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Philip Graubart, "Here There Is No Why" and Philip Graubart "Here There Is No Why"
01:08:29
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- [00:00]
Roberto Mazza
Hello everybody.
- [00:01]
Marshall Po
This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:08]
Roberto Mazza
I'm Roberto Mazza and this is the New Books Network. Today I have two guests, Michael Kinnemann and Philip Graubert. Today we're going to talk about fictional narratives and both books of these authors have been published by Kohler Books. A Rooftop in Jerusalem by Michael and here There is no why by Philip. So let me start with a brief synopsis of both books. So the book by Michael, A Rooftop in Jerusalem, well, talks about Daniel Jacobs, who decides to spend his junior year abroad in Israel. He never dreams he'll fall in love with both Jerusalem Ositi and an Israeli woman, Shoshana. It's the year religion becomes a part of his identity. From the heights of a simple rooftop, a year he encounters the tragic complexity of the Israeli Palestinian struggle. A year that begins a four decade long love affair as complicated and heartbreaking as the political conflict with which it's intertwined. As Daniel moves through life, through marriage, in divorce, career and travel, he returns periodically to Jerusalem, where his heart faithfully remains. The book by Philip here there is no why, picks up from a real story. In fact, it's connected to the important figure of Primo Levi. But while there's no Primo Levi here, there's a new fictional character, Chaim Lerner. Did Chaim Lerner, acclaimed Israeli Author and Holocaust survivor kill himself in 1983, 30 years after surviving Auschwitz? If so, was it traumatic memories finally.
- [02:58]
Interviewer
Catching up to him?
- [02:59]
Roberto Mazza
Or despair over Holocaust denialism? Or ordinary, difficult health issues? An aching hip, a damaged knee? Or simply a deadly episode of depression? Or was it murder?
- [03:15]
Interviewer
Before we delve into all of this, first things first. Michael, Philippe, welcome.
- [03:23]
Philip Grauber
Thank you.
- [03:24]
Michael Kinnemann
Thank you. Nice to be.
- [03:25]
Philip Grauber
Great to be here.
- [03:29]
Interviewer
To both of you. I want to start this interview asking something about yourself, so can you tell us something about yourselves? And then I'm also curious. What drew you to write these particular stories, and why now? Why publishing them in 2024, in 2025? Was there a personal experience or that pushed you toward these novels? Perhaps we can start with Michael.
- [03:55]
Michael Kinnemann
Thank you. I was a professor of Christian theology in various seminaries and universities for more than three decades. And then at the later part of my career, I was the head of the National Council of Churches in the United States. So I think of that as my first career. My second career began at about age 70 with the writing of fiction. My PhD was actually in the field of religion and literature, the University of Chicago, near where you are now. And it set me up, I guess, to teach literature as part of theology during my academic career and now to turn back to writing fiction in retirement. I studied at the Tel Aviv University in 1969, 1970. This was a very formative time for me. And so I studied in Jewish Israel, as it were. But I spent many of the weekends, most weekends maybe inside the Old City of Jerusalem, often staying at a very inexpensive Palestinian hotel called the Al Kamal. And it figures in the story. A seminal moment for me that helped to launch this idea, anyway, was I happened to be staying in that hotel in the Old City when Al Aqsa Mosque was burned, set on fire in 1969. As you know, this was the emotional equivalent of the burning of Notre Dame in the west for the Muslim world. And I was there at that time and experienced the depth of emotion all around. So I wanted to write about some of that experience and to start the book in that way.
- [05:51]
Philip Grauber
So for most of my career, I was a congregational rabbi. That's like 35 years. But all along I was also writing. And here's a kind of coincidence. I'm a graduate of Northwestern University, and I majored in creative writing. So I was always interested in creative writing. Maybe I won't go into right now why I decided to become a rabbi. I will say that my very first job as a synagogue rabbi, I was in New York The Park Avenue Synagogue, a big synagogue in New York. I wasn't the head rabbi. I was the second rabbi. My very first day, I took out a piece of paper and I started writing a short story. So part of my heart was in the new job, but part of my heart was the continuing to write fiction. All through my career, the 35 years in a. In congregations, I was always working on either a short story or a novel. And that was always parallel to my career as a rabbi. The two jobs do go together, a fiction writer and a rabbi in a manner of communicating with the congregation. And it's this kind of storytelling sense now in the congregation, maybe you'd give a sermon and the sermon would be centered around a story and a novel is centered around a story. And there's ideas that flow, you know, from different types of storytelling and different types of stories. So, you know, that's kind of, that's my. This hybrid of being a congregation rabbi and a storyteller. Now I'm retired from the active rap and so I write full time. And it takes me a lot less time to write a novel now than it used to take. Years and years. Now it doesn't take quite that long. This particular book, I'll go into the germ of it and then we could talk more if you'd like. But I am particularly interested, and it's possible I might use the word obsessed with, with the writing. Supremo Levi or Primo Levy is a character who is a well known Holocaust writer survivor. And I, I'd been reading his material since the early 80s. It's really before it became prominent when it first started getting translated into English. And Primo Levi had mysterious death. If you know about Primo Levi, people talk about that. He was found dead at the bottom of his balcony fire escape. And so was it an accident? Did he take his own life? If he took his own life, that's some 35 years after the Holocaust. Did he survive the Holocaust? If he took his life 35 years later? All, all these themes, all these ideas about Primo Levy and his survival. Also much of my interest flows from what, in channeling his conversation. So I've had this, this focus, this obsession with the writing of Primo Levi, the life of Primo Levi, the death of Primo Levi. And that started the novel and his life has the central mystery to it. So I put the central mystery, the manner of his death, front and center in the novel and then I let my imagination take over.
