Q & A

For my generation of writers, Norman Mailer, who died on November 10th of renal failure, was the ultimate father figure. We measured ourselves against the sweep of his brilliance—for it must be conceded that even his lesser books had the sweep of brilliance—our whole adult lives. He was the giant who dared giant leaps and, more than occasionally, giant pratfalls. Thus my drive to his brick house on the very end of Cape Cod in Provincetown, Mass. some months ago had the excitement and dread of a pilgrimage. Beside me on the passenger seat, the author photo on his last novel, The Castle in the Forest, drilled into me with a father’s intensity—equally admonishing and exhortatory—until I finally had to cover it with my hat. But I took my hat off when I entered his house and started asking questions.

Whatever else that can be said about it, this new book is written with the vigor of someone half your age.

Good to hear. But every time I hear compliments, my feet start doing this [twitching].

Not the shy, retiring type: A first edition of Advertisements for Myself You want to run away?

I’ve never learned to take a compliment graciously.

How come?

Damned if I know. My father, an elegant man, always took compliments very well. But I, being rough hewn, loved messing his hair. Maybe I defined myself in opposition to him.

In this book, the relationship between young Adi (Adolph) and his father is very fraught—more moving than I expected it to be.

I’ve been thinking about how many of my books have that recurring theme. My relationship with my father was very interesting. Not hostile, but never near. I couldn’t reach him. He was an exceptionally complex man. He was very proud of me after “The Naked and the Dead,” which he must have read ten times.

Did he “get” it?

Oh yeah.

So you were able to communicate on that very deep level.

Yeah, he didn’t go in for long speeches, but he would look at me and say,“This is good.”

Was it from him that you got your grit?

My father was a very bold man in his quiet way. And my mother was a remarkable woman—not only strong but also loving.

You demonize Hitler here, quite literally—the demon narrator is there at the conception. Aren’t you thereby letting mankind off the hook?

It seems to me there have been two exceptional births in human history: Jesus Christ and Adolph Hitler. Hitler is the devil’s answer to Jesus Christ.

Oedipal shmedipal, as long as he loves his mother: Mailer's Hilter had some Freudian issuesYou like making large statements, don’t you?

Drives wives crazy.

I can only imagine.

I make them for the sheer joy of making them.

When you read younger novelists today, are you impatient that they don’t seek to go larger?

I don’t read them. Which I think is one of the reasons they’re not particularly in love with me.

Whom do you read for pleasure?

I find I can’t read good novels anymore—not when I’m working—because they’re too disruptive. I get excited by them, and go off in all sorts of directions. How would I do if I were writing it? And I get off my own work. I’m immensely single-minded, I’d even say dull, about sticking to my own work. For the last ten years I’ve always felt I’ve got one book left, one book left, one book left.

If there’s still one left after this one, what will it be?

A sequel to this one about Hitler. In this last, after all, I only take him to age 16. I think there’s a little more to him …

Are you impatient with some of your contemporaries for not contending with the larger questions?

Look, for better or for worse, I have that kind of mind. They have [theirs]. I used to be very competitive. By now I’m sick of it, in the sense that it has no meaning. Either one of us will last, or ten of us, who knows. History can wipe all of us out.

I wasn’t expecting to hear such mellowness from you.

It’s not mellowness, it’s shared amusement. After competing with someone who used to be a rival, in the end we have a shared conversation. I respect Roth, I respect Updike, DeLillo, Vonnegut, I could name ten of them, they’re all good writers.

One book left?: The pugilist in his last daysSalinger?

Salinger I’m pissed off at, because he had such a glimpse into America when he was young, and he didn’t use it.

Any theory as to why he went silent?

No theory worth airing.

At your age [of 83], are you more prudent not to air a theory if it’s half-baked?

I’ve gone off half-cocked so many times in my youth that yes, now I’m a little older…

So you’re still actively growing?

Better growth than decrepitude.

It’s marvelous that you have this capacity…

Well listen, we’ll see. But I can guarantee you one thing: At the moment there are 20 writers, male and female, who feel that they are the best living American writer. And I of course am one of them. But that’s as far as I’ll go.

You deal in opposites a lot, don’t you? You like the way the world is balanced.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

So how do you finally measure up on the wisdom scale?

I’d probably give myself a very good mark.

Care to offer a numerical grade?

[Chuckling] No. That would not be wise.

As a man, are you ever intimidated?

Not anymore. The best thing about old age is that you’re no longer intimidated by anybody. There’s a real cool that comes in with old age.

* * *

NEXT: Read Shvitz post From White Negro to Jewish Hipster: Jews Still Acting Black in 2007, by Eric Goldstein

ALSO IN JEWCY:

Michael Weiss wrote an obituary for Mailer, Abe Greenwald compared him to Bono, and Stefan Beck called him an example of the free pass we give literary rock stars of a certain age.

[This article originally appeared in The Washington Post.]

As an assimilated Negro, I find that black Jews just tickle my fancy. (Any Oprah/Sarah Silverman hybrids, call me!) I agree with the writer Julius Lester when he says, “What I find remarkable about Jews: They’re the only ethnic group that seems to care about blacks. At least Jews want to learn.”

I’ve certainly tried to learn a Jewish girl a thing or two on blacks, so I figured Julius Lester might have some words of wisdom for me. I first discovered Lester when I stumbled upon his must-read 1984 New York Times interview with James Baldwin (during which Baldwin exclaimed “Fuck Norman Mailer!” when Lester mentioned the author of “The White Negro”—sadly, the Times struck it from the record.) Besides being an academic and literary star—he's author of over 45 books and a decorated professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts—Lester also happens to be that most intriguing of exotic birds, a black Jew. He made a name for himself as a writer, radio commentator, and avowed atheist during the civil rights era, but converted to Judaism in 1982 after years of religious searching (Lovesong, his spiritual memoir, details this journey.)

At 68, Lester is still writing; next spring HarperCollins will publish his novel about lynching, told from the point of view of a 14-year-old white boy. I took to asking him some questions over e-mail.

THE BLACKER THE BERRY, THE JEWER THE JEW

I think the average black person is suspicious when the average Jewish guy distinguishes himself from the average white guy—at least in America. What do minorities like blacks or Hispanics have in common with American Jews, and what are their differences?

Not a huge fan of Normal Mailer: BaldwinIdentity has many faces, and one’s social identity may not correspond to one’s personal identity. There are Jews whose personal and/or religious identity is so forceful that they resent being identified as white, even though they look like “the average white guy.” Someone who identifies first as a Jew sees him or herself as living by a value structure that believes in justice and equality as opposed to a white guy whose value system is different. Perhaps blacks should not be so quick to dismiss a Jew who insists that he is not white, regardless of what he looks like.

Growing up in the forties and fifties, I always thought Jews were different from whites. Jews were people who empathized with blacks, who understood what it was like to be discriminated against. When I was doing radio on WBAI from 1968 to 1975, people would call me on the air and identify themselves as being “white and Jewish,” and that always confused me because, in my mind, Jews were different from white people.

