Whenever I tell someone I’m reading Amos Oz, the reaction is almost always, “Why? He’s so depressing.” Or, “Oz? He might be a good writer, but he’s practically anti-Zionist—you don’t actually agree with him, right?”

I think this says more about how Oz, who stood among Israel’s most influential authors and public intellectuals, and who was a lifelong Labour Zionist, is misunderstood, than about the quality of his writing.

Among my peers, if they’ve heard of him at all, Amos Oz is often seen as either a pessimist or a political critic too sharp and scathing for comfort. They are missing the point of his novels entirely.

My books are often seen as political statements, but they’re not. If I want to state something very directly—for example, that my government should go to the devil—then I’ll write an article or go on television and say, ‘Dear government, go to the devil.’ If I want to make a political statement, then I’ll write one. When the question is less simple—when within me I hear several points of view—then, perhaps, I write a novel. (Israel, Palestine, and Peace, 1994)

The questions Oz addresses in his novels are not simple, and they don’t have simple answers. That’s exactly what I love about his work. I often can’t even tell what his answer is, which I find increasingly rare in contemporary fiction. Through his novels, I can navigate and contemplate big ideas in all their complexity without feeling pushed one way or another: belief vs. doubt, love vs. disappointment, dream vs. disillusionment, ideas vs. reality. Big paradoxes like these weave through Oz’s work, and grappling with them was his real underlying “point” in writing.

Amos Oz has been a companion of mine since I made aliyah three years ago, at 19. In that time, I’ve slowly but surely made my way through several of his books, including A Perfect Peace, My Michael, Don’t Call It Night, and Judas, and I recently began reading what many call his masterpiece, A Tale of Love and Darkness.

Reading Oz has been a quiet education for me in adulthood and belonging in Israel. The tensions Oz probes across his writing are the same ones I’ve struggled with since making aliyah: identity, self perception, community, the gap between expectation and reality. For the past two years, I have endlessly tried to resolve these contradictions, and through Oz’s work I have explored different aspects of myself and my new surroundings.

Each book spoke to me in a different way—as a young person trying to find my place in the world, as an idealist learning to reconcile big dreams with reality, and as an olah chadasha still figuring out what it means to live here in Israel, in all the beauty,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)