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Every novel comes from a personal place, yet Moon Path is perhaps an exception in sheer depth, if not in essence. During the entire course of the book’s writing, my family and I devoted ourselves to helping a very special woman in her daily battle with Metastic Melanoma, which had spread over the years from a small mole on her thigh to her brain. Despite this, shortly before I finished Moon Path, Michal Ben-Ari Greenberg—my wife of 20 years, mother of my children, my best friend, and the most strong-willed soul I’ve ever known—lost her struggle. I was with her at the end. She was as valiant, stoic, and beautiful in death as she was in life.
I owe heartfelt thanks to many people who helped me bring Moon Path into the world. First and foremost is Michal, who’s patient transcription of semi-legible handwritten testimonies retrieved from the murky depths of the Hagana archives in Tel Aviv gave me a firsthand feel for the real people who played a role in the Northern Plan. Second is my amazing and indefatigable son, Segev, who’s depth of insight far exceeds his 17 years. At every juncture of Moon Path, even in the darkest hours of Michal’s illness, he was there to offer ideas, patient encouragement, and sometimes just a sympathetic ear. I could not have done it—the book or the caregiving—without him.
I’d also like to thank my surrogate alpha-readers, who stepped in to take Michal’s place after her death: Jeremy and Belinda Gerber, Jon Kohn, my mother Ronnie Greenberg, and my unstoppable mother-in-law Einat Benari. And of course, my solid core of beta-readers deserves my recognition and eternal gratitude: Robin and Jay Epstein, Amy Ariel, Daniel and Nomi Sherman, and all the rest. Finally, I owe sincere thanks to my editor, Dave Lane (aka Lane Diamond), whose relentless and patient persecution of my grammatical and editorial transgressions—in this and my previous two books—would do justice to any Inquisitorial court.
I was entranced by the idea of The Northern Plan (or “Haifa-Tobruk,” or “Masada on the Carmel”—choose your moniker) from the moment I heard about it some decades ago. I vowed to use the plan as a backdrop for a novel one day. Once I started researching in-depth, however, I quickly learned that it was a plan never truly put into action, nor even wholly fleshed out. Despite this, as a Zionist, I see the Northern Plan as a psychological turning point in the creation of the Jewish national home. In the shadow of the unfolding horror that was the Holocaust, the Jews of Palestine came to the visceral realization that there was—quite literally—nowhere left to run. This ethos—perhaps conceived previously but certainly gestated during this short yet intensive period Haviv Canaan called “The Two Hundred Days of Dread”—continues, I believe, to shape Israel to this day.
I was surprised to find how little written material was available (in Hebrew or English) about Tel Aviv’s closeted homosexual community in Mandatory Palestine. Despite some outstanding insights drawn from journal sources and indirect references, I was forced to take broad literary license (Michal would have said “make it up”) regarding the lifestyles and attitudes of these pioneers of what has become a diverse and vibrant community, and a true source of national pride. LGBT historians, take note: there is work to be done!
Finally, being rather pedantic (Michal would have called it “anal retentive”) about even the most minute historical detail, I relied heavily on written sources in the creation of Moon Path, most of them in Hebrew. Along with an incredibly long list of articles and online sources, the following books were invaluable during the writing of Moon Path.
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1. Begin, Menahem. White Nights: The Story of a Prisoner in Russia. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.
2. Canaan, Haviv. Two Hundred Days of Dread. Tel Aviv, Israel: Mol-Art Press, 1974.
3. Wasserstein, Bernard. On the Eve: The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War. London: Profile Books, 2012.
4. Dagan, Shaul. The Northern Plan. Tel Aviv, Israel: Ministry of Defense, 1994.
5. Ratner, Yochanan. My Life and Me. Tel Aviv, Israel: Schoken Publishing, 1978.
6. Elam, Yigal. Hagana: The Zionist Way to Power. Tel Aviv, Israel: Zmora, Bitan, Modan – Publishers, 1979.
7. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.
8. Sumakai Fink, Amir and Press, Jacob. Independence Park, The Lives of Gay Men in Israel. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999.
Steven Greenberg
Kadima, Israel
May 2019
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