‘Hebrew Kid’ packs punches but lacks realism

"The Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden," by Emmy Award-winning writer Robert Avrech, is filled with the best of intentions. However, it falls far short of becoming a superior book for young Jewish readers.

This is a shame, as the novel transmits a very positive notion of Judaism. The young Jewish and non-Jewish reader will be introduced to the meaning of Jewish ritual.

The author, who won an Emmy for his excellent adaptation of Jane Yolen's powerful novel "Devil's Arithmetic," has an obvious and sincere feeling about traditional Judaism as well as a desire to educate and instill pride in young Jewish readers.

Yet "The Hebrew Kid" simply does not work. It lacks the realism required of any good fiction.

The family members portrayed are all stereotypes: the devout and saintly Jewish father, the overly protective and chicken-soup making mother, the irritable but beautiful older sister, and the narrator — 12-year-old Ariel — who is the Hebrew Kid, a perfect Jewish hero.

Ariel has more in common with comic-book superheroes than with a flesh-and-blood teen. And his speeches — on Judaism, marriage and life itself — are more appropriate for a character a full decade older.

Likewise, the Apache Maiden, based on the real-life Apache warrior Lozen, does not come across as a real 13-year-old girl, even in the Wild West. Her conversations with Ariel advance the Jewish and Apache content of the story, but they are not believable except as a fantasy of the author's imagination.

The plot is melodramatic from beginning to end. An anti-Semitic sheriff from a small Arizona town expels the family, who has immigrated to America following a pogrom in 1870 Russia. Before the novel is over, we experience the healing of Lozen's brother and the abduction of Ariel's sister by scalp hunters and the sister's rescue by the Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden. The plot, as well, features a cameo by Doc Holliday and the culminating bar mitzvah of the narrator-hero.

Even in stories for young adults, the author has an obligation to create characters and situations that are emotionally believable. It is this emotional believability that unites works as disparate as "The Wizard of Oz," "E.T." and Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory."

The best literature for young adults inducts teens into a world of adult understanding — which is why Sholem Aleichem's and Mark Twain's children's stories — are not only for children. In another example, the gentleness of William Saroyan's "The Human Comedy" did not mask the anxiety American families felt during World War II or the devastation caused by the loss of hundreds of thousands of Americans fighting Nazism and the Japanese empire.

There is plenty of blood in "The Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden" and plenty of violence, but none of it seems real.

Yet the author is attempting something important and profound. Avrech's son, Ariel, a rabbinical student, died at the age of 22, and this book is a tribute to him. The Hebrew Kid is named after him. In order to honor Ariel, Avrech and his wife have founded a publishing house dedicated to printing young adult fiction that transmits Jewish values and ideals.

For that reason, "The Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden" has a value far surpassing that of the book itself. And the desire to create positive books for Jewish young adults is both noble and necessary.




"The Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden" by Robert J. Avrech (225 pages, Seraphic Press, $14.95).