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The Same Embrace
The Same Embrace tells the powerful story of two young men struggling against a heritage of intolerance and silence.
Twins Jacob and Jonathan were inseparable while growing up in their second-generation-American Jewish family. As adults, though, they are almost hopelessly estranged -- Jacob is a gay activist in Boston, while Jonathan lives the strict, disciplined life of an Orthodox student at a yeshiva in Jerusalem.
In the shadow of a tragedy, Jacob travels to Israel in the hopes of finding common ground with his brother. But his twin's new assurance and faith force Jacob to reexamine his own sexual and religious identities, as well as his place in his complex and haunted family history. An ultimate confrontation between the brothers lays bare the shattering secrets of a legacy that began during the Holocaust.
Alternating between the present and Jacob's childhood memories, The Same Embrace moves gracefully from anger and alienation toward forgiveness and acceptance. A striking debut, this novel depicts a quintessentially American search for belonging.
Twins Jacob and Jonathan were inseparable while growing up in their second-generation-American Jewish family. As adults, though, they are almost hopelessly estranged -- Jacob is a gay activist in Boston, while Jonathan lives the strict, disciplined life of an Orthodox student at a yeshiva in Jerusalem.
In the shadow of a tragedy, Jacob travels to Israel in the hopes of finding common ground with his brother. But his twin's new assurance and faith force Jacob to reexamine his own sexual and religious identities, as well as his place in his complex and haunted family history. An ultimate confrontation between the brothers lays bare the shattering secrets of a legacy that began during the Holocaust.
Alternating between the present and Jacob's childhood memories, The Same Embrace moves gracefully from anger and alienation toward forgiveness and acceptance. A striking debut, this novel depicts a quintessentially American search for belonging.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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About the author
Michael Lowenthal
30 books38 followersMichael Lowenthal is the author of the novels Charity Girl (Houghton Mifflin, 2007), Avoidance (Graywolf Press, 2002) and The Same Embrace (Dutton, 1998). His short stories have appeared in Tin House, the Southern Review, the Kenyon Review, and Esquire.com, and have been widely anthologized, in such volumes as Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge (HarperCollins), Bestial Noise: The Tin House Fiction Reader (Bloomsbury), and Best New American Voices 2005 (Harcourt). Three of his stories have received "Special Mention" in Pushcart Prize anthologies. He has also written nonfiction for the New York Times Magazine, Boston Magazine, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Out, and many other publications.
The recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Wesleyan writers' conferences, the MacDowell Colony, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, Lowenthal is also the winner of the James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize. He teaches creative writing in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University.
Before becoming a full-time writer, Lowenthal worked as an editor for University Press of New England, where he founded the Hardscrabble Books imprint, publishing such authors as Chris Bohjalian, W.D. Wetherell, and Ernest Hebert. He studied English and comparative religion at Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in 1990 as class valedictorian.
Lowenthal lives in Boston, where he is an active former board member of the literary human rights organization PEN New England.
The recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Wesleyan writers' conferences, the MacDowell Colony, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, Lowenthal is also the winner of the James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize. He teaches creative writing in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University.
Before becoming a full-time writer, Lowenthal worked as an editor for University Press of New England, where he founded the Hardscrabble Books imprint, publishing such authors as Chris Bohjalian, W.D. Wetherell, and Ernest Hebert. He studied English and comparative religion at Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in 1990 as class valedictorian.
Lowenthal lives in Boston, where he is an active former board member of the literary human rights organization PEN New England.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 10, 2016
4.5 stars. This book really stirred my emotions. Lowenthal created a complex, dysfunctional family and discussed their travails with beauty and insight. I appreciated the time devoted to discussing different forms of Jewish practice. This book was simultaneously intimate and epic. It can be an emotionally punishing read but I loved it. If it had just a little bit more information about Jonathan's religious studies in Israel I would have given it five stars but this book is still really good. Go read it.