None of this is to say that Jewish racism does not exist, because it does. And black racism exists, despite those who maintain that blacks cannot be racists because they are victims of racism.

It is increasingly difficult to generalize about blacks, Hispanics, and Jews because of increasing class differences within each group as well as generational differences. For example, blacks and Jews of my generation and older worked together in the labor movement and the civil rights movement. As fraught with tensions as black-Jewish relations became, that coalition meant something. The present generation of blacks and Jews do not see why it is expected that blacks and Jews will work together. The black-Jewish coalition means nothing to them, and I would not argue with that. The events of their lifetimes—Farrakhan, Israel, Arabs—mean very different things to each group.

Different from the rest of the country: Unique New York However, having said that, black-Jewish tensions have been more pronounced in New York than, for example, in the Midwest, where I found blacks and Jews working together on many issues with none of the suspicion and antagonism that can exist in New York. People too often think that the experiences of blacks and Jews in New York reflect the state of affairs between blacks and Jews across the country, but that is not the case. I know it’s difficult for New Yorkers to believe that their experiences do not represent the truth for everyone in America, but New York is unique.

Politically I think blacks and Jews made a huge mistake in the 1980s and 1990s by not reaching out to start working with Hispanic groups. Even twenty years ago, demographic projections suggested that Hispanics were going to become the largest minority group early in the 21^st century. That has happened earlier than anyone predicted. As Hispanics become an increasingly strong political group, the public discourse on whom and what constitutes a minority will change, and neither blacks nor Jews are prepared to deal with the shift. Blacks are in the process of losing their golden status as the largest minority group, and this loss is going to have an impact on black identity, which has been too focused for too long on being victims.

SLAVERY: OVER FOR 142 YEARS. THE HOLOCAUST: OVER FOR 62 YEARS. BEING A VICTIM: TIMELESS.

Is there a statute of limitations on historical tragedies? For how long is Auschwitz or Jim Crow Mississippi relevant to a young Jew or Negro in New York City?

Compassion fatigue: Remember the Maine? A very interesting question. I suppose one needs to ask if there is a statute of limitations on memory. There was the recent article in the Sunday Times about people who are tired of memorial services for the victims of 9/11—about “compassion fatigue”. The article referred to the numerous events that were once remembered by public ceremonies and are scarcely remembered now: the sinking of the USS Maine, the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

One of the real problems facing America today is that since the 1960s, Americans no longer share the same historical memories, or we do not share those memories in the same ways.

In the summer of 1973 I taught summer school at a small college in Macon, Georgia. In one of my classes was a very beautiful blonde girl who invited me to drive up to someplace in north Georgia with her. I declined. I knew that northern Georgia was prime KKK territory and as much as I wanted to sleep with her, driving into Klan country was a price I was not willing to pay. When she asked me why I told her about the Klan’s prominence in northern Georgia, about segregation and the backs of buses, etc. She looked at me with her wide blue eyes like I was crazy said in her honeyed southern accent “None of that ever happened down here.”

Echoes of the past: Jim Crow Mississippi can't be forgotten Even though she was blonde, she was not dumb. She had come of age after the changes wrought by the civil rights movement and had grown up at a time when blacks sat anywhere on buses, when there were no white and colored water fountains in stores, when blacks and whites went to school together. I was floored by her response. I had no idea that history could be wiped out so completely in so short a time. This was 1973. The summer nine years before, I had been in Mississippi waking up every morning half-surprised that I hadn’t been killed during the night. After that day I didn’t know how to talk to her, (which was sad because she was really a beautiful girl) because her experience negated the history I had endured.

It is not enough that we remember only what happened to us. We should make the effort to remember that which happened to others, even others before we were born. So many U.S. states and cities have Native American names. The people are gone; all that remains is a word from their language, which is really a kind of tombstone. Massachusetts is a Native American word meaning “High Mountain Place.” Connecticut means “Long River Place.” It is my obligation to remember. The act of remembering connects us to each other. The life of the young black in New York grows from the lives and deaths of blacks in Mississippi who endured and struggled so that he would not have to endure and struggle in quite the same ways. The same goes for the young Jew.

Still relevant?: Building the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin Our lives do not begin with our births. Our lives exist on a continuum. Part of that continuum is that our lives today will become someone else’s past, and how we live our lives will, to some degree, give texture and context to the lives of people not yet born.

One of the things I love about being Jewish is that remembering is an integral part of being Jewish. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we sing melodies and say prayers that date back a thousand years and more. On Tisha B’Av we still mourn the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem more than 2000 years ago. At Passover we remember the exodus from Egypt, which may or may not have happened, but something happened that was transformative.

It is my wish that the young black New Yorker will remember Auschwitz as well as Jim Crow Mississippi, and that the young Jewish New Yorker will remember Jim Crow Mississippi as well as Auschwitz. Remembering the sufferings of others makes us come closer to each other.

Seems to be being a black Jew might have some perks. For example you can’t be “out-victimized” by anyone, right? It also seems the particular black-Jew blend should have a nickname. Any suggestions?

If there are perks to being a black Jew, I missed out. And I must be dumber than I realized because it never occurred to me that no one could out-victimize me. I never thought of being black or Jewish as being a victim, which just goes to demonstrate how much out of touch I am with the times I live in.

As for nicknames, oy vey! Virginia Hamilton wrote a novel called Bluish about a kid who was black and Jewish, but “bluish” sounds more like an alien in a bad Sci-Fi movie. The police chief (or maybe he’s former police chief now) of Charleston, South Carolina is (was) a black man named Reuben Greenberg, and he is Jewish. He said he was working on a recipe for fried chicken soup. That’s as close to black-Jewish humor as I’ve seen.

THE JULIUS LESTER GUIDE TO BLOGGING WHILE BLACK, JEWISH, AND 68 YEARS OLD

You’re a blogger at 68, when many people your age are still trying to get on to the Internet. Do you think it's important to stay engaged with the youth generation? Do you think blogs are a good medium for bridging generational gaps?

The non-linear world: Can you blog and walk at the same time? There are probably more people my age online than is recognized. I think it is important to stay engaged with the youth generation to the degree that is possible. I taught at the University of Massachusetts for 32 years, retiring at the end of 2003. I retired in part because I couldn’t continue to bridge the generational difference between my students and me. Yes, I blog but Facebook, YouTube, and other such enterprises are beyond me. At age 68, I keep having to decide: Given however much time I have left, how do I want to use it? One of my children is on Facebook and I enjoy logging in and seeing what she’s up to, but I don’t have the time or energy to create a Facebook site for myself.

One difference that my daughter and I talk about is that I grew up in a “linear world,” i.e. the world of print, and also a world in which you did one thing at a time. She has grown up in a world of simultaneity, a world in which one does several things simultaneously. It took me a while to understand that I can be talking to a friend in France on Skype and at the same time being sending that friend an attachment relating to what we’re talking about. And there’re probably four other things I could be doing at the same time. I grew up taking piano lessons; my daughter grew up with Garageband. A big difference.