- [08:54]
Interviewer
I want to say that I grew up in Italy And I remember I was a teenager when Primo Levi died, and I still remember all of the stories connected to that case, whether it was a suicide or maybe something else. And as of now, there's no. I mean, of course he was ruled as a suicide, but observe, there's still a lot of debate about what happened to him. And I'm still glad that students in Italy have to read his works. It's still part of the curriculum, and I hope this won't change anytime soon. Now, Philippe, I really want to start with you. So here there is no why is the type title of your book. And this revolves around trauma, memory, and actually mystery surrounding, as you said, the Holocaust theologians, life and death. Why did you decide to weave these themes into a fictional narrative? Because to me, it was very interesting how you took this story and you added trauma memory throughout all the book.
- [09:57]
Philip Grauber
Yes, I'm going to get. It's a bit of a cop out. So I'll give you my first answer. And then maybe there's a different answer sort of alongside of that first answer. But the first answer is I always work with character and story when I'm writing a novel. So I had this interest, this obsession of Primo Levi. And so right there you've got the Holocaust and survival. So you've got lots of themes right there. Now, for reasons of plot, I felt like I had to take him from Italy, where you're from, to Jerusalem. I just felt like it worked better for the story. Now, I could have kept him in Italy, but that would be too close to the real Primo Levi. I thought about Krakow. Maybe he lives in Krakow, but I felt like there'd just be a heavier story if I put him in Jerusalem. So once I put him into Jerusalem, that brings in all the issues of the Israel Palestinian conflict and the attachment to the land and all of the controversies surrounding the Middle East. So I guess these different themes emerged organically and it meant that I had to tackle them in the narrative. So it wasn't as if I just said, okay, we've got memory and trauma and Israel and Palestinians and survival. It's that the needs of the plot generated these particular themes. And that was left up to me as the writer to make them interesting, to make them compelling to the reader.
- [11:19]
Interviewer
A Rooftop in Jerusalem. The title of your book takes us deep into the Old City. And you already mentioned that you spent quite some time wondering around the city, and the point of view is the one of a young outsider. So my question is, what did inspire you to set your story there and perhaps is your personal story. And why the late 1960, which was a very controversial and a very contested period of time. Let's remember in 1967, as a result of a six day war, obviously, Israel took over the Old City of Jerusalem from the Jordanians.
- [11:58]
Michael Kinnemann
Actually, the novel begins, as you point out, in 1969, but it runs all the way through 2010. So while the book begins there, it covers a lot of territory, all of which has been contested by the conflict between Palestinians, Israelis, you certainly know. And the story as a whole is a love story. I want to stress that people often read it as a political novel. We can come back and talk about misreadings that I think have happened already to the novel, but. But I think of it as a love story set against the backdrop of a conflict which is going on in a very contested part of the world. And so the ebb and flow of the love story parallels that of various peace efforts. The main characters, Daniel and Shoshana, come together most intensely in the early 1990s, the time of the Oslo Accords. And I won't say how it ends because I want people to read it, but in fact, it goes down a bit from there. But in 1969, it was a period of real transition for Palestinian, Israeli relationships, following, as you note, the war in 1967. And so it was a time, I think, appropriate to begin this. I will admit that it's also a period of history I know fairly well because I lived there at the time. And so that also made it appropriate seem to me to begin. I've been back many times since Roberto, So the various moments that occur in the book also were times when I was in Jerusalem, spending a good deal of time there with various trips over the years. So it made sense to me to do that, to set it in the Old City also made sense, because there's no place on earth, at least not in the Western consciousness, where religion and politics more intensely come together than there. Those were formative factors for me. They certainly are for my character. I love Phil's work, by the way. He and I, obviously good friends, we work together here in San Diego. And I love what he said about the fact that you listen to the characters. I try to do that. And when my writing is at its best, I listen to where they take me. So the setting made sense to me because I had some experience with it and because of the transitional character in the Middle east itself in the late 1960s. But then I listened to the characters and how they develop and the story, hopefully is then imagined more fully from there.
- [14:43]
Interviewer
And I want to keep discussing the question of your characters as outsiders. So both your novels really deal with characters who are by definitions, outsiders. So Philip's main character, Judah, is haunted by loss and pulled into a learner story. And then Michael, your Daniel, stumbles into the complexities of Jerusalem. And I'm really curious, why did you choose outside the perspective? And what does you believe and think allow the readers to see, you know, beyond the insider, beyond what you know, readers may already know about Jerusalem, Palestine, Israel?
- [15:28]
Philip Grauber
Well, I guess I'll start from my own personal experience. I feel like I'm an outsider when it comes to Jerusalem and Israel. And at first glance, it's an odd thing to say since I lived in Israel for five years, not consecutively, but I've lived there for five years and used to visit there two, three times a year. So I spent a lot of time there. But I'm still an outsider. I mean, objectively, I'm an outsider. I don't go through the experience that native Israelis go through. I was never in the army. I never had children that were in the army. I don't have the consequences that many Jews in Israel, Palestinians in Israel have for the conflict. I kind of jet in and out. So it made the most sense for me to kind of approach the book as an outsider. And then the narrator is an outsider. The narrator, by the way, is an investigative journalist. So that implies this kind of curiosity. So also overall, I'd say there's the sensibility of the outsider, the curious outsider. The outsider that's apart from it, but that wants to know more, I think is really congenial to fiction because it leaves the conclusions to the reader. If the, for me, this is just for me. If the narrator is too involved in his or her environment, then the reader has no choice. But, but if the, if the narrator is an outsider, then okay, the reader can figure out, okay, I can. I'm also objectively an outsider reading this book and I can come to my own conclusions, which is what I'm hoping for in this book.
