By Fire, By Water

Last month I had a great experience working with a local organization called Jewish Outreach Project that sponsors a One Book, One Jewish Community event in the Philadelphia area. The project is similar to the One Book, One City event that many cities sponsor, but with a book with some sort of Jewish theme and a Jewish author. This year the book selected is called By Fire, By Water by Mitchell James Kaplan. For the kick-off event for the program, they wanted someone to do an on-stage interview with the author, and I got the gig – quite fun!

The book is historical fiction (although the author doesn’t like to be pigeon-holed into that category, it’s the simplest way to explain it) and takes place in Spain, during the Inquisition in the years leading up to Columbus’s voyage and the expulsion of the Jews. It hinges around two characters, a converso (someone whose family converted from Judaism, usually to save their skins) named, and a Jewish woman who lives in Southern Spain, an area ruled by Muslims who are tolerant of the Jews and allow them to observe their faith.

My job was to read the book and prepare some hopefully interesting and original questions for the author. Once I got Monty Python (“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!”) and Mel Brooks ("The Inquisition! The Inquisition!" – and by the way, you can watch this excerpt from “History of the World, Part I" on Youtube and it’s hilarious!) out of my head, I managed to come up with some good questions. And while Mitchell, the author, told me he’d heard some of my questions before, he said I hit on a few that were new and that he found quite interesting! (I recall Nicole Krauss telling me once before she did a local reading I had arranged that she pretty much got different versions of the same questions every time she did an event. I saw her again recently at the Free Library of Philadelphia [line] and as she listened to questions from the audience, I watched her and, at a certain point in each question, she would nod her head once and I thought – ah, that’s the moment where she’s thinking: ok, I know which question this is, and I have my answer ready.)
Here's a link to the Free Library website. They don't the podcast up yet of her visit but they will soon:

http://www.freelibrary.org/

So are you wondering what my interesting questions were? Well, I asked him to tell us about advice he got from his writing mentor, who happened to have been William Styron. Styron told him that the most important thing is to convince your readers of the reality of your story.

Among many other questions, I asked Kaplan about something that happened near the beginning of the book, where participant in a secret study group says to the rabbi leading the group: “I came here to get answers, and all I’m getting are more questions.” The rabbi replies: “If you want answers, don’t look to Judaism. The entire edifice, beautiful and convoluted as it is, is built not of answers, but of questions.” I connected this to something in the end of the book after the Jews are gone from Spain and Ysabel and Fernando have achieved what they call Unification with all Spain under one rule. Kaplan writes: “Unification meant no doubt, no dissent, no debate. . . It also meant that the class of people who posed questions—scholars, astronomers, cartographers, secret agnostics—would not return. The advance of knowledge, especially of knowledge antithetical to the teachings of the Church, had ground to a halt.” I asked Kaplan about the idea of Judaism being a religion that encompasses the asking of questions, and how this was perhaps distinct from how other religions operated, as well as the suggestion that doubt and questioning lead to progress. He really liked that I put these two parts of the book together and said he hadn’t seen that connection before.

Mitchell Kaplan and Jewish Outreach Partnership and I also did something interesting – we made a video introduction for the event about the author. You can view it here:
http://www.acaje-jop.org/onebook/
(It’s on the right side partway down.)