As non-Hebrew readers are at last able to access and enjoy the work of acclaimed Israeli-born author Maya Arad, one of the "finest living authors writing in Hebrew today" (Haaretz), this candid and illuminating conversation highlights what makes Maya and her work so vital.
In dialogue with Hadassah Magazine Executive Editor, Lisa Hostein, Maya discusses her new book, Happy New Years, which, among many engaging themes, sheds light on what it means to be an Israeli living in America — a pertinent question as we all continue to grapple with the ongoing war in Gaza and the fate of the hostages, Israelis, Jews everywhere, and Gaza itself.
Maya shares the inspiration for her novel and how she both resembles and significantly differs from her protagonist, an Israeli woman who moves to the United States to teach Hebrew at a Jewish day school in the 1960s. The novel features letters she proceeds to write to college friends back in Israel over the span of 50 years, a period that sees huge developments in the status of women, LGBTQ+ rights, and how Israelis view compatriots who moved to America, among other things. Talking about her cohort of Israeli-born female authors, Maya observes that compared to her childhood, "Now, today, writers come in all shapes and colors, right? There are women, there are immigrants from Russia and from Ethiopia, there are expats, like me, there are, you know, Israeli Arabs who write in Hebrew, so it's really … there's so much diversity, which is great." Providing her deeply personal response to the October 7th attacks, which particularly hit close to home as she spent part of her childhood at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, a Gaza border kibbutz that was devastated in the attacks, Maya paints a vivid picture of how the Israeli American community came together even more deeply as a result.
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