- [17:00]
Michael Kinnemann
You may have seen a blurb at the beginning of the book from Yossi Klein Halevi. This is my book Rooftop in Jerusalem. Yossi Khalil and Levi is well known political spiritual commentator in Israel. And he says something that I find very gratifying. I must admit this is self serving, but he says that I come as close as any outsider possibly can to the inner reality of Palestinians, Israelis. My goodness, what a wonderful thing to say. But it points out that while I try to get as close as I can to that reality, I am an outsider. That's what Phil said. That's my perspective. So I would have felt awkward posturing as one who could speak more from the inside. So part of it, as he said, just where we stand at this point. It's the perspective that I know and occupy. I would add, by the way, that I think that is something I bring to the writing about the Middle east that I hope is important. I studied in Tel Aviv, but as the head of the National Council of Churches, I'm very familiar with Palestinian leadership. I've traveled up and down Palestinian territory, meeting with Christian leaders and other political leaders. So I have a sense of being immersed, maybe on, I hate to say, sides of a conflict, but really knowing more than one beyond that, as Phil was suggesting. I think this allows us as outsiders, to express perhaps more fully the complexity of the situation that people find themselves in when they live there. We can view it from more than one angle. Daniel, in his naivete in the first part of the book, keeps saying over and over again, why don't people talk to one another rather than simply about one another? It's a pretty simple concept that he has, and I hope it deepens as the book goes on and his own identity develops. But it also is true. There's a perspective here as an outsider, where you encourage people talk to one another. Because I've been able to talk to them. And I can see that there's humanity on all sides.
- [19:14]
Interviewer
Personally, I would say that, you know, the perspective of the outsider is the same one I have. I lived in Jerusalem. Most of my academic work is about Jerusalem. I know the city, particularly the late Ottoman history. And I can go around the city knowing places that lots of people may not even have heard of these places. And yet I'm not inside. I'm not a Jerusalemite. I don't live the reality of daily life. And so I have this kind of a connection, but also a distance. And sometimes it helps me to ask questions, not necessarily getting an answer. But certainly I felt very much connected to your novels because I felt like you and outsiders, but not in a bad way. You know, sometimes there's also some positive aspects connected to it.
- [20:03]
Michael Kinnemann
By the way, I was just going to say, Roberto, that Phil and I have noted that we have experienced different Jerusalems. That's been fun because we don't necessarily see through the same eyes even there. And we've talked about. It would be fun to go together because we all bring different perspectives.
- [20:23]
Interviewer
And that's true in many ways. I mean, I lived. Every time I was in Jerusalem, I lived in East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah, which is very different from living in West Jerusalem. You know, the borders that I had to cross, the lines, obsolete, invisible lines, the shops, the people I met. So absolutely, I think this is a reality. You know, even reading your books, there are multiple Jerusalem and not necessarily everybody knows the other. So I think this is important point to stress.
- [20:54]
Philip Grauber
We're just going to add one thing about the outsider status, to put it dramatically as a novelist. I love Jerusalem in my book is also a love story. Part of the love story is the main character in Jerusalem. I love Jerusalem, but I'm also quite alienated from Jerusalem physically. I don't live there anymore. But also just what's going on, it's hard to absorb entirely. So that kind of love that's struggling, I want that to be in the book itself. A sensibility that also emerges from the book slip.
- [21:28]
Interviewer
Going back to your book, your work blurs lines between biography, theology and mystery. I really like you bring all of these different topics together. So I was wondering, how did you balance the historical references to Holocaust writers, theologians. We've also fictional invention. Because this is a very, you know, hard ground. People might be upset that you mix, you know, fiction with the Holocaust, for instance.
- [21:58]
Philip Grauber
Yeah, I mean, that's the trickiest challenge in writing the book. And. And I was actually. I tried to be very careful in. In how I was portraying the experiences of the Holocaust.
- [22:08]
Interviewer
Part of this.
- [22:10]
Philip Grauber
This is a larger issue. But how does one write about the Holocaust if. If one never experienced it? It's almost impossible. There's a. There's a debate in Jewish literary circles. Is it really possible to. To picture the Holocaust in fiction if you haven't experienced it or even if you have experienced it? You know, I. I grasped onto the character Primo Levi because he was so convincing in really discussing and showing his experience. But of course, did I really experience it from reading the page? So what his words on the page. I mean, here's where I came with. I came to. Is that it's impossible really to portray the Holocaust and fiction, but it's also necessary to portray the Holocaust and fiction. So that's one of the paradoxes, one of the mysteries that's in my book. I'll say from a technical point of.
- [22:58]
Marshall Po
View.
- [23:00]
Philip Grauber
If you read the novel, the narrator is never describing events in the Holocaust. The narrator didn't go through the Holocaust. So I would never try to narrate to portray the experience of the Holocaust, But I feel it's legitimate to portray my relationship with Holocaust survivors, since that's been a real part of my career and that's an authentic part of American Judaism. None of us have gone through the Holocaust Holocaust, but we all know people that have gone through the Holocaust, and that experience shapes American Judaism. So I portrayed that in the book as well as I could.
- [23:40]
Interviewer
Well, let's go back to Jerusalem. So your. Your book really captures the texture of daily life, hospitality, music, marketplaces. You really go into a lot of descriptions of all of this. So you do this also confronting political tension that you already mentioned. And I'm curious about. How did you research and recreate that atmosphere from a creative, you know, a narrative point of view?
