Faith for Beginners

A wonderful read - he is an excellent story teller and I didn't want it to end. I can not wait for his next book!

As one who has weak interest in reading about Arab-Israeli politics, finding one's fatih, or mother/son relationships, it took a lot for me to decide to settle down with this book. But I was redeemed with a refreshing read well outside of the typical gay-novel niche. This is one journey to faith that is a lively excursion through Israel. The ways of Helen Nussbaum, her punkish son Jeremy and disabled husband bring an interestingly distinct contrast between settled American life and the very real turmoil of living in Israel. The family is outside of their normal Michigan world and on a commercialized tour called the Michigan Miracle 2000. Helen is worried about Jeremy, her pierced, college-slacker son who has just survived a suicide attempt. But amid their travels through war-torn Israel, they take steps (sidesteps?) toward exploring their faith and achieving a sort of mutual acceptance. While her husband suffers from a slow but steady form of cancer, Helen explores intense sexual experiences with a young, hirsute rabbi. Jeremy has some fun of his own, meeting George, a deaf Palestinian. Politics of all types fill their lives (but in a captivating way) and as it turns out, Jeremy becomes the one who understands this strange, ancient land and its current climate the most. Here are the ways Aaron Hamburger could have made this novel go wrong: making it solely a story about a mother who struggles with the fact that her only offspring, two sons, are both gay (not new); overloading the story with politics (he didn't); making Jeremy's rebellious nature the core of the story (again, not new); setting the story in Michigan (ho hum). Instead, Faith for Beginners proves to be a rich blend of real, flawed characters, imbued with the easily-recognize (but often missed) humor of suburban family ennui.

Faith for Beginners involves a Michigander Jewish family (mother, father, gay son) on a package tour of Israel. The father, who had been a clinical psychologist, has terminal cancer. His wife and son have erotic/romantic adventures in Israel. Helen Michaelson's is with a very hirsute rabbi who migrated from the US and is leading the tour along with his mother. Jeremy, a fifth-year Columbia undergrad who had recently nearly overdosed on drugs and liquor back in New York, attempts to pick up Noam, a Hassidic student, at the Wailing Wall, but gets shunted off to a strange Sabbath dinner with another group of tourists to Jerusalem, and later is picked up in Independence Park after dark by a deaf Arab who has taken the name "George." The comedy between Anglophones abroad that was the specialty of E. M. Forster is transferred from pre-WWI Italy and India to Israel ca. 2000. About two-thirds of the way through, there seemed to be heavy influences of A Passage to India, though the Marabar Cave episode and the trial of an unjustly accused local in Hamburger's novel are split (but not entirely unrelated, not least in that Michaelsons are involved in both). I was disappointed at the lack of follow-through (Jeremy's more than Hamburger's) with the juridical proceedings against the local. Nevertheless, the rich portrayal of characters of diverse backgrounds and the intricate plotting kept me entertained and turning the pages. BTW, the book is NOT "pornographic," though Helen and Jeremy each has a major and a minor sex scene.

