The Extra

A.B. Yehoshua has written a novel that through the story of Noga, a woman who has returned to Israel from abroad illustrates the conflict between religious and secular Jews and with Arabs living in Jerusalem.  Yehoshua is one of the Israeli writers who is thinks Judaism cannot survive without Israel.  He sees Israel's future impossible as it is.  Jews are the uninvited guests who cannot leave because they are also among the hosts of the party.

Noga, a harpist, who grew up in the Jerusalem apartment she has come back to watch over, left when as a professional musician she could not find work in an Israeli orchestra.  She has come back to help her brother Honi with an experiment with their mother.  After a long very close marriage, her father has passed away.  Honi wants to move his mother out of the family apartment in a neighborhood section of Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, where he now lives with his wife and children.  His mother is not sure she is ready for assisted living.  She proposes an experiment that will bring Noga back from the Netherlands to live in the rent controlled apartment while she tries out assisted living.

Noga agrees to the experiment for three months.  Leaving her position in the orchestra, they promise to wait to play Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp until she returns.  She leaves behind her harp and does not arrange for a substitute which means she will not practice her instrument for three months.  Her brother arranges for her to be an extra in some television projects that are in production while she is in Israel.  This is to keep her busy and earn some money.  Now that she is back in Israel she is open to conversations about the experiment and also her personal life.  She is divorced and has no children.  Why people want to know doesn't she have any children?  Is it because she cannot?  No she tells people she is divorced because she did not want children.  Her music is her life.

Slowly the plot advances.  More and more information is released helping the reader understand Noga and her feelings.  Also we see her interactions with her mother and brother as they try to understand the woman who did not want children of her own.  At one point her mother,  who thinks that having a child is the answer to everything, says,  “Listen to what a wise woman has to say to a beloved daughter, hear me out and don’t interrupt. Give him that child, give it to him, and that way something real from you will stay in the world, not just musical notes that vanish into thin air. Make an effort, then go back to your music. Give birth to a child, and I will help him raise it.”

Noga has many interactions that bring her touch with children.   In her apartment building two Haredi children from downstairs break into her apartment to watch TV forbidden to them in their own home. An encounter with her ex-husband, who has remarried and has two children.  In her work as an extra she is apart of a greater story but not really a lead character in the moving the plot of those programs forward.   Always on the side or in the background.  Noga is trying to redefine her life and figure out who she really wants to be.


This is a story of every woman's dilemma, balancing children and work, family and career.  Also it is a story of balancing elderly parents and how much the children should be involved as caregivers and how long the parents can remain independent.   The reader and the family are all watching and wondering how the experiment will resolve itself.  it is quite a puzzling story, that the reader must follow closely as it develops to a slow crescendo.