- [24:08]
Michael Kinnemann
Well, thank you. I hope, I hope that it does capture something of the experience of being there. People who have traveled for a brief time, people who live there, have told me that it captures something of their own experience. So I'm glad of that. I've spent a lot of time there, as we've noted, and I have friends in. I'm not sure I like the idea of the four quarters of Jerusalem, but I have friends in all the quarters of Jerusalem, and that's really helped also to get a different experience of the city. Another part of the research, though, is over the years I've been privileged to be part of groups that have met with diverse people and organizations. So when I was with the National Council of Churches, for example, we would meet with Israeli peace activists, with settlers groups, with Christian Zionists, with Israeli cabinet members, with Palestinian political leaders, with all of the major religious leaders, Palestinian, Muslim, in the Old City. That's been wonderful experience for me. It was a part of my earlier career, but I've been able to bring it also into the writing of the fiction. As a part of the background research that I do. I was there at various times also recently that have been memorable. My wife and I were staying in the Old City in March of 2020, when the whole city shut down around us and we barely got out on the last plane flights as Covid was shutting down the city. I was recently in contact with the hotel where we were staying at the time because they had to let all the workers go. And they simply said, the kitchen is yours. And so for the last two days, we were alone in the hotel eating breakfast in the kitchen as we found it. And I was back in January of 2024 researching a new book called Becoming Nathaniel, which is also set in the Old city, but with 50 miles away, Gaza, the tragedy, calamity of Gaza happening, which changed, of course, the whole tenor of the experience. And I'll be back again next spring with my daughter, who's never been there, as another to be able to see the city through the eyes of someone who's not experienced it before. All of this is wonderful. I'll try to file it away, keep it for future use.
- [26:44]
Interviewer
I want to ask something about encounters. So both novels are highlighting in different ways, but I think there are connections there. Jewish Arab or Jewish Christian Muslim encounters. And this happens often in moments of tension, but also intimacy. So I'm curious, what do you hope readers learn about interreligious contact through your stories?
- [27:12]
Philip Grauber
There's an interesting phenomenon among American Jews. Let me start with that. American Judaism is deeply connected to Israel and what goes on in Israel. And I. I've tried to resist this for much of my. But congregations will. In Sif. Israel. Israel and the Palestinian conflict should be the major topic of American Judaism. Now, obviously I'm interested in it, and I spent lots of time in Israel and I continue to travel to Israel. But so every once in a while I think, how many of American Jews, let's say, in my congregation, are actually acquainted with a single Palestinian? We've become very interested in the conflict, but we don't necessarily know anybody other than our Jewish family that lives in Israel. By the way, you could say the same thing about most American Jews are not really acquainted with very many. Maybe none of, let's say, messianic Jewish settlers. So everything that guides us in understanding the Israel Palestinian conflict is missing something. And that's the encounter with the other. I mean, and I'm not any different. I have one close friend who is a Palestinian who lived in Jerusalem. I met him one of the times I lived in Jerusalem. And in American Judaism, that kind of makes me an expert. I'm at least acquainted with somebody. I've had conversations with this person, but it's inadequate. It's not enough. So I feel like the close encounters, the intimacy, are really necessary in trying to unpack what's going on. I have the sense that most of us that are deeply involved in the conflict don't know a significant portion the narrative of the other. So at least I've tried to do that in fiction, to try to showcase that you have these two characters, you put them together and they're telling stories. Okay, suddenly there's a deeper understanding. It doesn't mean that through fiction you solve the conflict, but you deepen your own understanding. And then when you bring that deeper understanding, call it wisdom to the conflict, and suddenly you have a better, deeper, more profound perspective.
- [29:30]
Michael Kinnemann
I think Phil sells himself short because he really does bring sensitivity, in my experience, to Palestinian life. But I appreciate what he had to say there. I try to put characters of different religious backgrounds into intimate relationship in the novel. So the main relationship in the novel is between Daniel, who is an American Christian, and Shoshana, who is an Israeli Jew. And in some ways, the title of Phil's book fits with mine. Here. There is no why with regard to love. Who can explain why it happens? There actually are characters in the book who are a better fit for Daniel, Abby and Maya and others. But he loves Shoshana, and here you don't explain that. So the love, in that sense transcends any kind of religious difference. And he becomes immersed in her religious practice, such as it is. And I think she touches, at least on his. So I try to put those into conversation. There are other places in the book where I do it more directly. Daniel leads an interfaith group back to Jerusalem that's made up of Christians, Jews and Muslims, and conflict ensues among friends. These are people who know themselves and have a community back in Columbus, Ohio. But once they get into Jerusalem, history begins to intervene, and we realize that they read the past differently. They have different sense of what counts as historical record, and they begin to tell one another their own sense of.
- [31:18]
Philip Grauber
Of.
- [31:19]
Michael Kinnemann
Of the history of the place they're looking at. They also have different fears, so they begin to see what makes the other one afraid. And I think that's an important part of interfaith encounter as well. Another part of the book that comes through, though, is that extremism is a problem in all religions. So right from the very beginning, Al Aqsa is set on fire by a Christian zealot from Australia. But of course, that's misread on all sides. Whether Palestinians were hampering Israeli firefighters, whether Israel actually was responsible behind it. So Al Aqsa functions the burning as a kind of Rorschach test, with different groups responding differently to it. But extremism is what set it in motion. Later on, he takes a religious. Daniel takes a student group to visit Christian Zionists in the Old. In Jerusalem, extremism is a problem all the way through, even as I try to undercut any easy statements like that. So Shoshana, for instance, is absolutely anti Orthodox Jew. She doesn't like Orthodox Jews at all. And she says so with a kind of zealotry. Of her own so that even her anti extremism is extreme. So I try to show the complexity in that way through the novel.
- [33:01]
Interviewer
I want to ask each one of you a couple of questions about the characters so that we give the listeners a sense of the story and also sense of these people. So in here there is no why Chaim Lerner's theology and is, is a very interesting one. It's about a limited God and this wrestle with faith after catastrophe. Obviously we're talking about the, the Holocaust. Philippe, how do you think such theological debates resonate across religious boundaries?