September 14, 2010
Michael Lowenthal's debut novel explores the comples relationship between two Jewish brothers, one straight, one gay, and their shared family history. An absorbing look at one man's experience of his Jewish heritage in a decidedly modern world. Ironically, the book feels slightly dated for its 80's atmosphere.
July 21, 2024
This is the second novel by Michael Lowenthal I have read and not liked, Avoidance being the first, and for similar reasons, though most of the reasons are unique to this novel. Here are some of the reasons I disliked it:
1. At barely 300 pages there just isn't room to encompass or explore the many themes (being gay, being Jewish, family relations, getting old (at 24?), dating a younger person, family history, Jewish history, Orthodox yeshivas, etc., etc., etc.) this novel explores or rather touches on. I couldn't help thinking that Mr. Lowenthal was attempting using an exploration of Gay-Orthodox Jewish relations to attract the praise that Lev Raphael had got for his 1990 story 'Dancing on Tisha B'Av' - the comparison between Jacob's boyfriend Danny dancing at disco and his brother Jonathan and other yeshiva students dancing mitzvah seemed like plagiarism of theme from 'Dancing on Tisha B'Av'.
2. One of the great 'reveal' moments of the novel is the story of a Jewish rabbi in 1941 throwing his sixteen year old son out their hiding place (although the novels actually tries eschew comparisons with Anne Frank it is a copy) onto the streets when he discovers him having sex with a boy. As no point in the story is the chance that an unknown boy in clothes covered with yellow stars and Jewish identity papers wandering the streets with no money and nowhere to go was sure to be in the hands of the police within hours at the most. Not only had the father condemned the son to death but he had done the same for himself and the rest of the family in hiding but those who were hiding him. The boy would have pressured, i.e. beaten and tortured unmercifully to reveal were and who hid him.
3. The novel is set in 1993 and there are a large number of specific events and things the big LGBT march on Washington, AIDS quilt, HIV/AIDS testing treatments, official 'Coming Out Days' all of which might have seemed like eternal verities when the novel was written but are fast disappearing into a black hole of historical footnotes. Even AIDS is no longer in the consciousness of young LGBT+ people. Nothing dates a novel like specifics, you have to be a really great writer, like Hemingway in 'For Whom the Bell Tolls', to set a novel amongst current events and write something worth reading nearly a hundred years later. Michael Lowenthal, although a good writer, is no Hemmingway.
4. My biggest problem with the novel is Jacob because all the issues explored relationship with his twin brother Jonathan, his family, his Jewishness, his gayness, never come together and are never viewed outside of himself. Indeed when issues should lead to challenges or conflict, like discovering that the rabbi who threw his son out to certain death in Shoah is a relative he knew and loved (I am being vague to avoid giving away the plot). You would imagine this revelation, as a gay man, would have least caused angst, but all it does is provide a reason to attend the opening of the Holocaust Museum in Washington.
Also although there is a great deal about Jacob learning about his twins Orthodox beliefs he never relates them to anything outside himself. Although Jacob has a number of radical dyke friends it never crosses his mind to explore, let alone question, the position of females in Orthodoxy. All that matters to him is his relationship with his brother or really his brother's relationship with him. Jacob never has to do anything, confront anything, reject or accept anything or one. He certainly doesn't have to understand anyone - nobody really exists except in terms of his needs or problems. Jacob, like Jeremy in Avoidance, is a monument to self centred egotism.
Finally I have huge problems with the way Lowenthal fails in his so-called exploration of his religious heritage to approach any aspect of it with a critical perspective. I am not Jewish so have restrained myself in a way I would not have done if the novel was written by a catholic exploring traditional catholicism via Opus Dei or The Society of St. Pope Pius X.
A truly bad novel and I do think I will read anything else by this author.
1. At barely 300 pages there just isn't room to encompass or explore the many themes (being gay, being Jewish, family relations, getting old (at 24?), dating a younger person, family history, Jewish history, Orthodox yeshivas, etc., etc., etc.) this novel explores or rather touches on. I couldn't help thinking that Mr. Lowenthal was attempting using an exploration of Gay-Orthodox Jewish relations to attract the praise that Lev Raphael had got for his 1990 story 'Dancing on Tisha B'Av' - the comparison between Jacob's boyfriend Danny dancing at disco and his brother Jonathan and other yeshiva students dancing mitzvah seemed like plagiarism of theme from 'Dancing on Tisha B'Av'.
