By Masada Siegel, Special to the Jewish Sound
“Israel had a big effect on me,” says Ruchama King Feuerman. “It’s the kind of place where outrageous stories are handed to you on a platter, and then you have to tone them down to make them believable.”
Much like the characters she creates in her novel “In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist,” Ruchama King Feuerman is an intriguing woman. Her story is set in Jerusalem and her head appears to spend a great deal of time in Israel, but Feuerman, who was born in Nashville, grew up in Virginia and Maryland and now lives in New Jersey. She will visit the Seattle area on Nov. 20 to speak about her experiences.
At the age of 17, Feuerman bought a one-way ticket to Israel to seek her spiritual fortune. Her mother hails from Casablanca where her family lived for centuries and her father is a third-generation American who was born and raised in the South.
“My father had a big effect on me. He had turned his life around and became interested in Torah-observant Judaism in his mid-30s,” Feuerman says. “He was full of sincerity and religious enthusiasm, akin to someone who’d ‘seen the light,’ and yet, despite himself, his natural skepticism and irreverence kept rising to the surface. Something in that blend — sincerity and irreverence — has always appealed to me and influences the way I like to write.”
Feuerman spent 10 years in Israel, where she taught Torah, but also learned from every situation that presented itself to her. Many people find the city of Jerusalem to be akin to walking into a history book, where the magic of a time past comes to life in every step one takes throughout the city.
“Sometimes I’ll try to write a story with a setting outside of Israel, but then after a few pages I’ll find myself drifting back to Jerusalem,” Feuerman says.
At one point Feuerman felt pulled in one direction: Toward the energy of exploration through the mystics of our time, the Kabbalists.
“Years ago, when I lived in Jerusalem, I met a Kabbalist. We actually laughed together,” she says. “It was the best moment of my life. For years afterward, whenever I needed a lift, I would remember the Rebbe’s laughter — our co-mingled laughter — and it sustained me.”
It was that experience that inspired “In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist.”
“In Israel, everyone visits Kabbalists,” Feuerman says. “Heads of parliament, people seeking advice before operations, soccer players to improve their games, and soap opera stars, in addition to the black hats.”
Her novel, which was a 2013 Jewish book award finalist, intertwines people from different faiths, nationalities and walks of life, what could be called an accurate reflection of life in Israel. Though she wrote the story thousands of miles away from Jerusalem, “I loved how I could experience Jerusalem intensely from my little perch in New Jersey,” she says. “I also appreciated learning about Islam and finding many areas of overlap within Judaism.”
Feuerman’s passion for writing comes from what she says “serves some psychological need of mine — perhaps the need to be at a remove, to remain at a safe distance from people, and at the same time be in the pulse of life with everyone’s problems,” she says. “Writing, as John Berger once wrote, is both a barrier and a link.”
She spoke of a Hassidic concept, “being in velt, oist velt, a quality of being in the world and out of the world at the same time,” she adds. “I think the concept was meant to apply to praying but could apply to the writing process, too. Human beings tell stories in order to get themselves out of impossible predicaments. And the impossible predicament is life.”