- [33:39]
Philip Grauber
I'll start by telling you just an interesting paradox in the relationship between myself and Michael. You know, Michael is a, is a theologian. He's actually an excellent theologian, a noted theologian. And I'm not, I'm a rabbi and I've, I kind of read theology, dabble in theology, but I would never call myself a theologian. But I write about theology and in Michael's novels he doesn't write about theology. So I'm the one that's kind of picked up. He writes excellent nonfiction about theology and I've somehow kind of put it into my novel and I almost feel inadequate answering your question because again, it flows from the narrative. I needed Chaim Lerner to be a theologian. That was important for me for the book. I'll explain in a second. But then once I decide he's a theologian, I have to decide, okay, what's his theology? And I'm thinking, okay, well, it has to be a theology that generates a best selling book because in the, in the, in the novel, Chaim Learner writes a best selling book about his theology. And all I could think of was Harold Kushner, who wrote this book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, who to the Jewish community introduced this idea. So he said, aha, okay, so that's going to be Lerner's theology. So through that narrative process, I'm just making choices to advance the story. I actually start writing theology. Then as I write theology, it's, it's in Chaim's voice, but I'm writing it. This is the strange paradox. I become a theologian. I've become a theologian and I wasn't one before. And then my favorite theology becomes Harold Kushner's because that's Chaim Lerner's theology. Now the thing is that after I've written the novel and I have more distance, Harold Kushner has this idea of the limited God. And it seemed to me as I became, as I transformed myself into theologian, well, that works for the Holocaust. Because what other explanation could there possibly be? How could God allow the Holocaust? Well, God didn't want to allow it, but God didn't have the power. It works for Chaim Lerner, but it was working for me. Then I take a step back and think, that doesn't work for me at all. After I finished writing the book. How could you possibly have a theology where God is not all powerful? So it's my theology. I embrace that theology. At the same time, I reject it. And maybe I can never really be a theologian because of that, or maybe that's what theologians do. The last thing I'll say is that my book is a mystery. And I'm not a theologian, but I am a mystery writer. But I always want there to be a deeper mystery than just, okay, who killed this guy? Who did it? So in Chaim Lerner's life, there's a number of mysteries. There's why did he die? What does it mean to survive the Holocaust? But there's an ultimate cosmic mystery that's at the heart of the narrative of the book, which is really, why does God allow terrible things to happen? How can an all powerful God allow for the Holocaust? That's a cosmic central mystery. And what's interesting is of course there's no answer to that. There is an answer to the very physical mystery of how did Chaim die? But there's not an answer to the cosmic mystery of why does God act the way God acts? And I'm comfortable with that. I'm comfortable with an answer, but at the same time leaving the reader with a sense of mystery.
- [36:56]
Interviewer
Michael in a rooftop in Jerusalem, the main character, Daniel, finds unexpected welcome among Palestinians in the Old City, even as really larger political fires rage because of wall of events and some that you already mentioned. How important was it for you to highlight moments of human connection amidst conflict?
- [37:20]
Michael Kinnemann
May I make a comment before I answer that question?
- [37:23]
Philip Grauber
So.
- [37:26]
Michael Kinnemann
We were talking about interfaith relations a moment ago. The relationship between Phil and me is also an interfaith relationship. We do joint presentations here in San Diego based on our novels. I have over the years written about interfaith relations and guidelines for how Jews and Christians talk about tough issues. That was a direct chapter in one of my books from 2014, and the first guideline is know each other as friends. We think that's most important and we hope that in our joint presentations we model friendship as a key to interfaith relations. So I also tried to show that in the books I think he does well. So this is a part of the answer, the earlier answer. Christian theology, by the way, has wrestled with the same thing that Jewish theology has wrestled with, because we also, God knows, are implicated in the horrors of modern Jewish history. And as Christians. And Christian theology has tended to speak about God's power after the Holocaust as persuasive rather than coercive, as a way of trying to deal with the very same issue. Limited sounds.
- [38:43]
Philip Grauber
A little weak.
- [38:44]
Michael Kinnemann
But persuasive power, perhaps that's a different way to look at it. I don't know. I think how important is human connection? It's absolutely crucial. The book is a love story. Rooftop in Jerusalem is a love story. It begins and ends with human connection. But I think, as Phil suggested, the whole point of fiction is to put a human face on things that are often seen as categories or stereotypes. I start the book, for instance, with a conversation among Palestinian men, a group that I think is often very misunderstood in the United States and in the west in general. And so I begin there. These are very real human beings talking to one another about their own sense of the history of Jerusalem, but also about everyday events. The baker and he talks about how he makes kayak and so on. It's. So I try to begin that way, and I build that into different parts of the narrative. So, for instance, when Daniel takes the interfaith group to Hebron and they meet with two old men, a Muslim and a Christian, and the two old men say, ordinary people among us want the same things. We want to be able to live our lives, have our children, get a better life than we had, have good education, be able to take a trip. Occasionally we try to give that kind of human sense to things that otherwise are treated as categories or headlines in news events. I think that's what fiction can do at its best.
- [40:29]
Interviewer
I have a question for both of you. Do you believe fiction has a unique power to bridge divides between communities of faith? I mean, you mentioned that already, but I'm. Interesting how.
- [40:43]
Philip Grauber
Well, that's a good question. And I'm not confident. I don't go into the project of writing a novel thinking that, okay, this is going to change things materially on the ground. I will say there are, as we go through history, novels that have made a difference. We've talked about that. Other, other various settings. Uncle Tom's Cabin, you know, was crucial in American history. There's. There's several other examples of novels that were important enough to actually make a change on the ground. The idea that I might actually write one of those novels Even for someone as. As egotistical as myself, it's. It's hard for me to kind of grasp that. But modestly, I would say that a novel can awaken a sensitivity that maybe wasn't there. One example in my own book is that I actually tried to inhabit the world of a suicide bomber briefly. Just what exactly is motivating that suicide bomber? The suicide bomber ends up, obviously, a failed suicide bomber. He attempted a suicide bombing and he failed and then was in jail. And he becomes a character in the novel and he attempts to explain to the other characters why he did what he did. And there's. And that's a. You know, I have to. I'm not gonna. I was about to say that's a brave thing to do. I don't know. Maybe that's a foolish thing to do. It. The exigencies of the story demanded that I introduced the suicide bomber. And then it became my responsibility in some ways to inhabit his psychic force. And I tried to do it. And all I wanted the reader to get out of that is understanding the psychological forces that are at play, whether you like them or not. And I think once you have that understanding again, there's the possibility of deeper understanding and the possibility of wisdom. And then you multiply that by 5 million. And maybe, maybe over the course of a generation, maybe you're making some kind of difference.
