I have been reading these stories by Serge Liberman OAM (1942-2017) on and off ever since the book launch last year, but I am clearing the decks of books received for review in 2018 and it's time to write about some of the most memorable...
'The Promise' comes to mind now because it covers similar territory to The Atheist by Achdiat Mihardja, which I read last month. Both stories involve a fraught discussion about questions of faith between a man and his adult son, and both vividly convey the pain felt by both as the chasm between them widens. But the context is entirely different. Hasan in The Atheist is a symbol representing a secular future for a nation emerging from colonialism, but in 'The Promise' Shimen — speaking with his father who perished — represents all those who lost their faith because of the Holocaust. Distraught that he has been spared when so many others were not, his response to his father's belief in God's will is a passionate rebuttal:
'If that which happens happens by His will, why then did He will it that you, Father, and you, Mother, and you, Shliomi, Soreh, Itzik, Rivke, Yankev and the children — the children, tell me, why the children? — all of you so gifted, so good and so mightily loving of Him, should be taken, and that I be saved instead, the least endowed and the least deserving, who in surviving has come not only to live every day joyless and with heartache, but also to repudiate Him as a fiction, an invention, a fable — and yes, a lie?'
The spectre of his father tells him that a Jew may repudiate God, but will never himself be repudiated. He says that until God's purpose is known, it is for men to create their own purposes, and it is not too late for Shimon to do so. But Shimon interrupts his father as he never would have if his father were alive:
'For me, fifty years ago was already too late', I say, 'when I learned that there is none above, nor below, nor in the wings who directs dramas, comedies and farces down here. There is only us, we as ourselves; mortal men all, some of us wise, others less so, some menschlich [humane], others brutish, some choosing well, others badly, some reaping justly what they have sown, and others shredded and dismembered, not by their own choosing but by the designs that others with names like Amalek**, Haman** and Hitler have cut for them.' (p.206-7, Amalek and Haman were Biblical enemies of the Israelites)
This altercation reminds me of once reading that there were Jews who believed the Holocaust was another of their Old Testament God's punishments for sin, and to me it seemed such a terrible thing that as well as all the other horrors of the Holocaust, these believers should think that they deserved it. One flaw in this otherwise excellent book is that there's no appendix providing the previous publication of these stories, so I can't tell when this one was written, but 'fifty years ago' suggests about 1995, which makes every day joyless and with heartache even more poignant.
'Two Years in Exile' also speaks of the tension between parents and children. Set in Melbourne when Northcote was on the suburban fringe, Mother finds it a wilderness.
Five miles from the city's heart, Mother feels as if she were in a country town, a Siberian sovkhoz, [a Soviet state-owned farm] or a displaced persons' camp again. Far away is High Street with its sprawl of shops, offices, arcades and picture theatres. Further still, a light-year away, there is — she knows — a Jewish face, a Jewish word, a Jewish melody. But at our end, her very existence is enshrouded in a pall of silence and loneliness, while beyond, past the next crossing, along the dry, cracked and dusty unmade road, stretches an empty nakedness that, for Mother, is worse even than the silence and the loneliness. And more threatening. (p.38)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/02/14/the-storyteller-selected-stories-by-serge-li... ( )