I want to stay engaged with younger generations but recognize that I can only do so to a limited extent. Aging has its own interesting challenges and rewards. One is relief that I won’t be young again; another is the ability to look back to when I was young and what my dreams were and being able to say that I have achieved what I set out to achieve and more, that I didn’t sell out, that I made my dreams become reality. I would not trade being 68 for anything.

Are there any classic writers that would have thrived in this new media environment?

The Perez Hilton of Dublin: Joyce (drawn in text) This is a very interesting question. The writer who first comes to mind is Malcolm Lowery. I don’t remember the name of the novel, but one of his novels has a separate text running in the margin next to the main text. I wrote a short story (“The Child,” published in Join In: Multiethnic Short Stories) and a novella (“Catskill Morning,” published in Two Love Stories) in which I attempted to tell two stories—one in the margin, the other the main text. And I think James Joyce would have excelled in this new environment. To be able to add visuals to stream of consciousness feels like a natural for him. Although he’s not a writer, certainly Picasso would have thrived on the kind of art that is possible now, which can combine text, visuals, and sound.

I went with Baldwin one day to help him buy an electric typewriter. It frightened him so, I don’t think he ever used it.

What blogs do you read? You mentioned seeing me on Gawker.

I read Gawker, Jezebel, The Assimilated Negro, and several blogs devoted to women’s fashions. I love women’s fashions and subscribe to Vogue, Paris Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, W, and a couple of others. Both Gawker and Jezebel are funny as hell. The contributors on both have raised cynicism to a height that has its own peculiar beauty. However, Gawker needs to lighten up on the cracks about old people.

When John Le Carré admitted several years ago he was a longtime agent of Britain's intelligence services, the bestselling spy-thriller writer explained his involvement in the sort of terms you’d expect from someone who had for decades brilliantly captured boys’ spirits with a romanticized vision of espionage. "I really believed at last that I had found a cause I could serve," Le Carré, then 69, said in a TV documentary, The Secret Centre. "I also longed for the dignity which great secrecy confers upon you."

If great secrecy can confer dignity, it can also reap a personal harvest of great emotional wreckage. Such is the lesson of The Champagne Spy, a new documentary about one of the Mossad’s most infamous operations.

Mossad better blues: The posterThe setting is the Middle East in the early 1960s. Egypt’s ambitious leader Gamal Abdel Nasser is luring Nazi scientists to Cairo to facilitate the tyrant’s desire to build a nuclear weapon’s program. At around the same time, a dashing millionaire playboy named Wolfgang Lotz (rumored to be an ex-SS officer) arrives in Egypt and sets up a riding school and horse farm that quickly becomes the social nexus of both Egypt’s elite and their new Nazi imports.

Lotz’s real name is Major Ze'ev Gur Arie. He's a Mossad recruit who was commander of an Israeli infantry company in the 1956 Sinai campaign. Arie’s covert identity – which gives him access to a tantalizing mix of women, wealth and intrigue – proves intoxicating, and ultimately, tragic for the Israeli wife and child he left behind.

That child, Oded Arie, finally chose to share his story (and never-before-seen family footage) with filmmaker Nadav Schirman, whose documentary is winning awards and impressing audiences on the film festival circuit.

I interviewed Nadav (a friend I met years ago during my stint at the Jerusalem Post) as he was getting ready to fly to California for the Los Angeles International Film Festival.

What was the size of the manuscript before you cut the book down?

The finished book is 350 pages. I probably handed in 600 pages to my agent, but really, with the footnotes and my annotated raw notes, it was around 1100 pages.

You expected to do radical excision?

That’s how I work. I really love to work with negative space. Otherwise I would lose my mind. It took a decade; if it was the wrong direction I would really go insane. I really believe I had to draw Lillian a thousand different ways for her to become Lillian, even if it means drawing these scenes and dropping them out.

It was really a giant test for me as a writer to not fall prey to sensationalism, too. How much fun is it for Mr. Naughty Ex-Religious Boy to do the Jewish pimps and whores? I wrote tons of chapters on those whorehouses, but that was not the story I was telling. And the same with torture. I gave it this tiny little section that was the hardest and most dangerous part to write.

Risk-taker: YehoshuaIt was powerfully effective to have this little girl being incarcerated in this tube-like cell awaiting her —

Thank you. That was scary. Just after finishing my book I interviewed A.B. Yehoshua on stage about his novel Woman in Jerusalem which has a Greek chorus that comes in at the end. I asked him, “Did you really need to take that chance? Are you aware of how dangerous that was? You were home free.” I love fiction and it’s holy to me; I feel like if I make one mistake, I'm bumped and its over.

What do you mean, you're bumped?

Bumped out of line. “This was a perfect book but that comma is in the wrong place and it doesn't read right for me anymore.”

Is Kaddish a common Jewish surname?

No, no.

So if I'm not Jewish, and I’m reading this book, do I get the portentous nature of the name?

Even better if you don’t. His name is explained in the book, and how he received it. It’s a Jewish tradition. If somebody, say, has a terrible heart attack and survives it, they will take on a new name. If the angel of death was coming for Steve Cohen, he might not be looking for Marc Cohen. Sometimes people take on these wonderfully loaded, portentous names. In this case, the rabbi gives Kaddish his name—which is the prayer for the dead—because he is a sickly child. He says he should be the mourner instead of the mourned.

This book will not be pegged as a Jewish book, will it? A Jewish novel?

I like the way the question is formed because I get really defensive about that. It really comes from the Jewish community. I'm happy to be anything. You can call me whatever you want. Last time people said, "He is a long haired hippie writer," so now I am a short haired —

[RB laughs]

Now am I actually different? I got a haircut. Well, so do we switch shelves? But for me, I believe that if fiction is functioning, it better be universal. If this book makes me a Jewish writer, it should also make me an Argentine writer. I spent ten years of my life on this book. I'm obsessed with this country. I lived this book for a decade. I can't feel any closer.

Historically, it feels like I have been given the Holocaust because I am a Jew, even though I am an American Jew—you are bequeathed these things. But sometimes you just adopt them. Argentina is so close to my heart now. I am just doing my work and they are my people. I should at least be one quarter Argentine writer now. But apparently that doesn't change either.

The changes a decade brings: Englander pre-haircutHow Jewish is the Posnan family?

After the last book, I just I felt so much pressure to be like, “These are not regular people, they are Jewish people.” It’s just insane. I write fiction. And again I think of fiction as universal. My world in my head is often very Jewish when I imagine these things, but for the Posnans I actively resisted that. Once I decided the book starts off, “Jews bury themselves, the way they live,” that was one of the most freeing days, like “I’m just going to start this book with the word ‘Jews.’”

I was trying to stay away from Jewishness, but I recognized there is nothing to stay away from, that this is the world of my imagination. And it’s enough to me that it’s part of their humanity. Once I realized that I was not thinking of them as “other,” I got comfortable with the idea that none of this stuff is other, and now I feel like I can set everything in shul for the rest of my life. I am just so sensitive about it. It’s just such a strange thing that people want to do.

Why is it strange? Isn’t that what minority communities do?

