Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, The Balancing Game: A Child Between Two Worlds, A Society Approaching War, © 2013, ISBN 978-1-62212-846-4; 258 pages, available through Amazon, $16.50.
By Donald H. Harrison
Readers of San Diego Jewish World are familiar with author Dorothea Shefer-Vanson as a columnist based in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion. She writes about such subjects as classical concerts, Israeli politics and Holocaust memories. In The Balancing Game, we get to see her as a novelist, but the back cover description of her makes us suspect that the novel is partially autobiographical, a roman á clef. Perhaps there is not an exact 1:1 correspondence between Shefer-Vanson’s own life and that of “Naomi” a child of German-Jewish refugees who grows up in England and eventually settles in Jerusalem, but there are certainly enough similarities to intrigue regular readers of her columns.
On more than one occasion, Shefer-Vanson’s love for classical music has been on display in her column, and in this book, her description of a little girl thrilling to Handel’s Messiah bespeaks that love. “Suddenly there was a hush and everyone stood up. Naomi looked up at her father, who nodded to indicate that she should get up too. The conductor raised his arms, then brought them down, the drums rolled, and the orchestra and choir burst into glorious sound that seemed to cascade over Naomi as the Halleluiah chorus reverberated around the auditorium. Naomi felt her heart flutter with excitement as she listened to the music. When it ended and everyone took their seats again, she sank down exhausted, wishing it would go on forever.”
For Naomi, the concert was also magical because she shared it with her father, for whom this sortie into live music—especially to hear a choral work featuring male and female voices and so imbued with Christian interpretation – was at odds with the family’s Orthodox Judaism. Throughout the book, Naomi—who will eventually change her first name to “Felicity”—rebels against her Judaism, outwardly wishing to fit in with the Christian neighbors, and inwardly retaliating against her parents for incidents that she perceived as proof that they loved her younger sisters more than she.
In one quite humorous example of what Naomi considers her parents’ preference for her sisters, a dinner is described at which one sister is discovered to have contravened kashrut by having already eaten at a Christian neighbor’s house – ingesting not just any food, mind you, but bacon, the origin of which is a total mystery to the little sister but not to Naomi. Although the girl is punished by their parents, it is not with sufficient severity, in Naomi’s view, given the seriousness of the “crime.”
When Naomi, on the way home from school, is stalked by an Irish boy, who pushes her over, or sometimes hits her, the terrified little girl tells her father about the bullying, but he does nothing about it. So, to avoid the boy, she must take a more circuitous walking route home. Is this parental neglect or a lesson in life skills for the little girl?
Because she was the oldest sister, Naomi had considerable sway with her two siblings and often played a game with them in which they would imagine that they had all run away from home and joined the circus. She would lie on her back in her bed, and with her raised knees tenting the bed covers, she thereby would supply a platform upon which a little sister could shakily stand and imagine the crowd under the Big Top cheering her acrobatic finesse. In what they called the “Balancing Game,” the sister would try to maintain her position on Naomi’s knees.
In a home run by parents who Naomi was convinced didn’t really want her, “running off” was not only a childish flight of fancy; it was practice for the emotional independence that she would someday claim as a British Jewish expatriate living in Israel, far from her parents.
The novel builds to a climax which reveals the deep psychological reason why Naomi is so alienated from parents who, to readers, appear to be nothing less than near perfect and quite loving. Stories from Naomi’s life in England and from alter-ego Felicity’s life and preparation for motherhood in war-torn Israel are alternated, heightening the juxtaposition between the child and the adult it became. The drama is a sedate one, but all-in-all, quite thought provoking.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via sdheritage@cox.net