Reviewed by Carissa

TITLE:  Bashert

SERIES:  2013 Advent Calendar – Heartwarming

AUTHOR:  Gale Stanley

PUBLISHER:  Dreamspinner

LENGTH:  48 pages

BLURB: Is it possible to be a good Jew and a gay man?

Not for Jonah Stern. He can’t reconcile his faith with his attraction to boys, so he turns his back on Judaism. A college scholarship is Jonah’s ticket to freedom from his disapproving parents. Next step: losing his virginity to Christian, the blue-eyed blond man of his dreams.

Instead, Jonah has a fateful meeting with Aaron Blumberg and ends up celebrating Hanukkah. Aaron tells him they’re bashert—meant to be. But Jonah has doubts. He believes his lack of faith will create a wedge between them. It’s up to Aaron to bridge the gap and convince Jonah to take a leap of faith.

REVIEW:

Today the Jewish people celebrated Hanukkah as a season of lights, exchanging gifts and lighting a unique eight-branched candelabrum called a menorah.  Jonah, haunted by the ghost of Hanukkah past, felt he had nothing to celebrate.  This year, all he wanted for Hanukkah was a chance to embrace Christmas.

Jonah–Joe–wants nothing more than to forget his Jewish heritage.  If only because he can no longer reconcile the Jewish Jonah with the gay Joe.  And since he feels he can’t be Jonah without losing part of himself, Joe chooses to walk away.

He can’t walk away from Aaron.  Not when Aaron’s being bullied in the market.  Not when Aaron asks him ‘round for dinner.  And most definitely not when Aaron reveals that he too is gay.  Aaron seemed to have done what Joe could never do: reconcile both halves of himself, seeing himself as a good Jewish gay man.

There is no denying that they are attracted to each other, but can Joe go into a relationship knowing that his partner has embraced his Jewishness, and can he find a place where he might just be able to reclaim some of his heritage without losing himself?

I always make a point of picking up a few Hanukkah stories each year.  I love learning about how different cultures celebrate at this time of year, and there is just something about the depth of honored tradition in the celebration of Hanukkah that I find intriguing.  The same prayers and thanksgivings, echoed over and over, over so many centuries, is something I am awed by.  The depth of intention to keep such a tradition alive is breathtaking.  Coming from a world where everything must be new and now and more–this is a foreign concept.  Even for an ex-Christian girl like me.  I think I’ve never felt that depth of connection when I was religious, and I’m a tad bit in awe of it, and not a little jealous.

The way that this history, and the retelling of it in this story, was handled, left a lot to be desired.  There were times where I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was being lectured at.  Not told a story.  And while I adore learning new things in the stories I read, I want that history to have some emotional connection to the character telling it.  I just couldn’t understand why Jonah, who clearly had some pretty strong emotions connected to his heritage–even if they were not ones he particularly enjoyed–felt like he was reciting lines.  Maybe if the author had connected that knowledge to an event in Jonah’s past, or let us see parts of Jonah that existed before he became just an average Joe, it would have connected me to the story better.

I really liked Aaron and Jonah together.  I liked that Aaron challenged Jonah to see past his belief that he could not be both Jewish and gay.  I grew up with the idea of ‘unequal yoking’–basically the belief that it is bad idea for a religious person to get into a relationship with someone not sharing their faith–so I totally get why Jonah felt so torn about being with Aaron.  Aaron had embraced his faith totally, and Jonah, at least at the beginning, would like nothing more than to forget his.  Getting together, with such differences, could cause problems for them both–but if they actually work at it, I think they’ll see that not everything has to sync in a relationship.  That sometimes growing can come from all different directions.

While this story had an interesting premise, I could never really find and keep a connection with the characters.  Jonah seemed equal parts blasé and entrenched in his Jewish beliefs, which was confusing.  Aaron, who we don’t get a lot of time with, comes off as lacking a bit of that third dimension.  And, well, I am still not sure why and English major, like Jonah, would be so shocked by the term “grammar Nazi.”  It probably isn’t the first time he’s heard it, and the way it came across was like it was something that someone believed he should be offended by, and not something that actually would offend him.  Maybe it makes perfect sense to him, but because we never get a connection to his past, it feels like just a forced piece of writing to prove that he is Jewish.

The downside to short stories is that so much has to be cut out to confine the story into the plot.  This story could never quite break out of the plot structure to give us a story with real feeling, and a real emotional connection.  It would be interesting to see where Jonah goes from here, though.  I was never able to reconcile myself with my Christianity, but maybe Jonah might be able to get the heart of his Jewish heritage back without it costing him himself in the process.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: Dreamspinner  ::  Amazon  ::  ARe

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ADVENT CALENDER EVENT

Dreamspinner Press and The Blog of Sid Love bring to you an opportunity where you get to win a free set of DSP’s “Heartwarming” Advent Calender 2013. Yes! The full set with 31 stories including contributions from authors like Andrew Grey, Cardeno C., Grace R. Duncan, and many more…

If you wish to enter yourself into this contest, all you have to do is comment on every advent event post we make each day till the end of this month. Look out for titles with “Advent Calender Event” mentioned in them (such as this one) and the posts will be reviews on each and every story from this anthology.

The contest will end on 1st January, 2014 and the winners will be announced on the 2nd of January.

So, good luck to you all and Happy Holidays!