Inside my head, it’s not a minority. That’s the whole point. When I grew up, Orthodox was the only way to be. I keep using the Dostoevsky example: In the Idiot, one Russian guy is talking to another Russian guy. But they don’t see themselves as “Russian guys.” You’re just in their world. They’re just guys.

What are your feelings about Kaddish and Lillian and Pato? Ten years with three people—

Day and night, yeah. I’m such a pessimist, I didn’t know if I would survive this book until the characters began to take on their own forms.. You have Lillian say one thing, and you go back and it’s just not her anymore. A friend still hasn't forgiven me this one moment I wanted so much. I think it was maybe the finest line I have ever written, but it was just a slightly different Lillian head—she would just not think this way at this point, anywhere in the book. That's when it the book felt tight to me, when I cut that line.

There was a question about surviving this book? If you felt that, what was the hump that you got over?

That moment I just said.

Nine years into it [laughs]?

I knew the book would be completed when I suddenly had another idea. I’d was writing the novel—this thing that was all-consuming, literally eating my whole brain—and then this little space opened and I thought, “Oh, that would be a good short story.” I feel like my head is now lit with ideas. It’s all free space now.

I would have thought that for some period of time, having completed the book after spending so much time on it, there would be some kind of reverberation. You’re saying you have been liberated to move on.

For me this was book was all-consuming, like most of my adult life spent on it. There really was a postpartum thing where you feel fine for a couple of weeks and then you just crash. My whole sense of purpose was this book, but then it gets balanced out by the fact that my real purpose is writing. If that’s what you are going to do all the time, you better really like it. So I feel like people get into trouble when they are only project-oriented.

Not a Jewish star in sight: Englander's first bookNine years later, big life commitment. Done. So what do you think about your book?

For me it’s not about whether I think it’s good. I recognize that’s not for me to do. I know what my obligations to a book are. I always quote Barry Targin, a writer who taught me about moral fiction at Binghamton. He talked about writing a fiction he could bear. The question is, do you stand by it?

You are proud of this as a good piece of craft?

Uh, I don’t know if it’s that.

You did the best you could?

Actually, it’s very strange for me to need to say, “Yes. I have tried my best” and then also to be done. Literally, my poor, poor editor, poor Jordan—I made a list of probably 75 to 100 pages of questions that I wanted to answer before the book was done. I remember sitting in her office on the last day, with her at her desk and me sitting at a small desk behind her.

Was it the kid’s table?

At the kid’s table. Other editors would walk by the office and look in and say “Poor woman. I don’t know why they love each other, those two.”

I remember sitting there crossing out the last question and being like, “And now I am done.” That’s it.

That’s a beautiful scene. Possibly shows the finer editor-writer relationship—

I'm so thankful for my editor and my agent. They take good care of me.

Let's give them names. Who are they?

Nicole Araggi and Jordan Pavlin at Knopf. I’m spoiled as can be. I’m really happy at Knopf. They care about books. Even the cover is important. Barbara de Wilde, who did my first cover, she hadn’t worked there in the intervening eight years and yet they brought her back. Nobody asked. I didn’t ask. To me that means somebody in the art department is thinking about books in a careful way. Not that anybody remembers I was alive, thank you, but I don’t think my collection would have sold a copy with a Jewish star on the front. They represented it the way I see it and that gave it a chance.

Have you spent much time thinking about who you are now, after this long boat voyage, ten years before the mast or some such?

My friends would say, “All he does is think about himself.” [both laugh] But not in that way. It’s a goal, to be very honest, to choose writing, to make time to write. I keep saying “obsessed” or “holy” because I am obsessed with it and it is holy to me. The writing will not suffer. I refuse to have it suffer but, now, after this point maybe I can balance writing and something else. I would like to be more available for dinner plans with the next book. That can be a goal.

You’re shooting for becoming a well-rounded mensch here.

I’d like to work towards being of the world.

We’ll check in from time to time and see how it goes.

Daniel Mendelsohn's resemblance to his great-uncle Shmiel, who died in the Holocaust, is so stark that young Daniel could make his relatives weep just by walking into a room. Should it come as a surprise that this writer is so obsessed with identity?

The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million has been one of the most critically lauded books of 2006 (you’ll find it on every major list), not least for the fact that it reinvents the shopworn genre of the Holocaust memoir. It never confines itself to a single terrain, be it literary or geographic. Mendelsohn alternates his investigation – which takes him from Poland to Scandinavia to Australia – with rich discourses on Cain and Abel and the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah. His subjects are love and death, rootedness and Diaspora, and the protean nature of narrative itself.

Trained as a classicist, Mendelsohn rejects the trappings of what he terms "Holocaustiana" by refusing to see his subjects as "puppets to be manipulated…for the movies or magical realist novels." The twentieth century was enough of a deus ex machina; it doesn't need a curatorial sentimentalist to intervene on behalf of its victims.

The Lost, as a result, is firmly "anti-redemption," a stance that will hardly win its author fans of the Schlinder's List tendency. Not that he minds much.

The Lost was completed fairly recently but occupied you for at least five years. What is the date you recognize as the book's beginning?

The Bolechow Municipal Storage Facility: Formerly the synagogue where Mendelsohn's grandfather and Shmiel were Bar Miztvah'd The first 75 pages of my book are an attempt to answer this question, to describe in considerable detail how the search, and hence the book, began. Despite the fact that I'd always been possessed by family stories and histories, and had always hoped, in some vague way, that it might one day be possible to find out what happened to Uncle Shmiel, things didn't really get moving until I had the idea late in 2000 or early in 2001. That’s when I decided to go back to Bolechow and see if there wasn't anyone around who might remember Shmiel and his family—just walk around and talk to people and find "traces" of them.

So I and two of my brothers and my sister went to Ukraine in August 2001, an experience I subsequently wrote about as a cover story for the New York Times Magazine in July 2002. I should also emphasize that when I went on that trip, there was no notion in my mind that this might become a book. What made me feel strongly that there was a book to be written was what happened subsequent to our return from Ukraine—my being contacted out of the blue by one of the few Jewish survivors from our town, now living in Australia, and the consequent realization that there were these people still alive who had been intimates of my lost relatives and could help me learn about them.

Naturally, at the starting point, I had no idea of what stories would develop, so it was a bit of a crapshoot. But as it turned out, I got so much more than I could ever have dreamed of.

I always wanted to make the “search" the armature on which to hang a narrative that was complicated and rich in a way that I enjoy as a reader myself, and (more important) that allowed me to talk about many issues that have always been interesting to me: history versus narrative, family romances, storytelling, and so forth.I always thought of The Lost as referring not only to these six people who were murdered, but to a lot of things: A certain interwar European culture that has vanished; the world of people like my grandfather, European immigrants at the turn of the century through the 1920s, whose experiences as immigrants made them into a very specific kind of person that doesn't exist any more; a certain kind of Jewishness represented by those people; the kind of child I was in the 1960s who grew up around those people; the survivors I came to know, who although they survived had "lost" so much of themselves; and so on.

All those things are now "lost," I feel, and I wanted to find a way to write about all of it, from the start, and knew that the investigation, the search for Shmiel would, somehow, provide me with a structure from which I could hang the things you refer to – the circling digressions, the mini-histories, the reveries from childhood.

