with its contemporary concerns of consumerism, psychology, and eating disorders -- lies a work deeply concerned with Jewish ways of looking at the world. The central conflict of Eve's Apple revolves around Joseph, an under-employed teacher of English to Russian immigrants, and his live-in girlfriend Ruth, who has suffered in the past from anorexia nervosa and who seems to be having a relapse. Joseph's attempts to help Ruth are further complicated by his own lingering grief for a sister who committed suicide. The main points of the plot, then, hardly seem to be what one might call "Jewish-Jewish" literature, despite the fact that Joseph and Ruth are both clearly identified as Jews. However, Ruth's straggle with anorexia, and Joseph's search for answers to her illness and to his grief, while influenced by contemporary ideas of psychology and consumerism, are also a compelling confrontation with Jewish rabbinic ideas concerning the body and its needs and desires. How Eve's Apple confronts and resolves the conflicts of its characters can be much illuminated through an examination of the rabbinic notion of the yetzer hara. The yetzer hara is a familiar idea from Rabbinic literature, most frequently translated as the evil impulse. But in the Rabbinic mind this idea is more than a cartoon figure sitting on our shoulder trying to propel us towards lustful or criminal behavior. For while it is seen as the impulse which pulls us away from the path to righteousness, the yetzer hara is also associated with the natural human desires that perpetuate the world. After all, humankind is created in Genesis 2:7 by a combination of the "dust of the ground" and from the breath of God.(3) Rabbi Samuel bar Nahman, a Roman-era commentator, illustrates this idea by writing, "[W]ere it not for the yetzer hara, a man would not build a house, take a wife, beget children, or engage in commerce."(4) In this sense the yetzer hara is seen as an essential part of human existence -- without it, there is no life. … |
