A very sensuous, tactile, earthy Four Meals. Southerners of a certain type would see the value here. Or….are there any Southern Agrarians extant?

Set in the Shalev’s Jezreel Valley. FWIW, the future venue for Armageddon, for all you millenarian Evangelicals.

This book lives and breathes the land, trees, nature, animals, smells, smells, smells. Shalev wants you to smell that citrus, smell that cow manure. The whole of life is there in the town of Kfar David. Fictional town? I think so. I looked it up. There’s a Kfar David in Jerusalem, but I can find no such place in the Jezreel.

The narrator, illegitimate son of Judith, who came to Kfar David in 1931, died in 1950. Somewhere in the middle, Zayde (means grandfather) was born. The real father? Who knows? Three men claim fatherhood: Moshe, the farmer; Jacob, the canary keeper; Globerman, the cattle dealer. Remarkably, they don’t fight over it, but all raise the orphan Zayde, feed him, teach him, see to his well-being. All are fathers to him, and he gives them all their due.

The four meals? Fed to Zayde by Jacob, sumptuous gourmet feasts, offered at long intervals. The four meals are a framing device, a Proustian spark, evoking the memories of Judith and the village. Stories abound. The tone is basically positive.

But perhaps beside the point. The picture of the farming community is idyllic—and yet realistic. There is bounty and security. Alas, there is tragedy now and then. Whose tragedy? Read it and find out. The community is the whole point. Or so I thought. I wanted to live there.

How does it all work out? Who’s the real father? Read it and find out.

But mostly, read it to immerse yourself in a world that is within our reach. Or at one time was. In America, we might call it a Jeffersonian world. Except in America, Jeffersonian (unfortunately) ended up being more or less just abstract.

Yet, don’t think it’s a perfect world. There is inevitably the butcher and the cattle dealer and the slaughterhouse. Those involved in the trade are invariably depicted as coarse. And yet, Shalev is no common, tiresome scold. They are members of the community. Regrettable though their trade may be, they are human beings. They are perhaps even a necessary evil, and most people would do anything at all to not think the worst of such people, who, after all, are law-abiding citizens, good neighbors, men who raise families, and are kind to their children. As Christians might say, hate the sin, not the sinner.

As whimsical and magical as Shalev’s fictional world is, I get the idea that his real-life existence wasn’t so far removed from his Fictional Arcadia. If only Hamilton had lost and Jefferson had won. But I suppose there was no chance of that.

If only…