Seven Oaks Magazine.

Finding religion: An interview with Montréal author B. Glen Rotchin
May 5, 2006
Charles Demers

Several months after receiving a rave review here at Seven Oaks, B. Glen Rotchin’s novel The Rent Collector has been named as a finalist for the prestigious Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Here, the author and reviewer communicate via email about the issues raised in this stunning and important first novel.

Demers: How do you respond to the feeling that in many ways you're stepping outside of those traditions by giving us a protagonist who feels Jewish religion in his bones? For the most part, we've been given secular protagonists, surrounded to certain degrees by'anachronistic' religious imagery and figures of authority. Why are authors so reluctant to give us Judaism rather than Jewishness? And why did you feel that you could?

Rotchin: A crux of the novel was that I wanted to get into the spiritual marrow of this religious Jew. I felt all along that I was attempting something quite unique in this respect in the context of Jewish fiction. As you so accurately point out North American fiction (Roth, Bellow, Wouk, Malamed, Paley, Richler etc.) has typically defined Jews within a cultural or socio-political framework. I think part of the reason for this is that the preoccupation of the immigrant and the immediate post-immigrant generations was to shed Jewishness (accents, dress, food, practices – both religious and cultural – any of the old world residue that separated them from secular society and stigmatized them.) These works were responding to their most pressing issues, i.e. anti-Semitism, gaining social acceptance within their adopted societies, achieving socio-economic standing and security, etc. I am writing from the point of view of a third-generation Canadian. My parents were born here and even my maternal grandparents were Canadian born. My concerns – though I can't say that I speak for my generation as a whole – are a response to being raised with the social, economic and political comforts and security afforded me. The immigrant generation took being Jewish for granted and raced to find a means of entry into American society. I take being Canadian for granted and struggle to find a means back to Judaism. The question I ask myself is: What have we, as Jews, given up in the process of achieving our present comfort, security and social standing. My sense is that we've given up a lot in spiritual and cultural terms.

This question of what we've given up in the rush to assimilate is not altogether original. It has been asked before in fiction (most overtly in Chaim Potok's work.) But there is a notable increase in the trend recently. A fascination with the Orthodox community and a renewed interest in Orthodox practices and religious mysticism among younger writers (I'm thinking now of Nathan Englander, Allegra Goodman and even Jonathan Safran Foer in his debut novel.) My novel also responds to the work of these writers because I found something lacking in the way they portrayed the Orthodox.

This isn't the time to get into the critical particulars, but suffice it to say I felt that a deeper, more honest, more complex, less stereotypical portrayal could be made. The anatomy of faith as inner-spiritual and emotional struggle could be explored and not just the depiction of a faith that is blinkered or even stalwart. I purposely downplayed the accessories identified with religious practice. I wanted the reader to reach inside my characters as opposed to remaining on the outside and defining them exclusively in terms of how they appeared and what they did. I wanted the reader to have a window on the struggle for maintaining faith. This defines my sense of what faith is really all about. Even among the ultra-Orthodox. It is something one must constantly struggle with.

How do I know this? Some of my best friends are utra-Orthodox Jews. My closest business associate for ten years was ultra-Orthodox. I worked with his family that long. I come into daily contact with ultra-Orthodox Jews. They are a part of my life, though I am not Orthodox myself. I have a tremendous respect for those who pursue the path of faith. I learned that ultra-Orthodox Jews, both modern and sect, are human like the rest of us. They have deep personal spiritual and emotional struggles, and their families suffer from many of the same social ills and dysfunctions as seculars. They are similar and different, since the spiritual demands placed on them by a discipline of faith makes them susceptible to inner-battles that seculars don't have to contend with.

For the most part seculars have become numb to matters of modesty, issues of diet, concerns about disrespectful speech and behaviour that are a daily concern for my religious friends. In ten years I never heard my business associate swear, and I hardly ever heard him denigrate another person. To be sure he slipped-up on occasion, but knew something was amiss and regretted it when he did. I wish I could say the same for myself. Simply put, speech and conduct for a religious Jew have cosmic consequences. If only it were so for all of us.

Demers: What has been the response, so far, to the book? Has the constituency been that which you'd envisioned? Had you envisioned one? It seems there might be more here which would resonate with a religious non-Jewish audience than a non-religious Jewish audience.

