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NEW BOOK RELEASE:
Elisha Porat, EPISODE, a novel. Translated from the
Hebrew by Alan sacks, "Y&H" Publishers, Israel 2006.
ISBN 965-909-03-0-7. For purcahse: Elisha Porat, Ein
Hahoresh
38980
,
Israel
. Fax 972-4-636-6774.
This book is the story of Leopold
Arieh Friedman Lahola, whose
fascinating exploits in
Israel
defy belief.
Elisha Porat describes Lahola as "the man
of a thousand talents," a brilliant Jewish intellectual
who immigrated to
Israel
in 1949 only to flee late in
1956. This flight was typical
of his life.
He would appear somewhere,
bewitch everyone he met, raise high hopes with his dazzling abilities and
supreme capacity to inspire,then simply vanish without
explanation, leaving his former coterie deeply embittered.
Arieh Lahola - Leopold
Friedman - whose life forms the basis for
the novel's protagonist, engaged in a broad range of artistic endeavors.
In
Israel
, he filmed and produced several
movies that left an indelible mark on the national cinema.
On the collectives and in other settlements, he directed countless
amateur stage performances. He
staged a large production at the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv.
He wrote film scripts for other directors.
He published articles and stories in the leading literary journals
of the day. And he dreamed of
founding his own lively, bustling
political theater.
Everything in Arieh
Lahola's life was hasty, hectic and episodic. Even
as a youth, animated by lofty visions and grand dreams, he set off on his
course as a Central European Jewish intellectual.
He loved life as a mirror of art and art as an imitation of life.
In art he saw the realization of all that is good and beautiful and
true in life. Steeped in
ideology, he flitted from place to place
in search of success.
During brief, intense bursts of effort, he attempted to realize his
artistic ideas on the stage. But
he was far too flighty and would suffer a succession of disappointments.
Just 50 years of life, from
1918 to 1968, were granted to Arieh Lahola in this world: in
Bratislava, Czechoslovakia; in Tel Aviv and in the wooden shacks of his
young pioneer admirers on the kibbutz settlements of the Emek and Hefer
Valleys; in Paris, which served as a way station for this classic
wandering Jew; and,finally, in Munich.
These 50 years were crowded with changes of
identity and crises of
belief. And Lahola, who
devoured life even as he nourished it with his art, failed to make more of
his life than a fleeting episode.
Elisha Porat, poet and writer, was born in
1938, to a "pioneer" family, of Jewish Halutzim. He raised in
Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh, and was a farmer and soldier. He has published 20
volumes of fiction and poetry in Hebrew, since 1973. His works have
appeared in translation in
Israel
, the
United States
,
Canada
and
England
.
Alan Sacks, who received his
undergraduate, graduate and law degrees from the
University
of
Pennsylvania
, has been translating
Mr. Porat's stories since 1988. He lives with his wife and
two children outside
Philadelphia
,
Pennsylvania
,
USA
.
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