- [42:41]
Michael Kinnemann
I would echo the fact that we're telling stories, not trying to make a point. That, of course, is crucial to the work of fiction. Having said that, I think that fiction can engender empathy, and that's what we're really looking for here. Graham Greene has a wonderful quote in his novel Power and Glory. At least it's wonderful to me where he says that hatred is just a failure of the imagination. That if, in fact we can see the other person, if we can see the wrinkles at the corners of the eyes and in the forehead, we can begin to imagine something of their life. And at that point, we may still oppose them desperately so. But it's harder to hate. I think that's what fiction can do at its best. It gets us ins. A capacity that literary fiction has that almost no other art form has, which is to put you inside the head of someone else. And so you. You see those wrinkles, you see the history that motivates their feeling about the conflict in the Middle East. You see some of the fears that they have which they bring to their relationship to other people. And I think that breaks down at its best, it breaks down stereotypes. So that we begin to see people as people and that makes it harder to hate them. I want to add one other thing that's kind of tangent to this, but in our joint presentations we say that one reason that we're doing this together is that we're existing right now in the United States and elsewhere, I'm afraid, around the world. In an era of book banning, when the arts in general are under attack, when the importance of fiction and the arts seems to be called into question, we think these things are important not, as Phil says, because we have any overblown sense of how we're going to change the world with one book, but because we think fiction as a whole, arts as a whole, really has a power that's crucial to a society.
- [44:45]
Interviewer
When I was preparing for the interview, I found out that you together gave a presentation called Can Fiction and Friendship Heal what Politics Can't? And that's why I thought about asking you about, you know, the role of fiction, because I thought it was very interesting to engage with this different level of how we intend fiction that is not just for entertainment or for critical thinking, but also a piece that can help communities healing. So I found it very interesting that you had this title for this presentation. Philippe, I want to ask something about Learner and I need to talk about Lerner's death, whether it was a suicide or something else. I found it interesting in the book that that particular section reads almost like a courtroom of memory and testimony. And my question is, what do you hope readers feel in that ambiguity in that moment?
- [45:45]
Philip Grauber
You know, I'll go back again to the genre of the book. I mean, the book, the book is a mystery. And what I'm trying to do in writing the book is to get the reader engaged in the central mystery. And I'm hoping that they'll follow me as we go through that story. So why did he die? Was it a murder? Was it, was it, was it a mistake? Was it suicides? And. And all through the book I'm trying to answer that question and hope, hoping that I'm bringing the reader along, that I'm engaging the reader and doing it while I, I do that. I mentioned this before. I try to open the reader's mind to other mysteries because to just have this single minded mystery, then it becomes a kind of police procedural. And I'm not writing a police procedural where they're checking DNA and checking hair elements and trying to figure out why it happened. I do want something deeper to go on. So the deeper element that I'm trying to introduce to the reader is, okay, why do people die in general, let's understand suicide. Because when you have a book that's so steeped in suicide, by the way, I make the book sound darker than it really is. But I think you'll agree it's steeped in just the phenomenon of suicide. But examining suicide intellectually or through the novelist lens is also examining life itself, the value of life. So why is there such a thing as suicide? Can people actually survive trauma? I could list five or six other questions that are mysteries in the book and. And I would hope that people would discuss. So I try to play a kind of double game where I'm writing a mystery, a genre mystery, and it's a who done it? And a why done it. But I'm also introducing cosmic questions that are also. They should be mysterious to the reader, and I'm hoping that the reader engages with them. And I think maybe in some ways it's part of my experience as a novelist to introduce questions that have no answers. So for every mystery I have, there's an answer. I feel like I owe that to the reader. I'm telling you, okay, who did it, why it happened? I'm going to eventually, through plot twists, reveal that. But I'm also going to leave you with other mysteries that maybe you'll continue to think about, even if basically, in the end there are no answers.
- [48:10]
Michael Kinnemann
I hate closure, by the way. And so I have almost no completion of the closure. I leave things hanging perhaps a bit more than Phil does in the novel.
- [48:23]
Interviewer
And Michael, I want to ask about the beginning of your book. So early in the novel, Daniel is swept into a crowd, obviously during the fire at Al Aqsa mosque. That is sort of the very beginning of your book. And this is a very powerful moment of fear, misunderstanding. And I'm curious, why did you choose to open the narrative with this event?
- [48:48]
Michael Kinnemann
I'm afraid I jumped the gun in answering that earlier, that this is a bit of a Rorschach test, because the way in which people react to this right from the very beginning shows the complexity of the conflict, the whole living in the whole situation that is Israel, Palestine today. So he goes back, for instance, to talked with the men at the. At Alkamal, the cheap hotel where he stays, and they're talking about the burning as a seminal event in their consciousness. Obviously a great work of art. The pulpit is. Has been burned and they're suspicious of Israel's role in it. Then he goes to this, what I think is a pretty funny scene at Sukkot with Mrs. P and her family, where the family, at least one member of the family, reads the. The burning of Al Aqsa in completely different terms and relates it to the destruction of Kunstverke, the German artwork of the Jewish community at the time of the Holocaust. They. So it shows right from the beginning the way in which people react to the. The fire at Al Aqsa, some of the ways in which history and fear and so on plays into it. There's also an educational element here, I will admit, although I'm telling a story and not trying to educate. But I just. It's so astonishing to me what I include myself in this. Americans don't know about the world, and here's a really crucial event for a major part of the religious world around the globe. And we're pretty ignorant of it, I'm afraid. So by beginning that way, I was calling attention to that. The educational component comes through, I suppose.
