For his 50th birthday, Joseph Licht is making special recipes for one big dinner for his sons. However, Joseph has an ulterior motive and that is to ask his sons for forgiveness for what happened 20 years earlier.

20 years earlier, Joseph, a literature professor, meets Rabbi Yoel Rosenznweig, who is something of a genius/prodigy of the Torah. Something connects between the two of them. Almost without a second thought, Joseph abandons his faithful wife and 5 sons...only to discover that Yoel has committed suicide.

I felt that *Light Fell* was a frustrating book because Joseph works hard in preparing the arrival of his sons. His sons are spoiled, judgmental and unappreciative. In addition, Fallenberg doesn't give the sons any depths as he has given to Joseph. Perhaps if we knew more about the sons' views, we might be able to understand their position with their father.

Half-way through this novel I almost gave up on it. It was hard to meet on its own terms, its plot turns a bit melodramatic, its tone almost operatic. An Israeli scholar, married with five young sons, becomes enamored of a charismatic rabbi, and after a four-month affair leaves his family. Taking place as it does within the context of religious beliefs that condemn what he has done, this turn of events creates a tidal wave of ramifications that grow and converge years later at a fiftieth birthday dinner, where long buried secrets and resentments are finally voiced. Father and sons are then left to mend a lifetime of disappointments and grievances.

The book represents on one level a kind of microcosm of points of view among Israelis about Israel - from a zealot founder of a settlement on the West Bank, to an ultra-Orthodox young couple, to reformed and secular Jews. On another level, it is a fierce domestic drama, rich with guilt, recriminations, petty cruelties, and other sorrows. Finally it is an extended meditation on the conflict between truth to oneself and what is owed to others. To what extent, the author wants us to ask, is being true to one's nature merely self-indulgent hedonism? The answer does not come easily, and when they get to the last page, readers of this novel will find the question not completely answered. There is more to the story to be told, and we are left with any number of clues about what lies in store for all of the characters we have come to know.

It's amazing to me that the author is a straight man, though I note he has acknowledged authorities on Jewish gay issues. The prose is mellifluous, picking you up and carrying you along so that the writing alone is a joy; the plot only adds to it.
If you are gay and Jewish, particularly if you grow up in a household with any degree of religious observance, this book will mesmerize you on many levels. From his beginning as a "conventional" intellectual, balancing his studies with a family of five highly diverse boys and his wife, to his metamorphosis to his independence as a gay man trying to reconnect with his children, the story amazes and spellbinds.

It takes place in Israel, and breaches daring new ground. The struggle between the lure and pull of Jewish sources and love of another soul are tangible and delicately depicted. Yes, one can have a love affair with study and meaning. The struggle of someone at the critical age of 50, and the meeting with his adults sons, who are people struggling to define themselves in light of their father's choices. The meeting between the father and his adults sons rings true with painful accuracy, the anger, the expections and the disappointments and surprises. Some amazing story telling takes place, because the characters each tell a story of the human condition, which is heart wrenching and real, and thus they get to know each other, and we do too. So the author is setting the scene, and we are invited to a table heaving with home made delicacies which we have been a participant in their creation,but the characters themselves do the story telling. We, as readers, learn about the power of storytelling as a tool for breaking down the isolation between human beings, generations, sexual preferences, and those with different beliefs and abilities. I loved the exposee of a woman with special needs being more developed in love than those who are "typical." Highly recommended. Bravo!

This unusual love story juxtaposes secular Israeli life with fundamental Judaism and in the process shows how relationships are born, live, and eventually die.In this beautifully realized novel one man is forced to feel his way through the perils and pitfalls of marriage and love when overnight his whole world is suddenly turned inside out.

In 1996, Joseph Licht, an accomplished academic, is giving long and careful consideration to planning a menu for his reunion, each item chosen for the effect it will have on his guests' emotions as much as on their palates. Twenty years ago he left his wife, Rebecca; their five sons, his father, Manfred, and the farm where he grew up, in affect abandoning his life of thirty years when he fell in love with Rabbi Yoel Rosenzwieg, a dynamic young teacher-scholar hailed by all as a Torah genius.

Joseph first meets Yoel at a lecture in Jerusalem and almost immediately this young and impressionable man becomes captivated by the Rabbi's low-simmering peacefulness. A surprisingly large man who looks more suited to a life of physical, outdoor labor than to the scholarly and spiritual pursuits that undoubtedly required endless hours of sedentary study, it only takes an instant for Joseph to realize that his life will be forever shaped by his encounter with this physically dynamic man.

