Eli Zuzovsky’s novel, ‘Mazeltov’ – a bumpy trip to queer adulthood

The bar or bat mitzvah is the coming-of-age ritual in Judaism, where 13-year-old boys or girls are now accountable for who they are and their actions, not their parents. Author Eli Zuzovsky has expanded this definition and applied it to queer people in his scathing and audacious debut novel, “Mazeltov.”

Our hero, Adam Weizmann, is less concerned about learning and reciting Hebrew and worried more about his developing sexuality. He’s also a precocious, lonely, aspiring actor dealing with stage fright, as he prepares to star in an upcoming school play, having been goaded by his flamboyant theater instructor, Vee. As Zuzovsky will reveal, all these and other factors will compel anxious, self-doubting Adam to define his identity vis-à-vis his own costly version of manhood.

It’s Tel Aviv 2009 and Operation Cast Lead, or the first Gaza War, is occurring, reflecting the escalating tensions between Israel and Hamas, a three-month skirmish which will claim 1400 Palestinian lives. While the country’s foundations are being shook, so is Adam’s uncertain future as he prepares, struggling with lust and shame, to come out to himself and his family. His entire world, including his relatives and the country, is in a mess.

His journey isn’t presented linearly or consistently, but in a kaleidoscopic fashion with time blurring from past memories, then jumping into the future as Adam later prepares to leave mandatory military service. The chaotic bar mitzvah is the central event and we experience it not only through Adam and his interior monologues, but through the voices of his friends and family, with each chapter giving us a particular characterization with their own varying viewpoints, conveying biographical details about themselves and Adam.

Family faults
Adam’s father Yisha is a poor parental role model and mentally unstable. He confesses, “Your mom wanted you more than anything. Today I can admit I didn’t.” He’s an alcoholic who got fired from two law firms, then hospitalized for emotional breakdowns. He finds halakeh religion and in a bizarre scene, he gives Adam his first haircut alone in the desert on Mount Meron.

However, his faith, which has a desperate quality to it, doesn’t help Yishai get closer with Adam. In fact, he doesn’t attend Adam’s bar mitzvah, but goes on a solitary hike. In a confessional chapter, he says to himself, not Adam, “Somehow, sometime, I will make things right. I promise…Maybe one day you’ll understand; being a parent is the most terrific pain.”

His neurotic mother has great love for Adam, even though she’s more worried about hosting his bar mitzvah and making last-minute preparations than the impending war occurring outside the synagogue’s door. She gives a self-pitying speech at the bar mitzvah party, lamenting her weight gain and guilt over divorcing Adam’s father. She’s conservative but accepts Adam for who he is: “I’d be there for you, always have been, always will be, always, always, even if you rape and murder, which I hope you don’t.”

Adam loves his grandmother, Meme, even though she couldn’t cope with her son’s mental disintegration. She’s a shiksa, born in Salerno, having converted for her marriage, but still feels like an outsider. She’s not even sure standing outside that she will have the courage to go into the synagogue.

“She just can’t shake the feeling that if she tries to enter—which she won’t, not yet—the building won’t be able to contain her, will vomit her out, perhaps even explode, and she, as usual will be the one to blame.” She’s in the early stages of dementia, but clear-headed enough to call Adam’s rabbi a “motherfucking piece of crap” for telling him that homosexuals were stoned to death, according to the scriptures.

Friendly foibles
There’s Adam’s best (if only) friend, his classmate Abbie who suffers from crippling anxiety, but her listing all the reasons why they are true best friends, is priceless. She wants Adam to be her boyfriend, yet still pines for him even after she realizes he’s gay, despite her mother’s cruel warning, “You’re desperately in love with a boy who’ll never love you back.”

At one point, she writes in a letter to Adam, “Remember how you told me I was the happiest person you’d ever met? I didn’t respond back then, you must’ve thought I was too focused on my ice cream, which I absolutely was, but the truth is that I’m incredibly unhappy. You’d be amazed.”

Other intriguing side characters include Ben, Adam’s cousin, who’s a member of the Israeli Defense Forces. Gay Palestinian poet Khalil works at Adam’s party as a caterer, and they will meet again in a bar years later. Khalil discovers and claims his own power, suggesting an alternative creative way to view the world, which will inspire Adam. With the war and Khalil, Zuzovsky introduces a political element implying as an adult you can’t avoid the Palestinian conflict from impacting your life, directly or indirectly.

Hilarious chapters include Adam’s first visit to a gay bar, then a stream-of-consciousness review of when he first had sex with another man. Overall, the novel lacks coherence in that it reads like a series of interconnecting short stories that don’t quite gel into a single entire narrative.

Despite all the neurosis surrounding him, his childhood traumas, and social isolation, we come to admire Adam as probably the most grounded person in the book even with his agita about being gay. It’s as if his bar mitzvah is a jigsaw puzzle and he’s trying to figure out how to put all the interlocking pieces together to form the adult Adam.

All these competing fragmented voices giving us clues as to who Adam is are presented to us, but the reader will wish that instead of all these multiple perspectives, we heard more from Adam himself, especially about him discovering and dealing with his sexuality. Yet there’s a poignancy, open heartedness, and insightfulness coupled with scorching wit here that triumphs over the novel’s diffuse structure.

Even though no issues are resolved and his life will be complicated, the bar mitzvah assures him with all the messiness of his family, the brokenness of the world and the complexity of his evolving identity, all will be fine, that his new life is finally beginning, alluding to the quote from Leonard Cohen, “There is a crack, a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.”

‘Mazeltov: a novel’ by Eli Zuzovsky, Henry Holt and Company, $26.99
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