It is the year 2000 and the Millennium March has just begun. The Michaelson's, a decidedly middle-class Jewish family on holiday from Michigan, are approaching the March, and their impending sojourn in Israel, with a mixture of benign hesitation and traditional duty. The trip is fraught with concern, for Helen Michaelson worries about her husband, sick with lymphatic cancer, and her two grown sons, both of whom have turned out to be gay. Whilst her eldest Richard, much to Helen's relief, has settled down with a nice Asian man, it is Jeremy, her youngest, who is the most cause for concern. Decidedly rebellious, abashedly promiscuous, and cynically ambivalent towards his Jewish heritage, Jeremy provides Helen with most of her headaches; he dyes his hair green, courts a safety pin in his nose, loves to drink and take drugs, and has just survived a lackadaisical suicide attempt by smattering thirty-two Valium over an ice cream sundae doused with vodka. Inspired by a story she'd read in the Detroit Jewish News, about young people who find themselves while on "Missions to Israel," Helen hopes that on this trip, Jeremy will get a sense of piety, perhaps even obtain a sort of spiritual enlightenment, a natural high from all the "deep whiffs of holy air and hot sand." Helen, deep down, dreams of some sort of transformation for her son; it's not that he wishes he wasn't gay, it's just that she wants Jeremy to get a sense of his place in the universe, even "shed a tear or two, and then perhaps get on and finish his bachelor's degree." Helen admits that she's frustrated with her husband's chronic illness and is tired of feeling lonely, but she confesses that there is no one she particularly wants to be near. Life for her hadn't been a tragedy, only a bit quiet for someone who had once dreamed of living boldly. The certainties that she'd counted on from religion, from marriage, from her husband, her house, and her children have all but failed her. All that is left is some kind of nebulous connection to her faith and a vague desire to reconnect with the land of her heritage. Jeremy is undeniably modern and American. Deeply critical of old world values, he confesses that he doesn't really believe in God. He looks at orthodox men, and although he already knows many of their rules, he realizes he could never be like them - rather a "manic-depressive homo," than some sort of prophet, forever stuck in the ways of the past. Jeremy remains suspicious of this world, and suspects that deep down religious people hold the copyright on "being right," religion is fine in the abstract, but in practice, "it's just another tool people use to divide themselves from each other." Throughout their holiday, neither Helen or Jeremy comes across god: Helen finds comfort in the arms of Rabbi Sherman, his "expert hands, and thick studly arms lined with dense fur," sexually exiting her beyond her wildest dreams, whilst Jeremy hooks up with George, a deaf Arab boy who takes him

Aaron Hamburger, the author of a collection of short stories, THE VIEW FROM STALIN'S HEAD, has written a first novel practically as good as his first book. In the year 2000 the Michaelson family from Michigan makes their first visit to Jerusalem. And what a family they are. Helen is a fifty-eight woman intent on "straightening out" her twenty-two year old son Jeremy, (one of two gay children) who has spiked hair with green highlights, a ring in his nose that resembles a safety pin, is a part-time vegetarian who has forgotten his Hebrew-- oh, the family is Jewish-- and the father/husband who used to call himself "Doctor" before he was diagnosed with cancer but is now just "Mr. Michaelson." Mr. Hamburger has written both an extremely funny at times as well as an erotic novel-- both Jeremy and his mother fall off the abstinence wagon while in Jerusalem-- that asks serious questions about religion, politics, family relationships, gay relationships, the Arab-Israeli conflict, etc.. In fact the author asks a lot more questions than get resolved; but perhaps that is what he intended, given the complexity of the issues he discusses. What Mr. Hamburger has done is to create a half dozen or more characters here who come alive on the page. We know a myriad of details about each of them. We can catch their body odor, sweat with them in the awful summer heat and-- pardon me, President Clinton (who gets mentioned by an Arab boy accosting Helen-- feel their pain. There are so many wonderful passages that draw the reader in. Example 1: When the Michaelsons visit the Wailing Wall, Helen "impatient to feel inspired. . . kissed the Wall, caressed the coarse stone blocks. She felt no God there, but then she'd never felt Him anywhere else, either, not even in her heart. Did He exist, then? Of course He did. it didn't matter that you couldn't pick Him out of a lineup." Another example: When Robert, Helen's oldest gay son wants to adopt a child with his male partner and chides her, one half of a mom/dad family, because she says that children need both a mother and a father, and tells her that "thanks to you, [he] hasn't felt a genuine emotion in years," she wonders what happened. "If what Robert said was true, then what had she done wrong?. . . Perhaps she's been overly cautious with Robert, since he was her first. And as for Jeremy? The only fault she could come up with was that she's been transfixed by the miniseries ROOTS while she was pregnant." That's awfully good, insightful writing. There are also funny digs at both the Jerusalem tourist industry as well as the tourists. Ms. Michaelson boards a tour bus named "Jacob and Leah & Rachel." Two other American tourists behind her on the bus are engaging in what she calls "Jewish Geography." ("'How about Delaware? Know anybody in Delaware?' 'I met a Friedman from Delaware once. What about Philadelphia?'") Julie, the well-organized tour guide, has everything the Michiganders [the name of the tour group] need, incl