Piecing Together the Story: Frances Begley, who lived close to Bolechow as a young womanAs to the book’s being "as much about me as about the six "lost"': I feel strongly that the book is about me only in as much as it needs to be in order to illuminate the issues I'm interested in, about family, about how people relate to the past (a subject as interesting to me as a classicist as it is to me as a Jew or a relative of Holocaust victims), about how one becomes the kind of person who is a searcher or scholar.

I am not interested in, and not a fan of, books about personal experience per se, even when they lead, as they almost inevitably do these days, to "redemptions" that readers will identify with or derive solace from. As both The Elusive Embrace and now The Lost should make clear, I'm anti-redemption. I'm suspicious of using the world to make ourselves feel better. Feeling good about oneself is, I think, a fairly low ambition.

You have already mentioned that you wanted, not surprisingly, to write a book that you would want to read. In pursuit of that, what Holocaust-themed books did you read?

Strange as it may seem, I'm not in any way what I call a "Holocaust professional." I don't particularly seek out Holocaust books – or films or whatever – as a rule, simply because they're about a subject I've been connected with. I suppose I've read all the usual books, starting with an electrifying encounter with Anne Frank when I was a teenager (mostly because of the teen-love stuff, if I recall, which is as it should be). Primo Levi is admirable for the moral rigor. Naturally, I read Hannah Arendt at some point, although I have to say after working on my book all these years, I'm not so sure evil is so banal after all.

Over the years I have read this or that if it seemed good or was well-reviewed. But I am not and would never claim to be a scholar of the Holocaust, and while writing my own book I actually avoided reading Holocaust lit in general. For the purposes of writing my book, I had this feeling that I wanted to be cocooned in my own story, and wanted to avoid "static" from other writings.

I just wanted to go out into the world and listen to these Bolechowers talk about the occupation in their town, the way I used to listen to my grandfather tell stories about the town, and to piece together a story of what happened that way. (The Homeric, oral narrative, as it were, rather than the Thucydidean, written one, the history.) Because it was so important to me to focus scrupulously on just six people, as if one didn't know any of the rest, and in that way to recover a sense of what was done – done to people, as opposed to done to the Jews – that I avoided lots and lots of Holocaustiana during the writing of this book.

It's odd, because it's precisely the opposite approach I normally take when preparing to write something, which (given my philological training) would be to read every word written on a subject before sitting down to write a single word of my own.

I think it's probably fair to say that I'm far more interested in certain aspects of Central European Jewish and non-Jewish life from the turn of the last century up until the Holocaust. That’s a subject I'm happy to seek out books about. I'd much rather read Joseph Roth's The Radetsky March – a truly great book – than Schindler's List, any day.

In beginning of the panoply of narratives that is The Lost, when and how did you decide to adopt this ring-like Greek story telling style?
Family Narratives: Bolechower Adam Kulberg and grandaughter Alma in Copenhagen
There was no conscious decision as such to adopt a style, since, as is already evident in my first book, this is the style I've always had when writing about family narratives (since it is the style of those family narratives, as I describe in the book.) So it wasn't as if I sat down and said, "For this book, a bissl ring composition!"

When I write in my "book mode," as opposed to my critic mode, to some extent I'm channeling my grandfather's storytelling voice. Indeed I think I'm writing often as a kind of transcription of a basically oral narrative, if you know what I mean: the long winding sentences, the circling back to the starting point after digressions, etc. I started writing this book on Labor Day, 2004, and as I wrote these stories down, the sentence and paragraphs and sections just sort of happened that way: it was all, from the start, big, circling, and broadly arced. And I just went with it.

Is your role of family historian self-appointed or assigned? Though you end the book poetically by not looking back at Bolechow, you wonder about how your children will apprehend this story.

The kids have certainly been aware of my research, the search, since it involved my being away for large chunks of time. I have explained to them what it's all about, and certainly my older boy is old enough to be told, in a limited way, what World War II was about. But to be perfectly frank, I suspect that, like most writers' children, they will be blithely indifferent to my books and never read them until much later in life.

I asked about your kids because soon the history and memory of the Shoah will be mediated exclusively through secondhand accounts. Despite your mother's appeal to "genug ist genug" as well as your own insistence that the book is over, the fact of a next generation suggests maybe it's not. I point to an aside late in the last chapter when you meet Francis Begley's granddaughter and wonder to yourself about writing a book for her generation. Did I read that incorrectly?

Well, of course I am a fervent believer in the necessity of carrying over the testimony to future generations. In a way, the central obsession of the book is: How do you become responsible for other people's narratives? And I think I spend a great deal of time worrying that question (not worrying about it: worrying it, the way a dog worries a rag doll.) I go to great lengths, I think, to articulate this notion that my generation – the "generation of the grandchildren," as I call it; the grandchildren of those who were adults during the Holocaust—is the last on earth who will have had the opportunity to know people who were survivors. I grew up going to family events attended by people with tattoos on their arms; my children won't. I keep referring to my generation, therefore, as the "hinge" generation, because we are the last ones who'll have been living receptacles for the stories of those who were in the event itself; and I'm acutely conscious, obviously, of what it means to be someone who becomes the "transmitter" of another's stories, another's past.

As for genug ist genug: I do think that this pull in the opposite direction – the impulse to forget about the past and live in the present and future – is worth bringing up, because as we know, it's possible to get so obsessed with the past that one becomes unable to live in the present.

People like to compare Mickey Avalon to Eminem, and maybe that’s fair: Get rid of Avalon’s Holocaust-haunted family and hand-jobs-for-heroin career track and Eminem’s Detroit trailer-park background, and you wind up with two white guys who both rap about their hard-luck stories. What these people forget, though, is that Eminem would be a total sex god if he weren’t such a homophobe — come on, you saw 8 Mile — and Avalon has no such masculinity issues. And while Eminem has devoted his life to hip-hop, Avalon is more of a hustler, using music as a vehicle to get his life to a better place. Putting his lanky body on display, Avalon rhymes about “sassy little frassies with bulimia” (of which he’s had many), and strung-out male prostitutes on Sunset (of which he was one), single-handedly forging a new genre—call it glam-rap—with every bat of his mascara’d eyelashes. He’s like the product of an unholy union between David Bowie and Run-DMC.

Busting Out: Mickey Avalon goes through the windshield glass When I sat down with Avalon in late August, I wasn’t expecting him to be an unassuming little slip of a thing, hardly taking up space in the booth at Cantor’s Deli. It’s hard to believe this waif is the same guy who’s been writhing around on top of windshield-blown cars in West Hollywood nightclubs, or that he’s about to become famous. But given his single “Jane Fonda’s” prominent spot in a recent episode of Entourage, his record deal with Interscope, and a much-passed-around LA Weekly profile that’s now been optioned for a biopic, it seems like Avalon is perched on the brink of something big.

You and I have something in common: We both went to Beverly Hills High.

I went to Beverly for one year and then I went to a school called Excelsior for one year—I think for a year—and then another called Ridgewood.

