A Table For One: Under The Light Of Jerusalem

by Aharon Appelfeld

A Table for One lifts the veil on the mystery of creativity, with diary entries on the craft of writing. It is set in the cafes of Jerusalem in the 1950s and 1960s, the intimate arena Aharon Appelfeld chose for his pitched battles with language and writing. Here he shaped meaning and wholeness from the fragments of his painful past, transforming them into the mosaic of creative fiction and non-fiction that is his oeuvre.
Many of Meir Appelfeld's oil canvases and charcoal sketches were specially created for this first English edition.

Genres: Israel, Nonfiction, Jewish

111 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

AHARON APPELFELD is the author of more than forty works of fiction and nonfiction, including Until the Dawn's Light and The Iron Tracks (both winners of the National Jewish Book Award) and The Story of a Life (winner of the Prix Médicis Étranger). Other honors he has received include the Giovanni Bocaccio Literary Prize, the Nelly Sachs Prize, the Israel Prize, the Bialik Prize, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the MLA Commonwealth Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received honorary degrees from the Jewish Theological Seminary, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and Yeshiva University.

Reviews

[Helga زن زندگی آزادی مرد میهن آبادی · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes it is actually those people who were hurt who show us how to elevate life. A man who has suffered is more than just a social burden—sometimes he can be the source of feelings and thoughts that rise from the depths of the soul.

This is a memoir not only of a man but also of a city who welcomed the man and gradually and oh so delicately integrated with him, adopted him and became his inspiration for writing.
This is a quiet, restrained, distilled and almost silent narrative of a Holocaust survivor who after years of wandering found his home and his lost identity.

Suffering not only turns people into ugly and selfish creatures, but it can purify and refine the soul. An injured person can also be a noble person.

A Table for One is a meditation on solitude and on belonging and on the power of memory.
What makes this memoir unique and evocative is the series of paintings of Jerusalem done by Meir Appelfeld the author’s son which accompany each vignette.

I believed, and still believe, that people who went through the Holocaust have thoughts and feelings that can contribute to the understanding of others. The experiences that we went through taught us not only about human weakness, but also about the nobility of man…What I needed in those years was a breathing space of my own, a space where I could have a relationship with myself and people who had experienced what I had experienced. The café was the place that suited me. In a café you can see uncensored movement, body language. Sometimes the entire war might be expressed with a shrug of the shoulder.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book for readers interested in how Jerusalem influenced Appelfeld's writing. It's also a nice look at the early years of the State Of Israel, and Jerusalem in particular.

Appelfeld arrived in Jerusalem at the age of 14, after 7 years of living in the forests of the Carpathian mountains. He describes having felt like "prey running always from the hunter." At age 7 he saw his mother murdered and was almost murdered himself. He was reunited with his father in Jerusalem. Upon arrival in Israel he had no ambitions to become a writer. He studied for two and a half years in Youth Aliyah and then did his army service. His ambition, or "illusion" as he calls it, was to become an Israeli. He tried to harden his body through various "unpleasant physical exertions," but his body would not change. So, his first attempts at writing were to bring about in words what he "couldn't bring about in life." He hangs out at Cafe Peter which to him "was more than a home."

"The people who frequented Cafe Peter in those years had come from Transylvania, Hungary, Bukovina, and Bulgaria; they spoke the languages of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. "Everything there - the taste of the food, the manners, the tone of speech, the silence between the sentences-was just as it had been at home.....No sooner was I through the doorway, than I knew that these people were my lost uncles and cousins. I was so enchanted by the place that whenever I had a spare hour I would rush over, and sit there spellbound."

All exiles had their favorite cafes, homes away from their now non-existent homes in Europe. They would gather there every day to talk or just to have a place to think, write, and socialize. In cafes Appelfeld met and learned from all of the great writers in Jerusalem at that time, including S.Y. Agnon and Gershom Sholem.

Applefeld would reward himself for writing a good page by taking walks to places he loved. Some of these places were the homes of good friends, like Leib Rochman, a Yiddish writer. Or he would walk around his own neighborhood.

For a rare glimpse in to this writer's mind and the city he loves, this brief memoir is a must.

[Simon Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book on writing and art I have read since Hemingway’s “Moveable Feast”.

[Sharon Jihad Levine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It also included artwork by Appelfeld's son, Meir. Appelfeld opens up and talks about his early experiences in Jerusalem, the people and writers he meets along the way, and how Jerusalem becomes "his" city. He also gives us a glimpse into the cafes of Jerusalem and the people who frequent them. Appelfeld opens up and shares his writing process. He talks about the experience of "uprootedness" and how it affects all aspects of his life and the lives of his friends, and his writing. If you have read his other works, you'll recognize how he includes his personal experiences and people he's met along the way into his novels. It's almost like a memoir #2 from "A Story of a Life."

[Perlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

While ostensibly a story of Jerusalem's cafes of the 50s and 60s, this is actually a memoir with ruminations on religion, faith, authenticity, trauma and its expressions, and having an inner life.
There were many pages where I wanted to underline whole passages, and I felt as though I was hearing from the author himself -- not reminiscences, but actually as though he was speaking to me directly. This is an intimate and personal book where Appelfeld shares what's in his heart and mind. I found it touching, and will re-read it. He also mentions many other Jewish and Israeli authors of his time, sparking me to make new 'to read' lists!

[Laura Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written book by Aharon Appelfeld about his writing in the cafes of Jerusalem. Deeply introspective and insightful. Loved this book!

[Simon Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply the best book about writing ever written. It demands to be read and re read