- [50:58]
Interviewer
Another question for both of you, and you know, about your work. Were there particular passages or scenes that you hope will stay with the readers long after they put down your book?
- [51:13]
Philip Grauber
I'll tell you a section that moved me in particular, and. And I hope it moved others. And I'm not sure why, but maybe it has to do with my struggling to write some kind of theology that can leave somebody comforted and puzzled at the same time. So Chaim does this experiment at the Western Wall with Judah. You know, Judah is a student, and Chaim is writing his theology book. And he says, you know, let's try prayer. Let's figure that out a little bit. I mean, people are at the. At the Western Wall, at the Kotel, and they're praying. And he says they're probably praying for things. I mean, maybe they're just, you know, thanking God for something. But the likelihood is there's petitionary prayer going on. So he tells Judah, let's do an experiment. You know, experiment, just two. We'll both go and we'll pray for something. But he says what he wants Judah to do is go. Go to the wall, pray for five things, ask God for five things, but understand you're only going to get one of them because we're talking about a limited God. So a limited God only has the power to bestow one. So you're going to have five things that you want, and. But you're only going to get one. So he goes to the wall and he asked for the five things, and I forgot exactly. His health and a career. He's only 20 years old at the Time. So. And then he's having this relationship. It's a love relationship. His first romance, and he picks, okay, that's the thing. No matter what, that's what I want. Even if you don't give me health, even if you don't give me career, even if you don't give me the money that I need. Keep this relationship strong. And. And then later he reflects on it and says, and that's the one thing that I was willing to. That I needed. You know, I could give up the other four, but the one thing I really needed, that's exactly what I didn't get. He got. He got all four of the others, but he didn't get the thing he wanted. Then you go forward in time. I think it's like 13, 14 years later, and he's now married to somebody else who has a terminal illness. And he suddenly remembers prayer. And he thinks, well, maybe I'll try Chaim's thing again. I'll ask for five things, and I'm willing to give up, but I'm willing to give up four, but I need the one. So he does the same thing, asks for a bunch of stuff, and this time it's even more catastrophic. The catastrophe is that all he really wanted was his wife to survive. And that's the one thing that doesn't happen. He gets all four of the others. But the one thing he most wants to happen, but he doesn't get. And I'll just read. It's a very short paragraph. So he goes through this in his head after he considers, okay, so he. He wants the.
- [53:48]
Michael Kinnemann
The.
- [53:48]
Philip Grauber
The. There's the one thing that overwhelms his desires in prayer, and that's the one thing he doesn't get. So he says the result was even more catastrophic than the first attempt. Rather than more time with my wife, I got dramatically less. As if God were mocking me, punishing me for Benny Chaim's heresies. Or maybe that was the point of the exercise, the theological equivalent of don't put all your eggs in one basket. Or maybe it was all bullshit. Just struggling with the idea of prayer. It moved me in the book. Developing a prayer life is something that's been important for me as a rabbi. I think many readers are curious about prayer, interested in prayer. So I'm putting it out there. What are some of the responsibilities of prayer? And I tried to have the narrator go through that, to invite the reader into that world also, as I have.
- [54:40]
Michael Kinnemann
Said before, Rooftop in Jerusalem is a love story. And so I hope people come out of it in having experienced a love story, it happens over 45 years. But then that may not be unusual in our day and age either. I don't know. By the way, Phil's here, there is no why is also a love story, but it's the man woman love story is not what I remember as much as the father daughter from his novel, which lingers with me in terms of the love story in a rooftop in Jerusalem. Readers, this may give away too much of the end, but there is a letter at the end that many people tell me makes them cry. And I guess I do hope that that love story culminating in some way at that moment stays with people. There also are dramatic encounters in the book, though, that I guess I hope remain because they talk about the complexity that we've been discussing throughout this hour. For example, the interfaith group goes to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. And in the midst of the grief that comes from this overwhelming catastrophe and the experience of it, the Muslim group points out that you can see the former site of Dar Yassin, the an Arab village that was destroyed by paramilitary troops at the time of the war in 1948. This causes great anguish, really, all around as they wrestle with yes, we need to remember that, too, but why here can't we simply have this? These are poignant moments that I suspect many readers will identify with there. Also, he leads a student group into Hebron, and again, there's dispute with one of the students remembering Baruch Goldstein, who shot up the mosque and killed 29 at the time. And the Israeli guide who is with them, yes, acknowledges that may his name be forgotten, but then says, have you been there when a suicide bomber blew him or herself up? And describes that experience. And then the experience of Orthodox Jews on their knees scraping up pieces of flesh in order that there's something to bury. These are moments that speak, I think, to the heart of some of this experience, and I hope they stay with people.
- [57:38]
Interviewer
I'd agree that the letters, the exchange of letters at the end are very, very moving indeed. Now we reach the end of our conversation, and I want to bring a couple of questions together. So when you were writing these books, I'm curious, what impact did you hope they would have on Jewish, Christian, Muslim readers, secular ones, and also every so far, responded in ways that surprised you other than the usual, I like the book. I didn't like the book. And did the novels spark conversations that you didn't anticipate?
- [58:18]
Philip Grauber
Well, generally, people don't stand with me and spend a lot of time analyzing the novel. It's wonderful to have this conversation with you now because encourages me to go deeper into it. Some of the responses. I'll start with this. I mean, some of the responses have been a little disappointing. Michael mentioned that there's an important relationship in the book, the father daughter relationship. I don't have daughters. So actually that was an important thing for me to draw up and to think about the daughter. For most of the book. There's several timelines in the book. For most of the book, the daughter is 15 and accompanies her father to try to investigate this murder.
- [58:57]
Michael Kinnemann
And.