How come you moved around so much?

I used my grandmother’s address to go to Beverly and it wasn’t really my scene. I kind of like did it for a year and got with it. I don’t want to say I didn’t fit in ’cuz I fit in wherever I go. It’s more like I didn’t have that kind of dough and, I don’t know, it just wasn’t somewhere I wanted to be. I think I went the next year, I went for like one week and was like, “I gotta get the fuck outta here.”

What did you not like about it?

I just have to get really careful, like politically correct and all that. For the most part, kids are influenced by their folks. I went to Horace Mann, where it was mostly kids whose parents had just moved here from another country. They lived in apartments. It was still kind of the same. And then all of a sudden at Beverly, it was all the really rich kids. Nowadays, I don’t have anything against rich people. It was just all of a sudden I was rubbing elbows with people I had never really rubbed elbows with before. It was uncomfortable.

It’s interesting because in your songs, you play off that rich L.A. aesthetic.

That was more in response to a few years ago … I moved back. I was living in this halfway house and I still never went out or anything and then I started going out with my friend Simon (Rex), and the clubs that we could get into—or that he could get into—were like ritzy and kinda like Hollywood A-class. Again, not really my scene. It was kind of similar to like what we were talking about. But you know, I could usually drink for free for the most part, drugs, whatever, girls, whatever. It’s just, like, you know, it was a good time. And I was taking part in it and indulging. 


The first thing I heard about you was: Mickey Avalon is the first “glam rapper.” What do you think about that description?

You know, I rap and I wear glitter. It’s better than “alternative rap” or “rock-rap” or something gay like that. [My music] sounds more like the rap I grew up on than what you hear now.

Glam rapper: He raps and he wears glitter.How so?

You know, like what folk music is. Like Bob Dylan sings about what’s going on around here. And when rap music started it was kind of rad. Now, it might just be a commercial for Louis Vuitton. But I don’t play guitar, and even if I did it wouldn’t even be that relevant to the times right now. I just happened to grow up on rap music. That’s what I know how to do.

Who influenced you when you were growing up?

Run DMC, Beastie Boys, Dana Dane, Stetsasonic, 2 Live Crew, Too Short. You can narrow it down to a certain time period: 1985, 1986, 1988.

Did you see your life going like this, toward music?

When I was a teenager I would write rhymes, like where my mind was at. Other friends were making an underground hip-hop movement, and taking it seriously. I got married and had a kid and went to Oregon, and it wasn’t really my deal. I came back [to Los Angeles] and my friend Andre Legacy was still into it and so was my other friend Simon Rex, a.k.a. Dirt Nasty. I just kinda got back into it for fun, just to fuck around.

When was that?

Probably like four years ago. They were way more into me doing it than I was. I moved here from Oregon to get off [heroin]. My mom helped me out. She made me go to school and learn how to use the computer, ’cuz I missed that. I was doing some graphic design shit for this independent record label, and then I said a rap out loud, just fucking around. I didn’t know anyone was listening. They heard it and brought me into the studio to make a song. I was still like, “whatever. “ I was just trying to survive. And then that CD got to Kevin [his manager]. People pretty much took to me. Now I realize, “Okay, fuck, this is something real.”

Your tattoo ‘I’m Sorry’—what does that mean? What are you sorry about?

Now, nothing. But there was a time in my life, maybe in everyone’s life, when that’s all that comes out of your mouth. These are just to cover up tracks. [Mickey points to a pair of dice tattooed on both arms.]

How did you kick your heroin habit?

I kick it all the time.

Are you still using?

No I haven’t seen a needle in a long time. Nowadays I try my best not to indulge. I know it will kill me, or not kill me, but make things dark. But now they got it in pill form, OxyContin, Vicodin. But I do my best to stay clear of the dark side, you know? I’m just trying to provide for my kid, and this is the time.

I wanna ask you what you thought of the LA Weekly piece that ran about you.

I thought it was great. I’m actually friends with the writer now. We went to the racetrack to talk and do our little thing, and we just ended up liking each other and I trusted him. And we got a movie deal. Him and a writer named Jerry Stahl, who did Permanent Midnight.

The author said it seemed like “no one in the family would ever be free [of the Holocaust].” He’s really saying something serious about you and your family.

I think with the generation before me, like my father and like my aunt, that’s definitely true. I’m sure it’s true of me, but I’m just thinking about the degree that it [the Holocaust] affected them. My father had a big tattoo of “Arbeit Macht Frei,” which was the sign above Auschwitz. It means “Work Will Make You Free.” My aunt has a Masters degree, and all her papers are like, “Children of the Holocaust.” It affects me a lot, but I don’t know in what way. I’m fascinated by it. I think about it. I remember my grandfather’s number.

Did that have anything to do with your becoming an Orthodox Jew?

No. I think that more had to do with me and who I am and more about my father and who he was. Now I can accept certain things about myself and try to be better and work on them and not beat myself up over them. It was the fear of becoming my father and going to hell. And I don’t even believe in heaven and hell like that. I mean, I believe in them as far as state of mind [is concerned]. I was young, impressionable, my father was dying [of a heroin addiction], I was addicted to drugs. I thought there was some salvation there. I think part of me wanted to be like Harry Houdini. And part of me didn’t want to be that person.

Born Again: Avalon used to be an Orthodox JewThat person?

My father.

What made you change your mind about Orthodox Judaism?

Having a child was part of it. When you have a child you think about everything you do. Honestly, I think it’s all bullshit. Whenever you get into a club mentality it gets weird. If you look into the different religions, there are cooler things about some than others. But for the most part, all are chauvinistic; all are anti–human nature, anti-life a lot of them. It’s like that little voice that finally gets loud: “I’m doing way too much that I’m not okay with.” Like if you’re a stripper and you try to convince yourself that you’re into it, but then you’re getting more fucked up and you’re like, “Why am I even here?” There’s a percentage of people who need those guidelines, but what it’s become and what the rabbis have done—and I’m talking like Second Temple time—it’s not what it was. But I’m not really into secular Judaism either.

What was your first show like?

I totally remember that. It was at the Roxy and I was opening up for Andy Dick, the comedian, and the White Stripes, and I lived in a halfway house. I wasn’t even allowed to spend the night out. So I had to do the show and go home. I hardly knew the words. I never performed. I recorded songs in the studio. I never, like, tap-danced for my family as a kid. It wasn’t my deal. I remember I started the show with my back to the audience, and after the first verse of the first song I turned around and I knew no matter what, at that point, I was finished. I could do that. And I turned around and it was packed. And it kinda started. I knew it would be okay.

Your acts are pretty racy now. Do you think about that, being a father with a young daughter?

I have thought about that, and the thing that keeps me from going like full force could be that. I’ve been photographed nude and stuff before any of this. But now I wouldn’t want to do that—sexual stuff on tape, anything visual. I don’t want my kid at school to see pictures of me bangin’ some chick in a motel room on the Internet.

But your act itself is kosher for someone her age?

