I am absolutely thrilled to welcome to the blog today my great friend and wonderful writer, Yael Unterman! Yael and I go way back - all the way to 1998, when I was also living in Jerusalem, and we can honestly say that Shakespeare brought us together - in more of a practical rather than literary way which I won't go into here! Since then, she and I have both seen our names on the spines of two books - Yael's first book is a biography of Professor Nehama Leibowitz, a fascinating teacher and Bible scholar. And she's here to chat about her brand new book, her first short story collection,
The Hidden of Things: 12 Stories of Love and Longing (Yotzeret Publishing, 2013).
I asked Yael to complete my Writing&Place questionnaire, knowing that, as a fellow immigrant, where she is has had an impact on what she writes, and I thought it would be interesting for all of you. Before we get to that, here's a little info about Yael:
Yael Unterman was born in Jerusalem, Israel. She grew up in Manchester, England, and returned to Israel at the age
of 18. In addition to spending several years on advanced Torah studies,
she earned a BA in Psychology and Talmud from Bar Ilan University, an
MA in Jewish History from Touro College, and an MA in Creative Writing
from Bar Ilan University. The many hats she wears include:
- Poet
- Author
- Actress
- Life Coach
- Teacher & Lecturer
- Translator & Editor
- Bibliodrama Facilitator
- Coordinator, Cardozo Academy Think Tank
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| Boaz the Sagging Tree |
Tania: Where are you?
Yael: I’m in Jerusalem, in the southern
neighbourhood of Katamon, populated by a high percentage of English
speakers and of singles. My bedroom window looks out over a
fruit-tree-filled organic garden. Two fir trees outside my window
make a nice perch for small blue-breasted birds. I named the trees
Yachin and Boaz, after the two bronze columns at the entrance to
Solomon’s Temple (not sure why they gave names to columns, but it
makes me smile…). Sadly, in a recent heavy snowfall, one of Boaz’s
branches snapped and he is now sagging badly.
T: How long have you been there?
Y: I grew up in Manchester, but
have lived in Jerusalem for all of my adult life. Though I do speak
fluent Hebrew, I admittedly live in a bit of an English-speaking
bubble, and also I travel abroad four or five times a year. This
means that I am not fully immersed in the local life here, though I
feel very connected.
T: What do you write?
Y: Though my first book was an academic
biography of a famous female Bible teacher, I’ve always adored
fiction, so I’m delighted that my second book is in this genre: The
Hidden of Things: Twelve Stories of Love and Longing, published
December 2013. The first few stories were forged in the crucible of
the Shaindy Rudoff MA programme for Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan
University. Take-no-captives feedback was the norm, and I learned to
pull up my writing socks, producing some interesting but fairly
flawed first attempts. After the programme’s end, new stories
continued to emerge, crystallising around an image, a character, a
fragment of thought. Within three years or so, I had put together a
collection of interlinked stories with recurring characters –
Jewish twenty- and thirty-somethings searching for love, identity,
and transcendent meaning, in Jerusalem, London and New York. The book
is both tragic and comic; the characters range from noble to
downright nutty.
After
hiring and then parting from an agent, and searching for a good
couple of years, I was fortunate to find a publisher. This book has
been over nine years in the works and I can’t believe it’s
finally out.
T: How
do you think where you are affects what you write about and how
you write?
Y: In major
and obvious ways. For my first book I was able to interview dozens of
people who knew the subject of my biography personally – she lived
in Jerusalem. For The Hidden of Things, many of the stories
are set in Jerusalem, with the characters being Jewish young adults
from countries such as England, South Africa and America who have
gravitated to the city for its special brand of spiritual life and its nature as
a singles mecca. They suffer from the
dual challenges of being immigrants and the exhausting dating system,
endlessly searching for someone to make a life with. I know this
world intimately, belonging to it to a large extent, and my
characters are composites of myself, friends and what I invented from
my murky mind. Other social groups in Jerusalem make brief
appearances in the book and there are hints to the conflicts taking
place between religious and secular, Arab and Jew in the region. But
this is not a political work, it is about ordinary people trying to
make sense of things that refuse to be nailed down easily.
Thank you so much, Yael! You can find out more about
The Hidden of Things: 12 Stories of Love and Longing by clicking the title, including excerpts and information for where to buy the gorgeous paperback or the instantly-readable ebook (yes, I am trying to come around to ebooks, I really am! Sigh.) I highly recommend Yael's wonderful stories, whether or not you are or have ever been single, whether or not you are Jewish, whether or not you've ever been to Jerusalem or fancy going. What is more human, more universal, than love and longing?
