Small Change (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

Because a very limited amount of Hendel’s work has been translated into English, a correspondingly low number of English-speaking critics have looked closely at her work. In Jeff Green’s Jerusalem Post review of her 1996 short story collection, An Innocent Breakfast, he notes that “Hendel has been writing fiction on a high level for several decades, and she would probably figure on every knowledgeable critic’s list of significant Israeli writers, though she is not as well known as she might be.” But critics are fairly universal in their appreciation of Hendel’s use of language and her willingness to approach difficult subjects such as familial strife and mental collapse.

Matt Nesvisky, writing a review in the Jerusalem Post of Six Israeli Novellas, in which Hendel’s “Small Change” appears, praises the author for having written one of the two best stories in the collection. Hendel’s novella, according to Nesvisky, “is a truly nightmarish story about an obsessive and obsessed Tel Aviv family.” Also lauding Hendel’s contribution to Six Israeli Novellas is Kirkus Reviews. Its reviewer refers to Hendel as “the standout contributor,” singling out her depiction of the generational tensions between Shlezi and Rutchen in the novella. Hendel has given readers a “precise portrayal of a tradition-burdened woman in thrall to her domineering father,” writes Nesvisky, who further admires her fine rendering of “the tensions at work in an ‘old world’ stubbornly resistant to change.”

Green indicates in his review that Hendel’s inability to seize “the public imagination” and secure a more high-profile position among contemporary authors has more to do with the grim subject matter she usually tackles than with her skills as a writer. Hendel’s stories in An Innocent Breakfast cover such subjects as loneliness, mental instability, and the tensions arising between differing generations, which are similar to those in “Small Change.” Green goes on to give Hendel high marks for the sensitivity with which she explores these subjects. “She conveys deep but unsentimental empathy with their suffering,” he writes. “The stories develop slowly and without pyrotechnics, leaving one with the feeling that the effort invested in reading them has been well rewarded.”

Compare & Contrast

• 1980s: In an attempt to control an annual inflation rate of 131 percent in 1980, the Israeli government changes the country’s currency from the lira to the shekel. In 1985, the currency changes to the new Israeli shekel in an effort to further stabilize the nation’s economic growth.

  Today: Israel has recently experienced years of positive economic growth. Its per capita gross domestic product for 2000 is higher than that in some European Union countries, and inflation has been reduced to 0 percent.

• 1980s: Thanks to a peace treaty signed between Egypt and Israel, the two countries open their borders and exchange ambassadors in 1980. The treaty eliminates the threat of Israel’s primary Arab adversary, which possesses the largest Arab military capability. In contrast to the struggle and pain Rutchen experiences, Israel enjoys a brief moment of peace with one of its Arab neighbors.

  Today: The Palestinian intifada (Arabic for uprising) that began against Israel in late 1987 still threatens the security of both groups. Tensions between Arabs and Israelis have reached dangerous levels, and on both sides lives are lost nearly every week.