Elsewhere, Perhaps by Amos Oz

First published:Ma’kom a’her, 1966 (English translation, 1973)

Type of work: Social realism

Time of work: The early 1960’s

Locale: Kibbutz Metsudat Ram, near the Israeli-Jordanian border

Principal Characters:

• Reuven Harish, (originally
• Harismann, ), a poet, teacher, and tour guide at the kibbutz
• Noga Harish, (nicknamed
• Stella Maris, and
• Turquoise, ), Reuven’s daughter, age sixteen
• Ezra Berger, a kibbutz member and truck driver
• Bronka Berger, Ezra’s wife and Reuven’s lover
• Avraham Rominov, (known as
• Rami Rimon, ), Noga’s boyfriend, age eighteen

The Novel

Elsewhere, Perhaps is set in the Israeli kibbutz of Metsudat Ram, which is located within sight—and gunshot—of the disputed Israeli-Jordanian border. Through the course of the seasons the members of the kibbutz go about their affairs, traveling through passages of life and death, change and continuity that are particularly Israeli yet universally human. The unnamed narrator of the novel is obviously one of the settlers at Metsudat Ram, and the reader also comes to enjoy at least honorary membership in the commune.

The action in Elsewhere, Perhaps is deceptively slow-paced, with a rhythm that echoes natural cycles. As befits a novel about Jewish characters, many of whom are survivors of the Holocaust or who are descended from the original generation of Israelis, memory and past events play a large part in the book. Persons and their actions are scrutinized, puzzled over, teased into meaning. As a character remarks, “I’m not a wise man, but I do know how to think. If you think the same thought a hundred times, it ends up by being very refined.”

Reuven Harish, the book’s central character, has much about which to think. Years earlier his wife, Eva, ran away with a cousin who was visiting the kibbutz. Ironically, and symbolically, Reuven has now assumed the position of tour guide as well as teacher for the commune. When not teaching he writes poetry, for which he is well-known, and he struggles with rearing his children, Noga and Gai.

After his wife’s departure, Reuven’s friendship with Bronka Berger gradually ripened into a love affair. At the same time, Bronka and her husband, Ezra, silently drifted apart, neither daring to admit openly what both knew privately. Now Ezra takes on double duty as a driver to deliver the kibbutz’s fruit to Tel Aviv; that way, he is seldom at home and can avoid confronting his wife or facing the situation.

Rami Rimon, Noga’s boyfriend, struggles to convince himself and others of his manhood. Although sensitive and caring, he tries to disguise these qualities, believing them to indicate weakness on his part. When his feigned roughness and attempts at lovemaking are rejected and mocked by Noga, Rami enlists in the army, full of self-pity and thoughts of a hero’s death.

In the meantime, Noga has begun to spend time with Ezra, and their originally innocent meetings develop into a love affair which parallels that of Bronka and Reuven. Ezra gives Noga the nickname, Turquoise, because she originally asked him to bring her back some thread of that color from one of his trips. By the time of the summer festival, Noga realizes that she is pregnant.

Zechariah Berger, Ezra’s brother, arrives from Germany to sign up artists for European tours; in Munich he runs an entertainment business with Eva’s second husband. When Zechariah learns of Noga’s condition, he plots to have her return with him to live with her mother. Zechariah’s plans are clever, and his arguments persuasive, but Noga and Reuven have already moved toward a silent, awkward understanding. At the same time members of the kibbutz unite to show Noga a flood of compassion, demonstrating a solidarity that is one of the enduring features of true communal life.

As the Hebrew calendar moves toward the end of the year, the kibbutz experiences changes in the lives of its members, some minor, others major. Committee memberships are reshuffled, preparations are made for the New Year’s festival. A long-anticipated clash with Arabs over disputed territory takes place. There are only two casualties from the kibbutz: a farmer killed while plowing the fields and Reuven Harish, who dies in his room during the battle.

The new year brings renewal both in the land and in the people. Even before Reuven’s death, Bronka and Ezra had gradually repaired their relationship. Noga and Rami are married, and on the day of the spring festival Noga gives birth to a daughter.

The Characters

Although Elsewhere, Perhaps is set in an Israeli kibbutz and its characters are undeniably Jewish, the reader is most struck by their overwhelming humanity. With affectionate, careful strokes, Amos Oz has created a gallery of persons who are recognizable both in their individual ways and their common traits. Even the minor characters are well-rounded and believable because their traits and personalities are both distinctive yet universal.

In writing his novel, Oz has brought the reader into the circle of the kibbutz; it is a circle as close and intimate as a family, and in a sense, it is a family. The unnamed narrator, obviously a member of Metsudat Ram, presents not only direct descriptions of actions but also the commentary on those actions by the kibbutz members. In this fashion the same event will be examined from several different perspectives, and this gives additional resonance and vividness to even the most mundane activities. In this sense, as the narrator remarks, gossip is not mere talk, but “our collaborator in this story.”