They both have an inkling of what will happen between them, though neither of them can truly imagine the expereince. Even Joseph is shocked at the tingle and swell of arousal, his first inklings of a basic and complex instinct he never thought he had. Meeting for secretive trysts at an unoccupied apartment owned by Joel's in-laws, the affair becomes so heated that it frightens Joseph to feel so out of control and he steadily becomes Yoel's life force, filling whatever space he occupies with a pulsing energy that is spiritual and intellectual all at once.

Secretly Joseph rejoices at this new and rare friendship with a man whose company he can feel completely at ease with and yet challenges him intellectually, who is free to speak his mind about the joys and rigors of Orthodox Judaism in the same breath as the glories of Western Culture. This is a true friendship and a near perfect pairing of minds and interests, coupled with the sexual attraction and lust that is like a "fire raging within."

There is however, a darker side to this relationship: Haunted by centuries of rabbinical commentaries and moral tales, the weight of centuries of leaning and tradition are rolled heavily to the side, even as Joseph and Yoel know that their affair represents "Sodom and Gomorrah revisited" and the curse of Leviticus: "an ultimate unleashing of God's unremitting fury upon mankind."

When Joseph abruptly leaves his wife and children, in the days that follow he slides from nervous hopefulness to quiet panic, experiencing a churning dread in his stomach. But when Yoel suddenly commits suicide, Joseph not only grieves his loss but also wonders if he could have prevented it. Plummeting, changing and whirling, his life shattered, Joseph remains decimated by loniless and fear, terrified by a choice gone wrong, and strangled by silence and unmeasured time.

At the center of Light Fell is Joseph's troubled and complicated relationship with his five children who grow older harboring various animosities for their father.Joseph certainly has loved his boys in return, in different measures and hopes, and now at fifty he dreams of healing the wounds of the past through this reunion dinner. His sons, however, show a mixture of determination and unwillness, the anxiety about the reunion weekend with their father crowding their waking thoughts, and their reaction to their father's long ago affair a mixture of shock and solemnity.

Two other characters play a pivotal role in this tale: Joseph's current lover Pepe, a man of crude appetities and unsavory business practices, maddening and disarmingly charming at the same time who encourages Joseph to hold the reunion dinner; and Rebecca, Joseph's ex-wife who views her ex-husband as the coward, who had escaped his responsibility and run away as she had stayed to uphold the family.

Author Evan Fallenberg movies back and forth in time, showing us the setbacks and compromises that shaped Joseph's life after the affair with Yoel ended so precipitously. He also presents different points of view, telling Rebecca's story, then returning to Delia's and then onto the three eldest sons, Daniel Ethan and Noam. Finally at dinner how each party copes with this uncomfortable reunion is complicated by the inevitable incriminations, even as Joseph tries to explain his actions.

It is here that Fallenberg sets up his complicated dynamics of the secular verses the fundamental, and that Yoel and Joseph's love affair meant so many different things for different people. For his sons it once came to represent a perversion and a lusting, a destructable force, even as they fancifully cling to their father's supposition that they can return to the simpler times; for Pepe it is a titillating string of tales, full of youth and vigor, hot sex and adventure; and for Rebecca it is her immature husband's escape from reality and responsibility. Certainly for Joseph the affair after all these years remains the personification of true love, "two souls only, bound at every point of their being." Mike Leonard January 08.

Fallenberg, Evan. "Light Fell", Soho Press, 2008.

