In her more than four decades in Jerusalem, Galila Ron-Feder-Amit has written some 400 books, taking ‘breaks’ to write TV and film scripts.
By BARRY DAVISRon-Feder-Amit with Menachem Begin.(photo credit: COURTESY MODAN)
Galila Ron-Feder-Amit may not be a spring chicken anymore, but she certainly keeps in touch with the younger generation – and manages to keep her youthful spirit alive and kicking.I caught up with the prolific 65-year-old, Haifa-born, veteran Jerusalemite children’s author, and TV and film screenwriter, prior to a house move – although she is, naturally, staying in the city. It is quite a shift in geographic and demographic terms.“I have been living in Talpiot for over 44 years,” she says, “but everything around us has changed.”When Ron-Feder-Amit first set up home in what has now become a crowded neighborhood, but primarily an industrial and commercial district, it was a charming, bucolic spot.“We looked out onto apple orchards [of nearby Kibbutz Ramat Rahel], and we could see the Dead Sea,” she recalls. “The orchards inspired all of the books in the Gingi series. It was awful when they put up a wall and blocked our view of the Dead Sea.” She and second husband Meshulam Amit are looking forward to settling into the quieter environs of Beit Hakerem this summer.The writer says her move to the capital was a foregone conclusion, and owes something to DNA. “My father made aliya from Poland, and he always wanted to live in Jerusalem,” she recounts. “He and my mother lived here, but in those days, it was hard to make a living.They started building Haifa Port, so they moved north; my father always dreamed of coming back to Jerusalem, and he always related to living in Haifa as just a phase before going back to Jerusalem.”Ron-Feder-Amit’s dad did in fact realize that wish, spending the last 10 years of his life in the capital – although his talented daughter made it to Jerusalem before him, when she enrolled at the Hebrew University for a degree in literature and Bible.Besides her father’s longing, one of Ron-Feder-Amit’s initial Jerusalem associative discoveries was, suitably, of a literary nature. “When I was 16 I encountered a short story by [Nobel Prize laureate S.Y.] Agnon called From Enemy to Lover, in which he writes about the wind that blows through Talpiot; I fell in love with that story. He talks about the wind, but in my mind’s eye I imagined that it was the spirit of creation,” she laughs, referencing the Hebrew word ruah, which translates both as “wind” and “spirit.”“I decided I had to live in Talpiot, as close as I could to that spirit, so I could enrich my muse,” she adds with a chuckle.
Although she is known for her amazingly weighty children’s oeuvre – thus far, she has written in the region of 400 books, which have been translated into 10 languages, including English and Chinese – she started out with a more adult readership in mind.“I grew up in a [left-wing] Mapai household and environment, and I didn’t know anything about the Irgun or [Revisionist leader Ze’ev] Jabotinsky.When I read stuff about what went on between the Hagana and Irgun, I felt terrible,” she explains, with a historical reference to the so-called Saison struggle between the two pre-state paramilitary organizations – when the Hagana resorted to grassing on the more radical underground group to the British authorities, to get the Irgun to desist from carrying out operations against the Mandatory forces.After the then-16-year-old Ron-Feder-Amit got some of her sadness and frustration out of her system, by crying over the fact that two Jewish groups could be such bitter enemies, she soon got down to writing a book based on the Irgun. Mind you, this was after already filling numerous writing exercise books with other incipient works of literature, which she stashed away in her bedroom.“My parents knew I wrote stories, but in those days it wasn’t the kind of thing you shared with your friends and classmates,” she remembers. “Back then, you were supposed to be outside, climbing trees and that sort of thing. Friends, when they wanted to pop in, would call or whistle up from outside, and that left me time to quickly hide any exercise books that might have been lying around. If you spent your time writing, it was as if you didn’t have a real life in the real world.”Ron-Feder-Amit’s attempt to right the injustice she felt had been committed towards the right-wing pre-state group eventually produced a whole tome, but she didn’t know whether it was any good, or accurately reflected the political zeitgeist of a couple decades earlier (or more). The youngster was clearly blessed with a strong will, and decided to go straight to the source.“I sent the book to Menachem Begin,” she reveals.Begin was then a minister in the National Unity Government and, of course, would later become prime minister. He was known as a highly personable character and he duly contacted the teenager’s parents, inviting her over to his home to discuss her work.“That changed my life and my eventual career,” says the writer. “He told me that I should write children’s books, because children have an open heart. He said that if I wanted to write for the heart, I should write for children, because adults are too cerebral.”DESPITE HER Haifa origins, Ron-Feder-Amit maintains she is “a very deep-rooted Jerusalemite.”