Reuven Harish is described by Oz as “a man of learning and at the same time a peasant, a man whose life has been enriched by suffering...one of our most remarkable men.” About the age of fifty, Reuven is a dedicated teacher, writer, and father. He is basically direct and honest, and his illicit relationship with Bronka Berger stems primarily from loneliness and grief over the desertion of his own wife, rather than passion or lust. Yet Reuven is acutely aware that in securing solace for himself, he has wronged Ezra Berger, and his attempts to resolve this dilemma add complexity and realism to his character.

Reuven’s relationship with his children changes through the course of the novel. Noga Harish experiences the changes, both painful and joyous, of developing womanhood and grows more distant from her father. Further, there is the dislocation and pain which followed when Eva Harish abandoned her husband and her children. This seemingly inexplicable act continues to puzzle and torment the family, especially Reuven, who believes that he may have precipitated the event, and Noga, who fears that she may repeat it.

On a wider scale, Noga and her brother Gai are of a newer, and different, generation of Israelis than Reuven, and this adds to their puzzled, yet essentially loving, misunderstandings within the family. To the normal complexities of adolescence is joined the constant threat of violence.

This violence, the sense of being surrounded by enemies, causes Rami Rimon to mistrust his own nature. Although sensitive and thoughtful, Rami attempts to project a tough, brusque image, which he hopes will make others see him as forceful and masculine. Noga, who perceives his pointless charade, laughs at him; in despair, he enlists in the army. Rami’s only brother has been killed while in the service and is remembered as a hero; Rami has self-pitying daydreams that he will follow him.

Ironically, it is in military service that Rami comes to terms with his true nature. He learns that a real man need not reject sensitivity and compassion, that true strength is not merely brute force. As Rami changes in military service, so does Noga in pregnancy, gaining more maturity and greater understanding. By the end of the novel their personalities have been sufficiently tempered so that marriage is not only appropriate but, within the universe of Metsudat Ram, almost inevitable.

The seeming inevitability of marriage is also present with another couple, Ezra and Bronka. Although their union is apparently shattered by Bronka’s affair with Reuven, the two continue to preserve the rudiments of married life. Even when they are estranged, Ezra and Bronka are clearly a couple, their characters complete only when together. At first glance a simple, slightly educated truck driver, Ezra is a complex character, difficult to comprehend because of his allusive nature. He answers questions with proverbs, biblical quotations, and uses these techniques to deflect others when they try to approach him. Yet these methods reveal that the burly, barrel-chested worker is deeply if not widely read, especially in the Bible, and a patient, methodical thinker. Bronka is a more profound, less explicable character. She seems haunted by some lingering and secret sorrow whose effect Oz captures but whose cause he does not reveal. Her gradual return to married life and modified happiness is sparked, in ironic but inevitable fashion, by Noga’s pregnancy. They take different paths to their goal, but by the end of the novel, Ezra and Bronka have managed to reconnect and become once again a real couple.

Critical Context

Elsewhere, Perhaps explores territory, both fictional and literal, that Amos Oz knows well. Like Reuven Harish, Oz was a long-standing kibbutz member, dividing his time between teaching and writing. Unlike Reuven, on the other hand, Oz is closer to the “new generation” of Israelis, who seem more confident, more self-assured, more at home, in a sense, in the land they claim as ancestrally theirs.

This division between the “generation of 1948” and the one which followed it (the generation of Oz) marks the main dividing line in contemporary Israeli literature. The older generation of writers lived through the founding days of the new Israel, and their works reflect an intense moral and patriotic vision. The new wave of Israeli authors, such as Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, are different in their outlook, and Elsewhere, Perhaps is an excellent example of this.

Oz sees the endemic armed conflict in which Israel lives as an existential fact, rather than a special case. He uses modern politics, including terrorism, as means to probe the individual human being and to see how a particular character will react to the common human dilemmas.

In works such as his collection of short stories Artsot ha-tan (1965; Where the Jackals Howl and Other Stories, 1981) and the novel La-ga’ath ba-mayim, la-ga’ath ba-ruah (1973; Touch the Water, Touch the Wind, 1974), Oz continues and refines the techniques he first established in Elsewhere, Perhaps. From his first novel he has developed an outlook that is Israeli in setting and feeling but universal in scope and sympathy.

Bibliography

Batzdorff, S.M. Review in Library Journal. XCVIII (September 1, 1973), p. 2464.

Sheppard, R.Z. “Independent States of Mind: In New York, International P.E.N. Generates Heat and Light,” in Time. CXXVII (January 27, 1986), p. 75.

Wood, Michael. Review in The New York Review of Books. XXI (February 7, 1974), p. 12.