Rotchin: Initially, I expected the audience for the book to be primarily Jewish, Montreal, and anybody directly or indirectly connected to the needletrade – which is not insubstantial. I had concerns that most non-Jewish readers would immediately be put off by the fact that the protagonist is an ultra-Orthodox Jew. I think it's one of the first times it has been done in a Canadian novel. Though my concerns were largely put to rest when my editor, Andrew Steinmetz, and my copy editor, Bruce Henry, both non-Jews, were both extremely positive about the story saying that they didn't feel the protagonist's Jewishness posed any barrier to establishing the intimacy required between reader and character. I like to think that maybe we're finally ready in Canada for a protagonist like Gershon Stein. One who can be religiously, culturally and unashamedly distinct.

Then I began to think that there might be advantages in having an Ultra-Orthodox protagonist since they seem so exotic/mysterious, are so visible, and are in our midst. And during the time I was writing there was a lot of talk about them in the news (particularly the Israeli settlers) and in North America Kabballah/mystical Jewish practices were garnering public attention, which appeared to indicate that a wider audience might be interested after all. In the end, I didn't think about it very much and wrote what I wanted to write. My protagonist was going to be who he wanted to be, his story was going to be the story he wanted to tell and no outside considerations were going to change that. Though, I think that what ultimately Andrew and Bruce (and other non-Jewish readers including yourself) have responded to is the humanity of the character underneath the religious garb. And this must always be the case if the story is to succeed. Though it must be said that if it succeeds at all it is because of and not in spite of who Gershon is and his spiritual intensity. His humanity shines through and connects with readers because he is so intensely religious and at the same time conflicted. I suppose it relates to the old truism about reaching deeply into the particular in order to achieve something universal.

Demers: Those of us who know Montreal politics understand that there are, typically speaking, Red immigrants (Jews, Italians, Greeks, Portuguese) and Blue immigrants (Algerians, Haitians, Vietnamese, Chileans); these groups are often used as bargaining chits in the ongoing tensions between Francophones and Anglophones in Montreal. I suspect that you set out to purposely meld the various Blue and Red groups in your picture of immigrant Montreal.

Rotchin: Frankly, I wasn't thinking about 'blue' or 'red' immigrant groups (or any political affiliations.) I was thinking about how the garment industry has traditionally been the entry point into Canadian society for generations of immigrants, beginning with, and dominated by, the Jewish community. I was thinking about how the industry became a microcosm of Canadian society. It brings together, perhaps like no other single industry, the full range of immigrant groups, the newer ones from Asia, south Asia and South America, the Carribean, the Middle East and the more established ones from Europe,

Eastern Europe and North Africa. They are both French speaking and English speaking and linguistically much more diverse than that. They are both educated and uneducated. They are fleeing both poverty and social/economic insecurity, and political persecution. In a very conscious way I wanted to sketch a portrait of the new Canadian reality. And to suggest, perhaps in a more subtle way, the underlying tensions present.

I once heard someone – a representative of the garment industry testifying before a Commons committee in Parliament, actually – describe the industry in a very compelling way. He said he wanted the legislators to have a correct idea of what the industry did: “We do not make garments. We make Canadians.” That about sums up the importance of the industry to Canada, historically. Its critical position as a gateway to our society. Generations of Canadian families, including mine, owe so much to the garment industry. And now that the industry is shrinking – manufacturing is being outsourced, most product is imported, job losses at the low-skilled end are massive – what effect will this have on the segment of society of new Canadians? How will they gain entrance into our society and economy? How will they provide for their families, set roots down and begin the process of deepening them? That's what the loss of this industry means, it seems to me.

Demers: Your protagonist, Gershon, voices the view – not always accepted in mainstream discourse – that religious terrorists, such as suicide bombers, are motivated more by real-life circumstances rather than religiosity per se. Why was this important for you to touch down upon in the Rent Collector?

Rotchin: We live in the age of the suicide bomber. This is our most stark political/social/religious context. I did not think it was possible to tell this story without touching upon that reality, just as I thought it was necessary to touch upon the legacy of the Holocaust. I don't consider suicide bombing – this act of pure nihilism, self-cancellation and terrorism – a religious act or statement, regardless of the language used by the organizers and perpetrators. It is a political act meant to achieve political objectives. This is what Gershon is saying. He is trying make this distinction between the political and the religious because that is the essence of his task in every aspect of his life. To find an appropriate balance. There is a beautiful poem/vision by Judy Chicago called "Merger" in which she writes "And then all that has divided us will merge/And then compassion will be wedded to power." I think Gershon, when he speaks of the despondency of those who would perpetrate such heinous acts, is voicing his sense (and mine too) that politics (power) must be tempered by religion (compassion) in order for a just society to emerge.