“I love Jerusalem and I feel blessed to be able to live in this city. I think I got that from my father. The Jews longed to return to Jerusalem for 2,000 years; that is something very deep. I often think about that when I am driving back to Jerusalem.”The latter is a frequent occurrence as, when she is not spinning out another book, the writer spends much of her time traveling around the country to talk to schoolchildren of all ages. Not only an enjoyable experience, it is a good way of keeping tabs on her readership, and keeping pace with what the kids of today are into. “I meet my raw material and also the target audience of my books,” she notes. “I am very interested in what the kids say and think, and in the questions they raise.”This also informs her output. “What I wrote 20 or 30 years ago is different from what I write about today.Children today have all sorts of interests that weren’t around when I was younger, and that’s fine.”Ron-Feder-Amit has said she doesn’t know exactly how many books she has produced to date, but it is in the region of 400. That is a quite gargantuan body of work – which surely must take its toll. “Yes, I do get a bit frazzled from writing so much,” she concedes, “but I take breaks when I write for television or for the cinema. Writing scripts is very different, and I find that refreshing.” A new series called Lehitbager (Growing Up) started a run on Channel 10 just over a week ago.She also takes complete breaks from her creative endeavors. “I go abroad a couple of times a year, to the Far East and other places. I’ve visited India nine times and I never wrote a word there, but I find India very inspiring.”Does she take a laptop with her? “No computer, and I don’t even take a notebook with me; I don’t need to jot things down. If I come across something interesting or inspiring, I remember it, and get it down when I get back home.”Producing books at such a frenetic pace, presumably, obviates the problem of writer’s block.Ron-Feder-Amit says she is not entirely immune to that professional malady, but manages to overcome it.“Sometimes I feel run-down and tired of writing, but suddenly, the path ahead clears and the words come rushing out again. There are books that are more challenging, and with some books it feels like the first book I have ever written. I don’t generally feel weary of writing.”WHILE MANY of her books are about kids enjoying kids’ adventures, there is also a strong educational side to her oeuvre, and she has frequently addressed painful subjects. One book in her “Time Tunnel” series, for example, was based on the 1974 Palestinian terrorist attack on a school in Ma’alot. That subject matter requires a steady and sensitive hand on the tiller. “I have written about the Holocaust, too,” notes Ron-Feder-Amit. “That necessitates even more subtlety and delicacy.”So, how does she go about conveying such horrors to young children, who cannot possibly grasp the enormity of the violence and tragedy? For that, the author was able to call on some professional experience. “I was on the management of Yad Vashem for many years, and I understood that not allowing children under the age of 10 to visit the new museum was a wise move. Small children are incapable of accommodating or absorbing such things.”Attempting to do so can produce highly undesirable results. “I was in Hiroshima and I saw children aged eight or nine at the museum [which commemorates the dropping of the atom bomb on the city in the final stages of World War II], making fun of the things there.They weren’t to blame; they simply couldn’t take it in.They were too young.”That Japanese experience left its mark on Ron-Feder- Amit’s approach to child-sensitive areas. “I decided there were things I wouldn’t introduce to my “Time Tunnel” book series; I don’t put in descriptions of gas chambers and such. I went in the direction of things like the partisans, Kristallnacht and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, without getting into descriptions of concentration camps.“I have never received responses from children or their parents that my accounts of the Holocaust or the Ma’alot attack were too harsh. I try my best to be sensitive to what children of this age are capable of taking in.”In addition to meeting schoolchildren on a regular basis, Ron-Feder-Amit has had plenty of firsthand experience with junior members of society. At the age of 24, as a newlywed and before she had any children of her own, she contacted the welfare authorities and asked how she could become a foster mother. She and her first husband had just moved from a small apartment in Ramot Eshkol to a much more spacious abode in Talpiot. Shortly after that initial application officials came round to the writer’s home, checked out the surroundings and decided that, based on the room they had at their disposal, the young couple could take in no fewer than 15 foster children.Ron-Feder-Amit wasn’t fazed by the generous offer, but did mention the fact that the house only had one toilet. “The man said that if we only had one toilet, we could have 10 children,” she recounts. “I must have been a bit crazy; I was 24 years old, and didn’t have any maternal experience. That wouldn’t happen today.”Over a period of several months she and her husband took in 10 children between the ages of three and nine, caring for them for a number of years. Naturally, the sudden influx of children and the expansive familial dynamics provided the budding writer with plenty of ideas for her books. Her first child – she has three of her own – was born into the already heavily populated family nest, and the foster children eventually all went their separate ways.Ron-Feder-Amit has come a long way since her first attempts at producing worthy literary works.Thankfully, she no longer has to keep her writing secret.