"As a Jew, I feel persecuted all the time": Udi Taub weaves legends between the holy and the profane Israel today

The stories in "Fables", the fourth book for adults by writer and illustrator Udi Taub, are written in the spirit of Hasidic stories and Sage legends. These are reflected not only in the linguistic choices and in the world of associations, but also in the arbitrariness of fate, which is sometimes revealed in its cruelty.

The story that opens the file, "The Stroller's Journey", largely sets the tone for the entire book: an old man named Gruber, a "goth's idler", pushes a cart in which lies a baby, he is his grandson, on their way to his circumcision.

But the road to the festive event turns into a nightmare.

People fall around them, soldiers shoot at them, the amusement park wheel breaks off and rolls after them, the cart almost drowns in the sea - and only miraculously do they survive.

If that is not enough, even at the end of their journey, Grover knows that there is another journey ahead of him, and he is not sure that he will survive it either.

"Almost the entire book is a parable."

Taub on "Legends",

"If it wasn't tragic, it would be funny"

In a conversation with Taub, I tell him that besides the obvious references to the Jewish legend tradition, in my eyes the exaggerated persecutions in this story (and others) have an almost grotesque side.

When Grover runs away with his short legs, like a cartoon character, from the hammer of fate that pursues him (and perhaps it is required that such a connection to animation exist in someone who has been involved in illustration all his life).

But Taub understands the stories first and foremost as tragic tales of inexplicable persecution.

"If it wasn't tragic, it would be funny. The Jew I'm describing takes his grandson for circumcision, and everyone is chasing him, and it's not clear why. As a Jew, I also feel persecuted. Why are the Iranians chasing me?"

Is this a national parable for you?

"Almost the entire book is a parable like this. It's a less personal book - it's personal in the sense that it describes the strange story of the people."

It surprises me.

I found in the book clear connections to the world of the legend, but I did not find such an explicit national or political dimension in it, and such a political interpretation alienates readers like me from the book.

"I didn't write the book out of political motivation, but out of a sense of being persecuted. There is no explicit political statement in it that calls for Grover to take a knife or a gun and start shooting back. The statement in it is against the persecution that I feel is unjust."

And how do you think the contemporary fairy tales you wrote continue the traditional fairy tales?

"The legends of the Sages are a full and overflowing world, on the border of literature.

But this is not literature as we understand it today, and it is certain that whoever wrote them did not intend to write literature.

This is also the case in the stories of Rabbi Nachman of Breslav.

Aharon Zeitlin once wrote that Rabbi Nachman wanted to tell stories because it warms the heart, but so that they wouldn't say he was wasting time, he put secrets inside.

I don't think that's the truth.

There is some lack of cohesion in his stories.

It is impossible to organize it from a literary point of view, unless you take into account another layer.

I think that Rabbi Nachman's stories are always a tool for something else, that's why they also have turns that sometimes seem arbitrary, because they break and bend at these meeting points."

"A legend, no matter how you look at it, is a symbol."

Udi Taub, photography: Yonatan Shaul

That is, literature and the extra-literary signified are like tectonic plates that meet in the fairy tale and undermine it.

"Exactly. A legend, no matter how you look at it, is a symbol. The saying and the story rub against each other, and that's what creates these fragility."

A tool in the service of morality 

In other stories in the "Fables" file, Taub uses the literary medium to argue with accepted ideas from the national-religious world, such as Rabbi Kook's idea of ​​"total unity".

In the story called "Three Walls" it is told about a woman who lives in an apartment that has lost its fourth wall, and the people are peeking into her life and robbing her of her privacy.

"I think that first of all we want to be good people."

A statue designed by Taub, photo: Yonatan Shaul

"At the beginning of the story, a hint is given for readers, in a seemingly casual sentence, that links the story to the idea of ​​'total unity', which is indeed a nucleus for a sky-high empathic perception, but when it is realized in the field and superficially - it sins in many cases with rapacity that crushes the individual under the wheels of the great unity."

"I got to see how a different religiosity is growing," he qualifies.

"Still on the fringes, but lively and full of interest. A broad religiosity that understands how there is holiness even in secularity. For me, religiosity is more than keeping mitzvot and studying Gemara and Halacha. Every person who listens to the voice inside him that calls him to be good to another person without conditions and without a hint of profit, and even without gratitude, There are things he will not do at any cost, even under terrible temptation - as far as I'm concerned, he is a supremely religious person."

So for you, being religious is not only observing a mitzvah, but also obeying a moral order whose source is not Torah?

"I have some acquaintances with political positions very far from mine, the exact opposite, and I think they are religious in the sense that religion is a tool in the service of morality. The perception that a historical injustice was caused here, even if I don't agree with it, is for me a religious act. I have a lot of respect for it ".

I mean, is it important to you that morality be an inseparable part of Judaism?

"It is not important to me that he be inside, just as it is important to me that my framework as a religious person does not imprison me outside of morality. Because that does a terrible injustice to what it means to be a Jewish person. I think that first of all we want to be good people."

You could say that your legends are like that.

They combine the religious with the moral and try to expand the fields of "religion", to create a wider umbrella.

"Yes. I grew up in the religious sector, out of a condescending atmosphere, out of a feeling that we are 'the full wagon'. Today I think we have a lot to learn. Apart from the superficiality that may sometimes be visible through the television screens, there is depth and values ​​in the secular world that the religious world needs to internalize."

"My novels are books of a concerned reader"

Taub, who lives in the Hasmonean settlement near Modi'in, published several children's books, until in the nineties he switched to writing for adults.

"I sent a story to a writing workshop for adults at Beit Ariela, and Chaim Baer read it and really liked it, and told me that I had to write for adults. He had a regular column in the newspaper 'Dvar' at the time, and he published my story instead of his weekly column, and then I was invited to the Magalim corner Writer' in the 'End of Quote' program. Since then I have been writing, and I only publish a little of what I write."

"He published my story instead of his weekly column."

Haim Beer, photo: Ziv Koren

"If we publish a book, then to change something in the readers."

A sculpture designed by Taub,

For Taub, writing for children and writing for adults are intertwined.

"To me, children's stories are tools, and I don't mean tools in the pedagogical sense, but in the sense of wanting to give through the story. Therefore, even when I write for adults, these are actually children's books. My novels want to create something, they are books for a concerned reader."

You want to act through writing.

"I don't write for entertainment. I was in the warehouse of the Kinneret Zamora book publishing house (where some of his previous books were published, KD), I saw the huge bookshelves, from floor to ceiling, and I said to myself, do you want to publish another book in this?

Why bother?

If you publish a book, then to change something in the readers.

Even if only five readers end up reading it."

Udi Taub, "Legends", Pardes Publishing House and the Context Institute, 174 p.

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