Matches: A Novel

To say I loved this book is an understatement. This books puts you in the IDF. You are there every step of the way. It was written with such passion and insight. The story jumps around, but that is what life in the army is like. Staccato bursts of patrols in Gaza interposed with attempts to live a normal life in back in the city. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the Middle East situation.

Stumbled across Matches at the library and think it's the best war writing I've read in years. Kaufman takes the reader into the IDF uniform in a way I've never encountered. As a novel, it's not perfect but it resonates with truth, authenticity, ambivalence and complexity. Suggest reading the 'afterword' before reading the novel.

Matches, more a series of related short stories than a novel, loosely hangs on the life of Nathan Falk. Falk, an American born Jew with a career in semi-pro football, leaves everything behind for a life in Israel and service in the Israeli Defense Forces. He seeks his heritage among the IDF soldiers, a.k.a. Matches -- those who strike, burn and die. The book is divided into four parts but it proves useful to think of it divided into three sections. Parts III and IV together make up the third section. Part I contains six chapters. Six is the number of man according to Jewish belief and this section deals with man's inhumanity to man. It is especially evident in "Jewish Wars" where Jews threaten to kill Jews and in "Good-bye House" where the IDF destroys the home of suspected terrorist sympathizers. "The Bedouin," Part II's only chapter, opens with a contest to determine how fast a Bedouin tracker can catch a wild hare in his bare hands. The plight of the hare becomes representative of the plight of women in the Israeli-Arab conflict. The chapter focuses on two women. Batiya, a teenage Bedouin, is marked for execution by her father because she is involved with an Arabic tracker. Maya, a Jewess, is caught between a passionless marriage with her artist husband and an affair with Falk. Both women are destroyed by events stemming from the war. The vulgarity of this section should shock the reader. Indeed, it seems intended to. War violates and betrays. The final section, Parts III and IV, contains seven chapters, seven being the number of completion. It reveals the utter futility of war in the Middle East and the foolish cycle of retaliation and death among the Israelis and Arabs. The final chapter, "Blame," takes us full circle. Once again, we find man's inhumanity to man, although only vaguely hinted. Matches suffers from a lack of editorial direction. Just as the soldiers in the book have a dearth of quality leadership, the book itself seems to have had no real leadership in the publishing process. Ambiguity, inconsistent characterization and poor style hurt an otherwise fine narrative. The book's potential to be a powerful dystopia, in the vein of 1984 or Fahrenheit 451, remains unrealized. Alan Kaufman teaches us two things. Peace is a blessing that comes at a high cost. War is terror and the best soldier is one who survives.

Nathan Falk, "Matches" protagonist, is binational, an Israeli army veteran and a citizen of America and Israel. When Alan Kaufman's novel opens, Nathan is serving in a reserve unit of combat-trained Israeli infantry. He had already served two years in the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), and as a reservist was frequently asked what brought him to "this insane mess?" Why join the army if he didn't have to? An American by birth, Falk feels he had lived pretending to himself that non-Jews really didn't think he was a "Christ-killing, world-dominating, media-controlling k*ke..." But he was always aware of an "ice-cold separateness." "They never let you forget not so much that you were a Jew but that they....were not." Nathan strongly believes that the only place in the world he can be free of this baggage is in Israel. Toward the end of the novel, an army general expresses, yet again, his surprise that an educated American, "who knows Auden and Yeats," would volunteer for the Israeli armed services. Falk replies that he loves the Jewish State and would do anything to keep it alive. "Because loving it is like loving myself." Then he reverts to dark humor as a way of chiding himself for sounding sappy and sentimental. However, he notes that the general is moved by his heartfelt statement. Kaufman attempts to provide here an evenhanded account of an Israeli soldier's life at the front and to reflect the enormous human toll the seemingly never-ending Palestinian-Israeli conflict takes on everyone it touches. Although many might say, (and I am sure they will do so), that no one can be objective or unbiased about this horrendous situation that saps energy and hope and breeds hatred and terror on both sides, I think the author does a superb job of bringing the realities of the war into the reader's living rooms. His perspective is much broader than one would think or expect. In an up close and personal, in-your-face kind of way, we accompany Nathan Falk as he navigates his schizophrenic world - the intricate maze of his personal civilian life and that of his military reservist tours of duty. Falk is a wonderful character - absolutely three-dimensional and very likeable, although his life away from the front lines, in Jerusalem where he is a member of an artistic, intellectual circle and the lover of his best friend's wife, may call his morality into question. His heart and mind are in the right place though. Bottom line - he is a decent, thoughtful man. Kaufman also draws extraordinary portraits of those who people our protagonist's life: Brandt, the squad leader with the looks and sex appeal of a movie star; Avi, a Moroccan-born Jew who drives a taxi in civilian life; Sergeant Dedi, whom the men would follow anywhere, has "the darkstaring focus of a Ninja tenth-degree black belt." He is an art student when not leading death defying patrols; Bachshi, the Bedouin, the unit's best tracker and Falk's close friend - or at least "as close as a Bedouin and a Jew c