Fathers and Sons, Sex and Sexuality

Amos Lassen

Evan Fallenberg begins his literary career with a beautiful first novel, "Light Fell". The title is borrowed from the Babylonian Talmud where the expression "light fell" appears three times and used to show that beauty and desire give us reason to reflect on the true nature of life.
Joseph Licht, a professor of literature, yearned to reconnect with the five sons that he deserted when he realized that he was in love with another man, Rabbi Yoel Rosenzweig. Written in flashback, we meet Licht when he invites his sons to come to celebrate his 50th birthday in Tel Aviv in 1996. We are then taken back twenty years when Licht, a married father of five, realizes that he is gay and falls in love with an intellectual and charismatic married rabbi. Licht left his marriage and his sons as well as his Orthodox Jewish religion to go after the man he loved. The results are heart-breaking as well as extreme--his wife is left with the ultimate feeling of loss, his sons are forced to deal with the issues of loss of self-esteem and worth and begin to embark on the roads of fanaticism to national causes and religion. While this is going on, Fallenberg gives us a look at modern Israeli life which includes peeks at academia and the gay culture of the country.
When Joseph Licht left his wife Rebecca, he also left his father and his farming community where he grew up. When he looks back at the affair twenty years later, he finds that the result of his leaving are not only still with him but with everyone that he was close to. When he plans to reunite with his sons at his apartment in Tel Aviv (which he shares with another man who is out of town), he brings up memories that affect everything that he does. In preparing for this reunion, both he and his sons are forced to confront what is, what was, and what might have been.
Yoel Rosenzweig, the object of Licht's love did not know he was gay; he was, in fact, like Licht, married. Soon after the affair began, Rosenzweig, filled with guilt, took his own life. Licht took this loss very, very hard and ended his relationship with his wife and sons. After having lived 30 years as an Orthodox Jew, he stopped observing.
Twenty years after his affair with the rabbi, Joseph Licht is sophisticated and enjoys a good life with his Brazilian lover, Pepe. He has become a complicated person but still wavers between boy and man in many of the things that he does.
One of the amazing aspects of this novel is the way Fallenberg presents the characters that represent a cross-section of Israeli society. Licht's sons are the new Israel as can be seen by the paths they have taken in life. One is a plumber, another, an army officer, yet another, a settler and builder, and the two others, a male model and a yeshiva student. They each have problems and, in facing their father, two decades later, they are not sure how all of this will work.
Aside from being a compelling read the book forces us to question our own lives. We live today in a world where the fields of religion, politics and science not only become one but confuse us as well. Are we totally responsible for the choices we make or does desire greatly influence our options?
Does desire influence the choices we make so much that we are blind to the results that will come? Were the choices that Joseph Licht made actually choices or were they desires that his ties to religion would not allow to surface?
It is a certainty that these questions have no easy answers, if they have answers at all. We learn that Licht sees what is going on with his sons and they, likewise, see what is going on with him. They do not all see him to the same degree but there is hope that they will reach a point of understanding for their father.
As I read "Light Falls", I found myself in so many places in the novel. Having been raised in an Orthodox Jewish home and having feelings for other men, I escaped to Israel where I fell in love with another man and we built a life together. However, my relationship did not end with suicide but with a lack of intellectual sharing. It did however last for 17 years. During that period, while living in the established home of the Jewish people, I abandoned my religion because it did not allow me to be who I was. It was not until I returned to the States that I found my place with regards to faith. The entire concept of desire in our lives I have always questioned--primarily from an existential point of view. "Light Fell" gave some of my questions a new credibility. The book did not provide the answers that I wanted but it assured me that I have not been alone in the way that I think.
Fallenberg has given us a wonderful novel to enjoy and to ponder. His prose is beautiful and his characterization is absolutely wonderful. A book that allows me to enter the psyche of one of the characters is a joy to read. The fact that it also provides a great deal of food for thought is a special bonus that we do not get enough of today. "Light Fell" is not only a book to be read and enjoyed but it is one that I, personally, will cherish.

In 1996 in Tel Aviv, literature professor Joseph Licht hopes to reconnect with his five adult sons as he desperately needs their forgiveness. Twenty years ago he deserted them and their mother when he realized he loved married male Rabbi Yoel Rosenzweig; Joseph was unaware that he was gay until that moment, but soon after he and his rabbi began their affair until a guilt wracked Yoel killed himself. Stunned by his loss, a grieving Joseph ended his marriage to Rebecca and his relationship with their five offspring. He also no longer practiced Judaism after three decades as an Orthodox Jew. Now he invites his children to join him on his fiftieth birthday although he is unsure they will come for each of them has major emotional problems that he knows he caused by what he did to them two decades ago when they were young.

Readers will feel empathy towards the five sons although their range of issues seems to run the gamut. Life in many aspects of Israel comes across very deep as the audience is taken to locales where the Licht family live to include the Negev, the university, the kibbutz and a small gay enclave. Although the look back to the Joseph-Yoel tryst is seen through a fond schmaltzy nostalgic lens even by the sons rather than a nuke that destroyed two families, readers will enjoy this deep family drama of a disdained patriarch trying to reconnect with the now adult children he deserted.

Harriet Klausner