Secret Anniversaries of the Heart: New and Selected Stories by Lev Raphael

"SECRET ANNIVERSARIES OF THE HEART" Amos Lassen and Literary Pride Raphael, Lev. "Secret Anniversaries of the Heart". Leapfrog Press, 2006 One of the most prolific gay writers working today is Lev Raphael. He has 17 books to his credit spanning the spectrum of literature--novels. short stories, non-fiction, etc. Lev Raphael broke onto the literary scene when he published a controversial short story collection entitled "Dancing on Tisha B'Av". For the first time, an author dealt with two major issues in society--homosexuality and the Jewish religion. He showed that homophobia and anti-semitism which had never been linked before had commonalties. Together with that he dealt with those that had survived the greatest disaster after known to the world--the Holocaust. And he went even further by including the children of Holocaust survivors when he told their stories. This book showed the world a new kind of fiction. We had had American Jewish fiction but American Jewish gay fiction became a new topic. "Dancing on Tisha B'Av" is out of print now but Lev's new book, "Secret Anniversaries of the Heart" includes twelve of the stories from that collection along with twelve new stories. Naturally the theme has not changed; anti-semitism is the overriding background of this new collection. These are not easy stories to read: for me as a Jew who lost family to the holocaust, who came face to face with Holocaust survivors on a daily basis when I lived in Israel, who grew up in the anti-semitic deep south and who is gay--these stories pained me deeply. Yet the beauty of the book is the catharsis I felt after reading it. When I read "Dancing on Tisha B'Av' when it was first released, I was just as pained. Until you live in a gay Jew's skin, you cannot not know what he has felt, not once, but over and over again. The beauty of Lev's work lies in the truths he expounds and those truths hurt. The characters you meet in his work are not just characters, they are thinkers and doers. They are logical and they make no value judgments. They watch life as it passes them by. They live and breathe as we do--they love with passion and are hurt with passion. I was once told by a friend that being Jewish and gay made me "twice blessed". I many times felt "twice cursed". Being Jewish in the South, or for that matter anywhere, is a complex issue. Being Jewish and gay is twice as complex. If you have read my article, "A Piercing Thought". you will understand. The tension that I felt in reading these stories took me back into those compartments of my heart that I thought had healed. The characters that Lev paints are not everyday men and women; their lives are complicated, in disarray and infused with desire which burns to the core of their beings. The memories of my own life flowed like tears as I read "Welcome to Beth Homo" and "Betrayed by David Bowie". Only those of you who have never fit anywhere can understand how real that pain can be. Raphael fills his work wi

Ever since Yom Kippur I've been reading this book of stories as though my life depended on it, and strangers have gotten used to the sight of my walking down the street, boarding the cable car, and poking my way through the alleys of San Francisco with Lev Raphael's book propped up in front of my face. I might as well have a cane because I'm blind to everything else when I'm reading one of his books. And this one, i think, must be the best of them all, for as a collection of stories this improves on his earlier DANCING ON TISHA B'AV by abstracting the best of them and then adding as many more. The first book came out perhaps 15 years ago, and since then he has only gotten even more into writing, and his wisdom about people has only grown, exponentially as it happens, so when you read one of his stories, it is like having a new life to live. I don't know much about Jewish life so I don't know how accurate he is being about the mindset and customs of his characters (though I should say, not all of them are Jewish) but even a Gentile like me, who hardly ever has a religious thought in his head, comes to understand some of the conflicts shown by his people. In the title story, a writer living in Michigan with a successful and somewhat overbearing partner joins a writing group and encounters a Hungarian novelist with a mean streak who runs the group like a little Dick Cheney. To his chagrin, David can't speak up against this tyrant's ranting, even when it turns homophobic and a Bolivian newcomer is attacked for his poetry. Another workshop participant, Chase, reveals in rapid succession that not only is he Jewish, but he's on the down low, a married man with a hankering for David. To his surprise, Jake (his boyfriend) and his accepting nature helps him realize that his paralysis during the workshop has everything to do with his now dead mother, who was a survivor of a death camp and who just wasn't emotionally available to little David. She kept a suitcase under her bed just in case the Nazis, or their US equivalent, came again, and now David and Jake reflect that such a time may not be too far away. "She'd take it out and update the contents once or twice a year, always on the same date. Why those particular days? She never explained, but the bag was always ready, and so was she." While our shelves groan with volumes of the American short story, we have a wealth of talent, but if I had a suitcase under my bed and wanted to take just a few books of the best, I would pack my Raymond Carver, my Grace Paley, and my book of Lev Raphael stories. He is beyond wonder, beyond guessing, his talent overflows like the gift of itself. And plus, in "The Pathfinder," he has written possibly the sexiest story of all time. Check!

PW has it all wrong. I totally agree with the Kirkus review which says in part:"Raphael writes from a highly distinctive perspective: a compassionate celebrant of souls squeezed by mainstream pressures and fighting for pride. Concerned ultimately with the struggle for love both human and divine, these are searing stories." The full review can be found on Raphael's web site and it's clear this is an important and must-read book for fans of the short story and contemporary literature. Secret Anniversaries of the Heart is a quiet blockbuster, as important in its own way as Raphael's Writing a Jewish Life, also out this winter. What a gift for his fans!