Gila Arnold - a chat about personality, subtlety, and the dramatic triumph of the mundane
Dream On, out last week in the US, is the breath of fresh air we’re all ready for. While Gila Arnolds’s fiction is easy and fun, it maintains a seriousness of meaningful character development that makes for a delightful read.
Gila grew up in Queens, NY, reading Lousia May Alcott and Little Women. She later moved to Ramat Beit Shemesh, where, she says, “My Aliya jumpstarted my writing career.” Gila is a long-time Mishpacha fiction writer and columnist. In addition to Dream On, she published It’s a Learning Curve in 2018.
Congratulations on publishing Dream On! It's not your first time anymore, you're a veteran. What's it like to be releasing a second book?
Wonderful and exciting, but in a way, it's kind of like when you have your second baby: not as exhilarating as the first, but also a lot less painful. When my first book came out, I felt this major thrill - this had been a dream of mine since I was a little girl, and here I was, holding a book with my name on it! Now I'd already crossed that one off my bucket list. But truthfully, since this started as a serial, the real excitement was when I finished that last chapter and sent it in to Mishpacha.
Given your speech therapy background, It’s a Learning Curve’s setting was probably obvious. What drew you to set Dream On in a seminary?
Seminary was a seminal year in my life, as it is for so many other girls. It’s just one year but it has an oversized impact on so many lives. I felt it deserved to be explored, and not just from the students’ perspective.
The truth is, the “Year in Israel” setting very much surrounds me. My husband teaches in a yeshiva for American bochurim, and I have many friends here in Ramat Beit Shemesh who teach in seminaries. I felt like I had an inner view of this world, which made it easier to write about.
The seminary bubble is so unique. Do you think Dream On’s characters would have developed this way had it taken place in another context?
Probably not. Every person or character has built-in flaws, and something in their lives will rub up against them to bring out those flaws. So Tammy’s boundary issue would have come out at some point in her life, even if she wasn't in a seminary. But had she still been working in a real estate office (which she did before becoming an eim bayit) it might have taken years until her boundary issues came out, and definitely not to the same extent. At the same time, she wouldn't have been Tammy, she wouldn't have discovered all of her kochos and she wouldn't have grown to the same extent.
I think the person most impacted and influenced by the seminary bubble is Chava, who’s been in it for so many years. So much of her character - that purity and sincerity, the idealism that could be a little bit too much, the earnestness that goes a little too far and grates on her daughter - so much of that comes from living in a seminary world, from giving this over to her students day after day and breathing it, living it, teaching it, and thinking about it all the time. I think that aspect of her personality would not have developed to such an extent had she been in a different setting.
ZeeZee and Tammy’s conflicts are very modern and Gen-Z, while Chava faces challenges unique to her middle-aged stage of life. What do you think this juxtaposition does for the story?
It was very intentional to feature different characters from different life stages in this book. I was nervous that setting a story in a seminary might make readers think it was a story for teenagers. In fact, after one of the early chapters, the editors changed the font of the chapter subheadings because it had a bit too much of a teenager-ish vibe.) But this book is very much a book for all ages and stages; one of the things I enjoy is taking an experience and exploring it from a large variety of perspectives.
In particular, I felt that Chava’s story is not told so much. We tend to see the seminary experience from the eyes of the 18-year-olds, I wanted to show the experience not only from the student's perspective but also from the teacher's perspective, especially from someone at the other end of the life cycle who is nearing retirement. Chava's story, a 50-something-year-old teaching in a very Gen-Z setting, is a challenge that I think many older teachers face.
One of the big topics that Dream On is exploring is people in leadership positions and boundaries. What led you to get interested in this topic and write about it?
Actually, I don’t generally decide to write about an issue; I write about people. I decided to set it in a seminary and then I created characters. And once I created Tammy as the Eim Bayit, once I figured out that this is her personality and this is the position that she’s in, it was so obvious that she was going to have boundary issues.
I was in touch with some Eim Bayits when researching the book, and the feedback I got afterward was very interesting. I heard back from some of them, “You’re giving me PTSD!” Even for people who don't have boundary issues per se, it comes up all the time when in that position. It’s a very real issue.
Both of your books are fun and easy reads, which can be attributed to their “everyday”ness. The challenges and scenes are so regular, with no extreme or exotic scenarios or “problems”. Did that present an extra challenge for you in keeping the plot moving?
The plot can sometimes get me stuck because I think, okay, I know who this character is, I know what her faults are, I know where she wants to go. So what should happen now to make her get there? But, as you point out, I'm not going to suddenly have a car accident or an earthquake or terrorists come and attack you. That's not my style.
I believe that there's so much drama in our everyday life. We don’t need to go bungee jumping to get our thrills; in fact, often just by sitting and thinking, you can find all the excitement you need, because there’s so much drama going on inside our heads! So my plots are more a derivative of digging deep inside a person's inner world. In fact, I get the most feedback about my stories of ordinary women not doing anything great in particular, just being themselves. People say, “Wow, that's exactly me”. Which I love, because we're all struggling, but we're all superheroes in our own ways.
It’s amazing how you have this strong character development holding the whole story and giving it the flow, but it's so subtle and relatable, not preachy. How do you balance that so it doesn't come across as an agenda?
It's funny, when I look at the first stories I wrote, back when I was in high school, they’re embarrassingly preachy. Like, I know best, nobody else understands what I do. When I started writing professionally, one of the first lessons I learned from Bassy Gruen, editor at Family First, was subtlety. Once I started experimenting with the technique, I loved it. You don't have to hit the reader over the head and say what the moral is. Just by using that perfect line or word at the end that turns everything around, you get the message across - and so subtly that it draws the reader in and makes them an active participant in the story. They feel like they're in on a secret, like they chapped - Oh wow, Tammy is acting this way because she has an issue she doesn't realize. It bothers me when I'm the reader and something is spelled out too much. I feel like I’m being talked down to. Writing with subtlety gets people to think, draw lessons, and learn.
