Burned S.J. sukkah touches nerve for Israeli author

In her most recent novel, Israeli writer Michal Govrin used the sukkah as a literary device. And, in a painful coincidence, during her recent visit to San Jose State University, someone used the Hillel of Silicon Valley's sukkah as an incendiary device.

Earlier this month, an unknown vandal or vandals set fire to the $1,700 sukkah in the wee hours as it sat in Hillel's driveway. But as Govrin wrote in her book, "Snapshots," it could always be worse — Saddam Hussein could fire a Scud missile at you, for one thing.

"I chose the sukkah [as a literary metaphor] because it's a temporary structure and, by decree, not stable. It's a way to be more in harmony with the outside world, the sky, the seasons and to expose ourselves — which is frightening. So that this symbol is burned down reminds us all how fragile and risky [life] is," said Govrin, a strikingly tall woman with curly blonde hair who spoke at not only SJSU but U.C. Berkeley and Stanford earlier this month.

Govrin's novel opens with the death of its protagonist, the mercurial Israeli architect Ilana Tsuriel. Govrin then circles back to the early 1990s when Tsuriel embarks on a quest to make a statement of peace by constructing a "sukkah city" on some of Jerusalem's holiest and most contested real estate on the Hill of Evil Counsel near the pre-1967 Israeli-Jordanian border.

"This is her dream, and harsh reality shatters the dream and shows it as tragic, pathetic and, maybe, a stupid dream about peace," sums up Govrin.

"But, still, she is a dreamer."

And while she wasn't the first to say it, she's quick to agree with the notion that, in fact, all Israel is a sukkah.

"Israel is both a mighty state very determined to protect itself and, at the same time, an image I use in the book is it is a porcupine standing there all armed and yet totally exposed to a car to come and crush it," said Govrin in her blended Israeli and French accent (she is the child of an Israeli pioneer and European Holocaust survivor, received a doctorate from the University of Paris and currently splits her time between Jerusalem and New Jersey).

Govrin wrote her novel in fits and starts over seven years from 1993 and 2000. And, at one point during her frequent real-life expeditions to the site of her pretend sukkah city, she was shocked and overjoyed to find bulldozers on the mountain. It turned out to be the opening dig of the since-completed Rhoda Goldman Promenade, designed by Bay Area landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and funded by San Franciscan Richard Goldman. The promenade, constructed on the very site where, 40 years ago, Israeli and Jordanian soldiers fired the first shots of the Six-Day War, is now a favorite spot for Jerusalemites of all backgrounds.

In that way, Ilana Tsuriel's "stupid" dream of peace and unity is coming true, at least a little bit.

It's a dream Govrin wishes she could share with the folks who burned the sukkah at SJSU.

"I would love to speak with those who burned down the sukkah and see if they're interested to learn what a sukkah is, to overcome hate and overcome the need to vandalize," she said.

She'd like them to "sit in the sukkah and smell the greenery and feel the shade coming through the leaves. It is so cozy, it is like going back to childhood and being defenseless and enjoying it — symbolically sitting under the clouds of God and also lying in the laps of one another. I wish I could invite these people into the sukkah and give them that experience."




"Snapshots" by Michal Govrin (322 pages, Penguin Group, $26.95).