Yeah that’s fine. She knows what’s real and what’s illusion. It’s more stuff like, even if you’re acting it’s still … She’s gonna have to deal with what she’s gonna have to deal with, me being who I am. But then sometimes I think, “Fuck, I don’t want to limit myself or censor myself.” Minus making, like, a porn video, I don’t think there’s much I would not do because of her. She’s smart. I basically don’t want anything too funny on the Internet that could be pulled up in the library or paraded in class. Anything to embarrass her too much.

Does she have a MySpace account?

No! She doesn’t even watch TV. She plays piano. She’s a kid, she plays. She lives with her mother now.

Were you married?

Yes, but I’ve been divorced for years.

Is Mickey Avalon your real name?

No. [My real name] is Tibetan. But I feel way more comfortable being called my normal name [Mickey has asked that we not disclose it. –ed.] As a kid, with a name like that you want to be called Joe or Johnny, so by the time you’re okay with it, you’re really okay with it. The first time I heard Mickey Avalon it kind of irked me, but now I get what I gotta do.

How did you come up with it?

I think I was thinking about a porn name.

For actual porn, or for music?

No, neither. You know that thing you do with names. You start with the street you lived on— that’s your last name. My mom’s family is on Avon, but that didn’t sound cool at all, so it became Avalon. The pet’s name is supposed to be the first name, and I just wanted something that sounded cool, and my friend Andre Legacy came up with it. It kinda became an outlet for me.

Part II: Joanna Angel

Jewcy: Your mom is concerned about your financials.

Joanna Angel: How many other twenty-five year olds do you know that are buying real estate and investing? I live on both sides of the country, and that’s expensive. You tend to spend a lot when you’re going coast to coast. When you’re in this business, you also have to look like a million dollars all the time and that isn’t cheap.

Jewcy: Did you go to public school?

Joanna Angel: My parents were a little nutty. They kept taking me in and out of Hebrew school and public school.

Jewcy: We were talking about the old clichés of adult stars and how they come from broken homes. But aside from having a stable high school environment, your upbringing sounds very different. It sounds nurturing.

Joanna Angel: There are a lot of people in porn. There are a lot of functional people in porn.

Jewcy: Tell me about the time your mom discovered your first piercing.Passover seder at the Angel household

Joanna Angel: [Laughs] I was doing tashlich on Yom Kippur and I raised my hand to throw bread into the water. And she was like, Oh my God. What is that? I was going to tell her but I didn’t want her to be upset.

Jewcy: Your first tattoo was on your shoulder.

Joanna Angel: Yeah, I actually have a lot of them now that she doesn’t know about. She knows about some of them but I forget which are the ones she knows about and the ones she doesn’t, so I try to keep track for when I have to cover up when I go home. Sometimes, though, I make mistakes.

Jewcy: Did you secretly desire to be a porn star in high school, or as a teen?

Joanna Angel: No, never. It never crossed my mind until my roommate in college asked me if I wanted to start a porn website with him. I knew nothing about porn initially. I grew up in the punk and hardcore scene—we were focused on making the world better, not sex. I didn’t lose my virginity until I was eighteen.

When my roommate did ask me about the website, I thought I was going to help run it or just write on it. It was exciting. It sounded like fun. I remember getting the website together and asking girls to model and I started to feel really hypocritical not doing it myself.

Then we took the photos of me and I didn’t think they were going to come out well and I remember looking at the photos and thinking, “Wow, I look kinda hot.” Originally, I thought I was a crusty vegan girl with short hair and bad skin but it came out kinda hot and it made me feel great.

Jewcy: Why did you start stripping?

Joanna Angel: I was sick of living in Jersey. I wanted to move and take it to the next level. I was in a crunch for money because of the website and I didn’t want to wait tables. And after I started the website, I saw a new side of myself and I didn’t mind going with it.

Jewcy: Have you ever had any feelings of guilt?

Joanna Angel: I don’t like pissing off my mom. I used to like it when I was little. And the only time I really thought that if my mom could see me, she would cry—and this is going to sound really fucked up—is when I did my first porno with a black guy. I was thinking, this right here is my mother’s worst nightmare. This is not what a nice Jewish mom wants her daughter to do.

And I feel bad when she sees some stuff. I remember when she borrowed my car and she opened the trunk and I had some DVDs in there, and she was like, “Oh my God. There are pictures of Joanna having sexual intercourse in the trunk of the car!” But I don’t feel guilty because I think I’m doing something wrong. I just don’t want her being upset.

Jewcy: Your mom thinks you want to get married eventually.

Joanna Angel: My mom’s been talking to me about it since I’ve been fifteen. And I do want to eventually get married. Yeah, why not?

Jewcy: Where do you want to be in ten years?

Joanna Angel: I would like to direct more and act less. I don’t think I’m that good at performing. But I do enjoy it. I wish I was better at it. I get nominated generally for Best Directing and Best Acting but other girls in my movies get nominated for Best Three-way or Best Oral.

Jewcy: Does it matter to you that your family can’t respect your profession?

Joanna Angel: I was never looking for validation from my family. It’s important that they’re in my life but I don’t need my dad to pat me on my back—I just want to see them and have them love me. It’s huge to me that my mom is still willing to embrace me and accept me. I think I took my mom for granted when I was growing up but not anymore.

Jewcy: How do you respond to your mom’s criticism that men take advantage of women in this industry?

Joanna Angel: Men take advantage of women in every industry. We live in a patriarchy. But that being said, when you want to do porn, you go to an agent and they ask you what you will do and what you won’t do—will you do girls? Will you do boys and girls? It’s not like that in the real world. They don’t give you options like that.

Jewcy: Does your partner in Burning Angel appear in any of the films?

Joanna Angel: No. He actually tried to talk me out of doing the movies. He tries to tell my mom that but she doesn’t believe him. It was just something I really wanted to do.

Jewcy: Do you still have a passion for having intercourse on film for public consumption?

Joanna Angel: Um, yeah. Well, as times goes on, I don’t think I’ll be doing more Burning Angel movies because it’s my own company so it may look strange that I’m promoting myself. But I am doing like six Hustler movies a year. I think the stage I’m at is kind of nice because I look forward to doing them now as opposed to tiring of them. There are some girls in the industry that work every day. You can’t enjoy that. But nobody enjoys what they do every day.

Jewcy: Do you still feel connected to your tradition considering your line of work?

Joanna Angel: I go home for the holidays. It’s a time to see my family and it’s a purely traditional thing for me. It’s not spiritual. And you know, I think I would feel uncomfortable marrying someone who wasn’t Jewish. I couldn’t live in a house with a Christmas tree—that would make me uncomfortable.

Joanna Angel’s Israeli mother had classic immigrant aspirations for her daughter. Prosperity. Respect. With her latest movie, XXXorcist, debuting this week, 25-year-old Joanna Angel has achieved both those things, but her mother—who prefers the family name stay private—is devastated. Her daughter’s many awards, significant wealth, and profile in the New York Times have all come about because Angel is better than most, some say one of the best, at making men orgasm.

Part I: Joanna’s Mom

Jewcy: How did Joanna get started in pornography?