2. One of the great 'reveal' moments of the novel is the story of a Jewish rabbi in 1941 throwing his sixteen year old son out their hiding place (although the novels actually tries eschew comparisons with Anne Frank it is a copy) onto the streets when he discovers him having sex with a boy. As no point in the story is the chance that an unknown boy in clothes covered with yellow stars and Jewish identity papers wandering the streets with no money and nowhere to go was sure to be in the hands of the police within hours at the most. Not only had the father condemned the son to death but he had done the same for himself and the rest of the family in hiding but those who were hiding him. The boy would have pressured, i.e. beaten and tortured unmercifully to reveal were and who hid him.
3. The novel is set in 1993 and there are a large number of specific events and things the big LGBT march on Washington, AIDS quilt, HIV/AIDS testing treatments, official 'Coming Out Days' all of which might have seemed like eternal verities when the novel was written but are fast disappearing into a black hole of historical footnotes. Even AIDS is no longer in the consciousness of young LGBT+ people. Nothing dates a novel like specifics, you have to be a really great writer, like Hemingway in 'For Whom the Bell Tolls', to set a novel amongst current events and write something worth reading nearly a hundred years later. Michael Lowenthal, although a good writer, is no Hemmingway.
4. My biggest problem with the novel is Jacob because all the issues explored relationship with his twin brother Jonathan, his family, his Jewishness, his gayness, never come together and are never viewed outside of himself. Indeed when issues should lead to challenges or conflict, like discovering that the rabbi who threw his son out to certain death in Shoah is a relative he knew and loved (I am being vague to avoid giving away the plot). You would imagine this revelation, as a gay man, would have least caused angst, but all it does is provide a reason to attend the opening of the Holocaust Museum in Washington.
Also although there is a great deal about Jacob learning about his twins Orthodox beliefs he never relates them to anything outside himself. Although Jacob has a number of radical dyke friends it never crosses his mind to explore, let alone question, the position of females in Orthodoxy. All that matters to him is his relationship with his brother or really his brother's relationship with him. Jacob never has to do anything, confront anything, reject or accept anything or one. He certainly doesn't have to understand anyone - nobody really exists except in terms of his needs or problems. Jacob, like Jeremy in Avoidance, is a monument to self centred egotism.
Finally I have huge problems with the way Lowenthal fails in his so-called exploration of his religious heritage to approach any aspect of it with a critical perspective. I am not Jewish so have restrained myself in a way I would not have done if the novel was written by a catholic exploring traditional catholicism via Opus Dei or The Society of St. Pope Pius X.
A truly bad novel and I do think I will read anything else by this author.
February 27, 2023
Brilliant, and deeply moving
July 7, 2022
Yet again, Michael Lowenthal has created a powerful and gripping book. And the fact that he wrote this in his 20's is so much more impressive because he tackles some profound themes and subject matter in the most honest and authentic manner. It is that honest authenticity that brings everything in this book to life. And Aunt Ingrid's childhood story will forever stick with me--I literally gasped when I read that part, and, to this moment, I am still thinking about it. Having only recently discovered Lowenthal's works, I am already a huge fan of the way he handles tough subjects in the most humane way; refusing to cover up the shades of gray that exist in all of us because it is in those shades (the areas between right and wrong, good and evil) that the truth of who we are resides. And if we ever truly want to understand the human condition, or even ourselves, we must also understand those shades.
July 21, 2011
there's a shocking scene that kinda turn me off to the book.
December 17, 2010
Some interesting ideas, but ultimately a pretty forgettable novel.
July 1, 2011
Remember when there was this terrible book with crappy biblical allusions? OH YEAH ME TOO. JUST NAME THE OTHER TWIN ESAU AND DO IT FOR REALSIES.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews