Dueling Identities:
Being Gay and Jewish
Featuring Author Lev Raphael
At a Private Home in Newton
Light Dinner To Be Served
Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 7:00 p.m.
Cost: $36

Space is limited, for more information and directions E-mail Dara at darak@cjp.org or call 617-457-8773.

Award-winning author of Dancing on Tisha B’av, Raphael will explore “Dueling Identities: Being Gay and Jewish” beginning at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 26 at a private home in Newton.

Raphael is considered one of America's earliest "Second Generation" writers, publishing fiction that explores the impact of the Holocaust on the children of survivors from the late 1970s onward. Referring to himself as an "escaped academic," he also examines in fiction and non-fiction the intersection of sexual orientation with larger contexts of Jewish culture and religious tradition, as in his haunting and sensitive first novel Winter Eyes (1992).

Raphael's first collection of short stories, Dancing on Tisha b'Av (1990) won a 1990 Lambda Literary Award, and some of those stories were set at MSU. Let's Get Criminal (1996) is the first title of the Nick Hoffman series of mysteries, taking place in fictional "Michiganapolis" at the "State University of Michigan" where Nick is an English professor who is gay and Jewish. The Edith Wharton Murders (1997) continues the series, which is now in its seventh installment with Hot Rocks (2007).  In his memoir, Writing a Jewish Life (2006), Raphael chronicles his life, claiming both his religious and sexual identities, and the happiness he found in both.

Click here for more information about CJP's GLBT community, or contact melissat@cjp.org for more information.