Joanna’s Mom: When she was in college, Joanna was out of control. I first realized how bad it was when I was in her apartment during Passover and I saw all these pictures and they made me sick. I’m not sure why she is so proud of what she is doing. She was profiled by The New York Times and she was so proud of it. I don’t know why.

Jewcy: Are you proud of the business she’s established for herself?

Joanna’s Mom: She makes a lot of money but she spends it all. And she won’t have any for the future. I would be more comfortable with her doing all these terrible things if she was doing something for her future. Joanna’s sister has an honorable job that makes $25,000 a year and she is able to do all the things most people do. Like go on vacation.

Jewcy: Is it the profession that bothers you or the fact that she’s not saving money?

Joanna’s Mom: No. No. They’re taking advantage of her. This is what bothers me so much. It’s one thing to make money off of this horrible thing but it’s another to not have the money. They are taking advantage of her sick mind.

Jewcy: When did Joanna first tell you about her porn career?

Joanna’s Mom: “Mommy, I don’t want you to be upset.” That’s how she started the conversation.

So I said, “Do you want to come home now?”

“No, we can talk about it on the phone.” And she says, “Mommy, I only did it once but I did a short strip.”

And immediately, I was very upset. Once is enough to make you slide down to the bottom. She kept on doing it because she told us that she was making a lot of money. She was out of control at this point. And all the psychologists and therapists that we invested in were helpless. I tried everything. All those people with their degrees are garbage. They couldn’t do anything. It just got worse and worse and no one could help.

Jewcy: Do you think your daughter is ashamed of her profession?

Joanna’s Mom: A long time ago, she knew she was doing something not nice. And she did whatever she could to not embarrass me, like change her name. I was proud of her that she was so worried about me. But do you know the Hebrew word arzut metzach? It means you steal but you’re proud of it. It’s something you do without being embarrassed and you’re proud of it. This is not nice. I believe that my dear Joanna is crawling with the sheretzim—the animals that live in the dirt and sewers. They don’t know they’re dirty and living in the sewers but you get used to the smell. You forget.

Jewcy: In retrospect, what about Joanna’s upbringing that made her want to be a porn star?

Joanna’s Mom: Maybe it’s because I’m different. Maybe it’s because I’m not American. I don’t know. She had a hard time with the two different cultures. But this only happened to Joanna. I cry to the other daughters not to try anything even once.

Jewcy: I’m sure you’ve thought about this a lot since Joanna left college: Was there a specific point in time, or an event, that helped you understand how Joanna became the way she is?She works hard for the money

Joanna’s Mom: It started with a belly piercing, I think. But then the tattoos started coming. I actually saw her first piercing in shul on Yom Kippur when her shirt was lifted up and I saw it. She left the room crying because I was so upset. I asked her, who did that to you? And then she got a tattoo in college and then she got one on her back. Her sister and my husband both thought she was going to stop so they let it go. And now they say, “Mommy, you’re right.” And it’s too late. I needed the support then. It’s just too late now.

Jewcy: When Joanna was growing up, did she have consistent boyfriends?

Joanna’s Mom: A lot of people loved her very much. But one day she cried and said, “I don’t understand why so many people love me and I don’t love them back.” She had a hard time accepting people’s love.

Jewcy: Do you think Joanna wants to get married?

Joanna’s Mom: She didn’t but I think now she does. She’s beginning to think about it. But who would want to marry her? With all these things she did?

Jewcy: Does she have a boyfriend now?

Joanna’s Mom: Yes.

Jewcy: Is it important for you that she has a Jewish boyfriend or eventually, a husband?

Joanna’s Mom: I have no idea. Look, I want her to be happy. I think it’s important for a husband and wife to share a tradition. I think it would be best for her to marry someone that understands her traditions. Only a Jewish person would be comfortable with her.

Jewcy: What was your upbringing like?

Joanna’s Mom: I grew up in a spiritual home. We had a traditional spiritual upbringing. My husband’s side is all not religious.

Jewcy: Have you see any of her pictorials or movies? Have you even looked at the websites?

Joanna’s Mom: Listen, listen. I don’t want to get upset even more. I am upset enough. When I was in her apartment once, I was very hurt and surprised by the pictures on the wall. I tried very hard to help her find a new way. When I saw the pictures, I lost hope and it made me very sick. It was hard for me to talk to her but she is my daughter and I will always love her.

Jewcy: What I’m still trying to figure out is how Joanna became the way she is. There is this stereotypical porn star’s upbringing and it involves a dysfunctional, broken home…

Joanna's Mom: This was not the case at all. I believe she became what she became because of money. She was working very hard for money and she got caught up in a terrible community. She lived with a girl in her dormitory and this girl always had money. Joanna found out that she made all this money from stripping. I said, Joanna, don’t you ever do this.

I am surprised at all these children. They are all very educated. They are all smart people. I met one of her stripper friends who was getting her doctorate from Columbia University. Why do intelligent people do these horrible things? We as a Jewish people believe that derech eretz kadma l’torah. In these universities, they place an emphasis on material and career – material, material. They don’t care how you make money. And because of this, I don’t recommend college. I think it’s a dangerous place.

Another friend of Joanna came on a trip with us and she was stripping. She said she was stripping since she was sixteen and she was studying, she tells me, to be a psychologist. Could you imagine sending your children to a psychologist that was a stripper for ten years? American society is telling our children that once you are a teenager you can do whatever you want.

Jewcy: Do you ever think things would have been the same had you stayed in Israel?

Joanna’s Mom: There are hookers in Israel also. It’s not Israel and America maybe. It’s the influence, the Western ideals.

Jewcy: It sounds like things are picking up professionally for her.

Joanna’s Mom: Yes, they are but they are making money off of her. They are taking advantage. She is making the business, doing those things. How can she not understand that this is a horrible thing for a woman? Look at a suicide bomber. They want to do it but why do they want to do it? Because they are brainwashed. She thinks this is power, this is control but it is not. A lot of girls are doing it without their parents knowing until it is too late. There are parents who know, though, and they take money from the stripping. They take money from the girl. We would never take any money from her.

Jewcy: It sounds like you’re trying to be supportive…

Joanna’s Mom: Supportive? What? It didn’t help. I did nothing. I told her to just stop doing the movies and just manage the project. Why does she have to do it? Why couldn’t she just give the movies to someone else?

Jewcy: Maybe she gets enjoyment out of it.

Joanna’s Mom: It’s hard for me to believe it. Listen, you have to understand what a woman wants. A woman is not like a man. A man can get enjoyment no matter what. A woman is not like that. She cannot get pleasure wherever she wants.

Next Page: Joanna speaks!

N E X T

Do: What was your take on this interview: fascinating or exploitive? And what about mom’s comparison of Joanna to a suicide bomber? Post a comment below and let your inner Catherine MacKinnon run free.
Go: Want to go to a pajama party with your favorite porn star? Drop by the first annual LoneStar Pornutopia Weekend in Houston, Texas, from November 29 To Saturday, December 2. It’s advertised as the most extravagant weekend in Houston history.
Read: Right, because you’re in it for the articles.