October 11, 2011
When Lev Raphael published the controversial story collection Dancing on Tisha B’Av, he broke new ground in the publishing world. Never before had an America writer dealt, in one book, with the conflicts between homosexuality and traditional Judaism, linked the chilling mind diseases of anti-Semitism and homophobia, while also bearing witness not only to the legacy of Holocaust survivors but the suffering and conflicts of their children. In a book that won him international acclaim, Raphael opened the door to a new kind of American Jewish fiction.