Women are in so many relationships in their lives. In both of your books you chose to highlight the coworker relationship. What is unique about the coworker relationship that brings such steep highs and lows?
I actually hadn’t thought about that until you pointed it out! I don't think there's anything particularly unique about the coworker relationship, but there's definitely something about the frum working woman herself that brings out strong emotions, conflicting feelings, and guilt. I know it as a working mother myself, and I think other people feel it. And when you’re bringing all these emotions with you to the workplace, it makes sense that you’ll rub up against your coworker, who’s dealing with all of her issues. You see it in A Learning Curve with Aviva, and in Dream On, a big part of Tammy’s story was how her job affected her relationship with her husband and how much one was pitted against the other.
I noticed something interesting present in both of your novels. Each character’s struggles are often represented by another person - Aviva vs. Yael, Chava vs. Tammy, etc. Yet, we can relate to and root for all of them. What do you think it takes for readers to be able to root for a character?
You have to get to their point of humanity, to a place where you can identify with them. When I'm creating a character, I need to find that nekudah where they are me in order for me to get into their heads. I need to say, ‘Oh, right, in that circumstance, I would act that way.’ Not that my characters are just like me - not at all! But when we can relate to a character on a certain level, we're going to feel like we can see ourselves in that situation and root for them.
Of all the characters, ZeeZee was the one who was most in danger of becoming a little bit one-dimensional. First of all, she's very different from me. And second of all, she started as a little bit of a stereotype, that kooky seminary girl doing all these zany things. Interestingly, I found her point of humanity in creating Chana Malka, even though she was really there for comic relief. That's where we start seeing ZeeZee’s insecurities; this is the girl she's been pitted against all her life. I think that's where she started becoming a human to me.
A lot of writers describe how their characters are writing their own stories. What part of Dream On was the biggest surprise for you?
Tammy's boundary issues took on a life of their own. It was interesting because I personally related to her the most. I got some pretty vehement feedback from readers saying, ‘How could she! She doesn't belong in a seminary!’ I was so taken aback; I felt like saying, “Don't you realize she's such a goodhearted person, that she means so well? Why are you picking on poor Tammy?” It was only later, when I was rereading the manuscript after a break of several months, to prepare it for the book, that I realized, “Wow, she really does have boundary issues!” At the time, I was so in her head, in her way of thinking and perceiving the situation, that I didn't step back enough to realize how dysfunctional this was.
In contrast to the “everyday” genre of your novels, your short stories have touched on fantastical, humor, etc. What has your experience been experimenting with different styles?
My very first story that was published was a humorous story, published in 2008 in Mishpacha. I then developed somewhat of a niche for humor stories, which was actually the biggest joke of all because anyone who knows me in real life knows that I’m not a funny person! Yet this humorous side of me was suddenly coming out. It was like releasing this inner comedian that I never knew I had. I think that's the brilliance and power of fiction. You can explore different personality types and genres and discover things about yourself along the journey!
Looking at the transition between the settings of your two novels, from an in-town American small business to an American Israeli seminary staff, your own transition peeks through. How did making Aliya affect you as a writer?
I was living in Israel when I wrote both novels, and I’d definitely say my Aliya jump-started my writing career. From when I was a little kid, it was always my dream to become an author. But back in the days when I went to college, nobody considered writing a serious career option. So I became a speech therapist. Aliya was also a dream of mine. Yet I remember one of my rebbeim in seminary asking us at the end of the year, ‘How many of you want to make Aliya?’ Almost everybody raised their hands. And then he said, ‘I can tell you right now, maybe two of you will make it here.’ I don’t think he was trying to depress us; he wanted to give over the message that fulfilling a dream takes hard work. When he said that, I said to myself, well, then, it's definitely not going to be me. I wasn’t the break-the-mold, persist-against-all-odds type. Yet somehow, incredibly, eleven years and four kids later, I found myself here, living the dream. A lot of the credit goes to my husband. And to Nefesh b’Nefesh, which made the odds of making aliyah much higher than back in my seminary days. Still, it was one of the hardest things I've ever done.
When I came here, I felt this sudden expansiveness, like I was now able to accomplish things I’d never thought I could. That year, I saw an ad for what was then the Jerusalem Conference for Women Writers. Leah Kotkes was running it, and in one of her workshops, she challenged us to write a story or essay and offered to critique it. So I went home, wrote a story, and sent it to her. She immediately wrote back, “You have to get this published!” But she didn’t stop there; she connected me with Mishpacha and checked up to make sure I’d sent it. B”H they accepted it, and that was the launch of my writing career.
So though I was living here all along, your observation that I transitioned from an American to an Israeli setting in my books is accurate. My earlier writing was much more American-based because my mindset was still there. I still felt like I knew the American scene much more than the Israeli one. At this point, I've been here for 15 years already, and if I had to write about an American community right now, I’d have to do research first.
There's a lot of Israeli-translated fiction, it often comes across to the American reader as a completely different society that’s being discussed. But the American-Israeli community has a lot more in common with the average American reader.
I haven't started thinking about my next serial yet, but I would love to write another story set in an American-Israeli community. Dream On was in-between, the seminary world of Americans coming here. But I think that the American-Israeli community, such as the one in Ramat Beit Shemesh and similar communities, deserves a book of its own. These communities are huge and growing, and I believe are very much the wave of the future. There's a lot to write about that.