May is Jewish Heritage Month, and we are delighted to host an excerpt from Rubble Children (University of Alberta Press, July 2024)—new short fiction from Govenor General Award Finalist Aaron Kreuter.
Rubble Children is an absorbingly timely and necessarily explorative read, tackling Jewish belonging, settler colonialism, Zionism and anti-Zionism, love requited and unrequited, and cannabis culture, all drenched in suburban wonder and dread. Engaging, funny, dark, surprising, this collection is a scream of Jewish rage, a smoky exhalation of Jewish joy, a vivid dream of better worlds.
"What if the worldview you were raised in turns out to be monstrous? In the stories that form Rubble Children, Aaron Kreuter examines a Jewish community in flux, caught between its historical fealty to Israel and a growing awakening and resistance to it. Rubble Children is a book of great range: at once political, communitarian, empathetic, funny, revolutionary, touching, and hopeful. This is a work that is essential for our moment."
—Saeed Teebi, author of Her First Palestinian
The passage we are sharing below is from "Mourning Rituals," the first story in the collection, which takes place during the shiva for Joshua and Tamara's father.
Bring home Rubble Children by Aaron Kreuter.
From “MOURNING Rituals”, Rubble Children
That evening, the adults praying in the living room, facing east, worn blue prayer books brought from Kol B’Seder in their hands, bending and calling out, Joshua and Tamara sat with their cousins in the family room in half-tense silence. Simon in his Israeli Defense Forces uniform, Clarissa, her hair in a high bun, sweatpants tucked into woollies snug in Uggs, bent over her phone, thumbs dancing. Shelly, cuddling with Andre, her new boyfriend; he looked lost, out-of-place, the Hebrew rising and falling from the front of the house registering on his face as alien, off-putting cacophony.
Joshua was staring at the rug, the day’s bottomless allotment of grief having finally tipped his meager watercraft. Simon was looking around the house with detached, distant arrogance. His head was smooth, his skin tanned deep brown, his cheek shaven by naked blade. He’d made aliyah two years ago. Tamara was staring at him, her face souring with each passing minute.
She bent over to Joshua.
“It looks like Simon’s itching to pick a fight,” she said into his ear.
“Hmm...”
“He’s holding his babka like a semi-automatic.”
“He probably just misses his gun.”
“He’d rather be with his unit, riding a tank through the desert at dawn, trashing the house of a Palestinian family because the father looked at him funny.”
“Tamara, not now.”
“...I might just oblige him.”
Simon must have known they were talking about him.
“Sorry for your loss,” he said to them from across the room, the first thing he’d said to them since arriving. Tamara smiled sarcastically.
“How’s Panem?” she shot at him. “Get out to the districts much?”
Simon looked startled. “Pardon?” he said. He was affecting a slight Hebrew accent.
“Tamara!” Shelly shouted. Tamara looked at everyone in turn, the flourishes of prayer fluttering through the house. She was in her element.
“What?” she said, feigning innocence. “What? He chose to go over there and play-act as a colonialist, comes here to this house of mourning dressed in his uniform, and we’re supposed to sit here smiling like idiots?”
Now it was Joshua’s turn to put a hand on Tamara’s shoulder, to push pause on the coming confrontation. She shrugged it off but didn’t continue. It was too late, though: the flood gates were open.
Simon smiled. “What, you don’t approve of my joining the army or something? Shit, my dad’s right about you: you’re too far gone to the left to even see reality. I know your dad just died, and, like I said, I’m sorry about that, but do I really have to tell you that if we weren’t keeping the Arab hordes at bay your little North American hippie-dippie pacifist hacker existence would become ancient news?” Simon turned to Joshua now, who was trying not to look at anyone, trying to not get involved. “I hope you haven’t followed your sister to the dark side, Joshua. Especially you.”
He had no choice but to look at Simon. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what it means. Israel is the only country in the whole Middle East where you wouldn’t be stoned to death for your, for your…lifestyle.”
Joshua laughed, to himself, like he had had a private revelation. Tamara, though, Tamara’s mouth was agape. She was gathering her wits for a full-frontal assault, but Clarissa beat her to it, pivoting from her phone for the first time since she arrived.
“You know, Simon. I wasn’t going to say anything because I was raised better, but you’ve really become an asshole. And, I’m sorry, I’ve got to say it: why is joining the Israeli army, like, given a pass? You know how our parents would react if one of us joined the Canadian army? The Canadian army is for people from Saskatchewan! And the American army, oh, you’re a misguided, bloodthirsty imperialist! But the Israeli army! Ooooh, the Israeli army! Why, then, you’re fighting for the Jewish nation! You’re a hero! You’re rewriting the history of a blighted people! How does it not, like, ring terribly false? Hero! What total horseshit!”
Everybody was silent, stunned, in the wake of Clarissa’s outburst. Later, Joshua would tell Tamara how surprised he was that Clarissa had thoughts or feelings like that. “The last serious conversation we had was five years ago, when we debated which Backstreet Boy we’d rather went down on us.”
Somebody hiccupped and all eyes turned to Shelly. She was crying. Andre was stiff beside her, stuck between wanting to comfort his girlfriend and wanting to get out of this house of strange Jewish customs and head-on battles. Feeling the attention, Shelly looked up. “How could you say those things, Clarissa? And during my Aba’s shiva! Don’t act like you don’t remember how proud he was of Simon when he made aliyah! He is a hero, out there all alone protecting the homeland!” She jumped up and ran to her room, her feet stomping on the stairs echoing through the house.
Tamara and Joshua looked at each other. Andre looked like he had just found out that his father had died. Simon swept a triumphant scowl across the room, stood, smoothed his uniform, and went up the stairs after Shelly, not making a sound as he ascended. Clarissa shrugged, went back to her phone. The steady chatter that rose from the other room and permeated the house meant one thing: the prayers were finished. Soon the house would empty out, and, tomorrow, it would start all over again, the pattern repeating for four more days and then—just like that—ceasing, leaving the mourners alone with their grief, with nothing but time to do what it will.
More about Aaron Kreuter:
Aaron Kreuter's most recent poetry collection, Shifting Baseline Syndrome, was a finalist for the 2022 Governor General's Award, and was shortlisted for the 2022 Raymond Souster Award and the 2023 Vine Awards for Jewish Literature. His other books include the poetry collection Arguments for Lawn Chairs, the short story collection You and Me, Belonging, and, from spring 2023, the academic monograph Leaving Other People Alone: Diaspora, Zionism and Palestine in Contemporary Jewish Fiction. Aaron's first novel, Lake Burntshore, is forthcoming from ECW Press. He lives in Toronto, and is an assistant professor at Trent University.