Book: Bee Season

I just got around to reading Myla Goldgerg's book "Bee Season".  I had seen the movie with Richard Gere years ago at a Sisterhood event in Utah.  The movie was interesting to me because, at the time, I was fortunate to be studying with a student of Kabballah.  Although my teacher has excellent credentials  I do not.  On the other hand, what really makes for good credentials in mysticism?

Anyway, I knew a little bit about the terminology of Kabballah, so it made the movie viewing a richer experience for me than it may have been otherwise.

Some of the ladies in our viewing group had read the book and made some small comments about how the movie differed from the text.  I'm glad that I saw the movie first because I would've been very disappointed if I had done it in the other order.  On the other hand, I'm a lot older now and I approached the book with a lot more life lessons under my belt.

I think the book is very well constructed and brings up the basic dangers of playing with the mystical in as clear as terms as you probably could.  That's the problem with mystical... you are trying to explain things for which there are no words.  The infinite cannot be defined by its very nature.

What fascinated me by the book was the classic structure of trying to tell this tale.  In our tradition we are told of four rabbis who enter into the "orchard".  I guess we could call this place a melding with G-d or enlightenment.  It's the highest form of communion that a human can have with infinite holiness.  Many many people spend their lives trying to get this closeness with G-d.  But the story from our tradition emphasizes the dangers of excess spirituality.  The four rabbis enter: one dies, one becomes a heretic, one goes insane, and one comes out whole.  (Rabbi Akiva is the one who makes it out okay.)

In Goldberg's story, we also have four main characters.  There is a father who desperately wants to enter the orchard and studies constantly but realizes that he probably just doesn't have the innate ability to make this happen.  But because of his obsession, his family also gets seduced by the idea of the possibility of attaining this elusive connection to the mind of G-d.  So, we have four people who are trying to enter the orchard.  The father can't get in, but wants to attain some degree of in-ness through his children and, in a less thought out way, through his wife.  His wife goes insane, his son becomes a heretic, and his daughter gets in and then back out safely.  His daughter is smart enough to lock the door to the orchard once she is out.

It's kind of like Moses smashing the original set of tablets when he returns from the mountain the first time and sees the havoc that has been wreaked in his absence.  Rashi tells us that smashing the tablets that had been written by the finger of G-d was what made Moses the greatest prophet of all time.

Even though I had seen the movie, I kept hoping that somehow the father in the story would die, but I guess that would've tied it up a little too neatly.