Please welcome guest author Dev Bentham. Here she's talking about her new book Learning From Isaac, perfectly timed for the Passover season.
It's Passover, the time of year when Jews all over the world are reminded to welcome the stranger to our holiday table. What exactly that means in terms of social and family politics is grist for the Seder dinner discussion.
In my new novella, Learning from Isaac, Professor Nathan Kohn has a tradition of inviting Jewish students to his mother's house for Passover. It's a bit awkward when he invites Isaac Wolf, a student he with whom he has incredible chemistry. They have a lot in common, including a shared heritage and a passion for the environment, but there are troubling differences, like the almost 20-year age spread and the fact that Nathan's a staid professor, while Isaac's a student who's been raising his tuition in the back room of a downtown club; as he describes it, "sucking dick for dollars."
Their Seder dinner is made even more uncomfortable by the arrival of Tzvi, a visiting Israeli professor who seems to know Isaac from the club.
The central Passover story is the classic freedom-from-bondage tale of Moses and Pharaoh that we know from Sunday School or Charlton Heston or Dreamworks. At Nathan's Seder dinner the talk turns to money and freedom. One character asks if money frees or enslaves us. Here's an excerpt of the discussion that follows:
Isaac spoke softly into the silence that followed. “Maybe the answer to your question is that both are true. If we’re desperate for money, it’s enslaving because of what we become willing to do to get what we need. Having enough money makes us free to choose our way in the world.”
Tzvi shifted beside me. His grin as he faced Isaac was cruel. “True, but financial circumstances needn’t make us prostitute ourselves.”
Isaac held his gaze. “We’re all prostitutes in one way or another. Some are simply more straightforward than others.”
What do you think? Does money make us free? Or is it another way we're bound? Does the end justify the means? Given skyrocketing tuition costs, is Isaac smart or naïve to think that when he's through he'll still have a place at the table?
Leave a comment today for a chance to win a copy of Learning from Isaac.
Dev Bentham is the author of Moving in Rhythm and Learning from Isaac. You can find her at www.devbentham.com, follow her on Twitter or email her.