- [58:58]
Philip Grauber
And because she's 15, she's in adolescence. So she's trying to kind of understand her relationship with her father. Sometimes to make a dig at her father and he's just trying to understand who is this girl and what does she want now as she gets older and thinks about her way in the world. So there's a scene where she decides to tell her father, I'm an anti Zionist and I want you to know I'm an anti Zionist and I've had some responses in the Jewish community. Why would you have a character, a Jewish character who's anti Zionist? And it's very clear to me that I wasn't making a political statement in any way at all. I was talking about the way a 15 year old adolescent may respond to her father. Just intentionally trying to make a dig at him and get him to shut up or get him to respond one way or another, it's difficult. But when you're trying to write a wide ranging novel of Israel, which is what I tried to do, and not introduce elements that will make the reader uncomfortable. I mentioned this character of a suicide bomber. I think there were readers that were uncomfortable that there was a kind of sympathetic portrait of it. I wouldn't say sympathetic. I'd say trying to understand who this person is and why, what led him on a particular path. Plus we come to the suicide bomber when he's changed a little bit so he can reflect also on his own psychological journey. Mostly what I want to do with the novel, which I've talked about already, is just increase some sense of wisdom. There's a sense that this is not all black or white. This isn't a story of heroes or villains. Or if it's a story of heroes and villains, then there's heroes and villains on both sides and often the villains are in charge. So then what happens to the people that aren't in charge? Just that sense of understanding What Michael, I think rightly refers to as empathy. Just to introduce a little empathy into the discussion with the sense that that can only help.
- [61:04]
Michael Kinnemann
I hope, obviously, that any group will see through the eyes of a group they aren't part of. So that's a part of what I hope happens in the book. But I didn't really have Christian, Jewish, Muslim readers in mind as much as I had Americans in mind, to be honest, that I'm writing for an audience that just doesn't know a whole lot about some of the issues that we're raising that come through the characters of the book. I've had educated guy and a friend tell me not too long ago that he didn't know there were Christians in the Middle, Middle East. Well, yes, but Phil and I have talked about this in our joint presentations. You can talk about all the numbers of Christians who live in west bank or wherever, and that's one thing, but to show a character that's more memorable. So hopefully some of that comes through. I've had people tell me that all Palestinians want Israel to be destroyed. Well, gosh, they may lament that it happened, but I don't know people who are going around wanting it to be destroyed right now. That's not the majority of people that I know. So how do we put those faces on real experience? I've had some reactions that have been interesting to me. I mentioned earlier, I think, that many people read A Rooftop in Jerusalem as a political novel, that the. I sure liked the fact that I learned about the conflict of the Middle East. I see it as a love story with the other as context, but that's not how it's always been read. And the other, that's a major one to me is that I have people, including reviewers, who say Daniel is a bridge builder. He sees all sides as if all sides are equivalent alternatives in his view. Well, that's where he begins. But there's a change in the book. I'm giving it away now. And he is a bridge builder for parts of it. But by the end, by the end, he's beginning to feel a pull that says these are not equivalent alternatives. And finally, there are some things that are right and some are wrong, and he needs to be more forceful about naming that. This is a real tension in my theological writings. Also, as head of the National Council of Churches, I was committed to the unity of Christians across the board until justice questions come into play. And at some point you have to draw a line and say no. In fact, that's an illegitimate diversity because it denies the just claims of others. Boy, those are hard lines. I don't pretend that fiction can solve them. I couldn't do it in theology, but at least we can raise them those questions. And so I wanted people to see that there was a change in Daniel, and that doesn't always appear to come through.
- [64:10]
Interviewer
And just to wrap up our conversations, what do you hope the audience listening to this interview takes away? Not necessarily just about your books, but also about how stories can shape empathy and understanding across divides.
- [64:28]
Philip Grauber
Mostly, I want the audience to enjoy a story that takes them to different places and introduces them to interesting characters. My glib response to why did I write this book? Is that I'm always trying to find interesting places and put interesting characters and see what happens. Now, obviously because of my deep attachment to Jerusalem. And as we said, both books are love stories and one of the objects of love is Jerusalem. And we've also said there's not necessarily a why as to why we love Jerusalem, just like there's not necessarily a why as to why you fall in love with the person you fall in love. I also have that romance in the book and, and I even say at some point the characters don't understand the love. There is a here. There is no why not. Understanding is not an excuse for not trying. And ultimately I think that's what I want from the reader is it's very difficult to grasp all of the perplexities, the puzzles that are in the novel. One of the puzzles in the novel is why has the Israel Palestinian conflict gone on forever? When other conflicts have been resolved in the world, this one never seems to resolve. Why is that? Let's spend some time on that understanding. We may not get to it. So I'm looking for a reader's experience of enjoyment in reading the book, but also for their curiosity, their captivation over this over a few big suicide, the Israel Palestinian conflict, the meaning of life, the value of life, just the compelling some kind of interest and thought.
- [66:08]
Michael Kinnemann
What he said. But also I hope listeners will buy our novels a rooftop in Jerusalem here there is no why. I think they're good books, hope people will read them. But beyond that, celebrate reading the importance of fiction as well as nonfiction, but celebrate the fact that we're able to learn about others in this kind of indirect and wonderful way. And then I suppose, also celebrate friendship. Phil and I, our friendship, I hope is of importance and people can hear that even in this podcast. But then take away from this, go make friends with people who aren't in your group, just as we're trying to tell stories that cross those, those barriers, may others go and do likewise because there are so many stories of people that we need to hear and celebrate. And thanks to you for this opportunity.
- [67:09]
Interviewer
These were Michael Kinnaman, author of A Rooftop in Jerusalem, and Philip Grauber, author of Here There Is no why, both published by Kohler Books in 2025. Michael, Philip, thank you so much.
- [67:24]
Philip Grauber
Thank you. It was a pleasure.
- [67:25]
Michael Kinnemann
Thank you.