The Top Layer (as in Michener’s The Source)
(courtesy of babblingdweeb)
Needless to say, I love books: they are, for me, like comfort food. Perhaps that’s because they bring to mind my mother, with whom I spent many summer afternoons reading books and exchanging ideas about them, while happily ensconced in wicker chairs on the veranda at our house at Hawthorne Lake. These days my husband and I (together with our dog Sparky) continue in this tradition, sharing insights from our readings of the night before, while snuggled under our comforter in the morning, drinking our coffee in bed.
Novels function to map alternative pathways, helping us to situate ourselves in, and negotiate our ways through, difficult territories.
When not in an academic mode, I often turn to novels. Over the years, I have come to appreciate not only how they provide a great source of pleasure, as well as a retreat from daily cares, but also, and as importantly, how they function to map alternative pathways, helping us to situate ourselves in, and negotiate our ways through, unknown territories. One book that has served me very well in this regard is James Michener‘s The Source.
Great historical fiction, The Source is a tale about the evolution of the various groups who occupied and interacted with each other in what the Jews of biblical times characterized as the promised land.
Across the Promised Land (courtesy of Gaulis Caecillus)
The narrative, which takes place in the Galilee, is a story within a story. At the meta level, the main characters are three archeologists–a Catholic, a Jew, and an Arab–all digging at a tell called Makor. The sub-narrative, and major story, is told through their diverse eyes, as they dig up and interpret–each from their own perspectives–artifacts from the sequential layers of history, dating back 9000 years to the beginning of monotheistic practices. Tracing the evolution and dispersal of the Family of Ur through each level of the dig, the investigators paint a continuous, and often tragic, picture. At each level, someone, or group of people, from among the Christian, Jewish, and other Semitic communities, seek to reconcile the three populations, only to be stymied by some unanticipated consequence or event. The three archeologists continue their investigation up the layers until they reach the top. When they do, it is 1948, the time of the first official Arab-Israeli war.
The Source was one of the first books I packed when, in January 1998, my husband decided to accept an offer to teach The Politics of the Environment at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. Situated on Kibbutz Ketura, in the Negev Desert, The Institute’s mission is quite in keeping with the theme of The Source: Specifically, it is devoted to bringing Arabs, Jews and Christians together around the common venue of the environment. 
Thus, with Michener in mind, I was able to give far greater meaning to my own presence and participation there. It was a transformative experience, to say the least.
In thinking back on it, one particular incident comes to mind. It occurred during the holiday Purim, a time when Jews typically let down their hair in celebration of their rescue by Queen Ester from the Persian Haman. And so, on Purim 1998, the vodka–which was otherwise rarely visible–flowed freely on Kibbutz Ketura.
Joining in the celebration, my husband, some of our students, and I dressed up as worker bees, and we partied and danced late into the night. Amidst the chaos, we stopped at one point and looked at each other, asking: What in heaven’s name are we doing here–two Episcopalians, together with a mishmash of Arab, Jewish and Christian students, celebrating Purim, on a kibbutz in the Negev? Smiling knowingly, we said to each other–of course, we are the top layer!
Smiling knowingly, we said to each other–of course, we are the top layer!
The recent collapse of the peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis is sorrowfully reminiscent of the long history of the region that presages it. When I first heard the news, a piece of my heart was broken. My hope is that, as Michener–were he alive–might agree, there will be another try for peace–that is to say, another layer. And who knows, it may very well emerge from the on-going work of the Arava Institute.
