Leavitt, June Oppenheimer 1950-

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Leavitt, June Oppenheimer 1950-

PERSONAL:

Born June 6, 1950, in New York, NY; immigrated to Israel, 1979; daughter of Jerome (a seller of jewelry) and Claire (a homemaker) Oppenheimer; married Frank Leavitt (a university lecturer), December, 1979; children: Shmuel, Esther, Joshua, Miriam Hadar. Education: University of Wisconsin, B.A., 1974; Ben Gurion University of the Negev, M.A., 2005, doctoral study, 2006. Politics: "Hate politics, though many consider me a right-wing settler." Religion: Jewish. Hobbies and other interests: Yoga, meditation.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Israel. Agent—Neil Amdur, 135 Spring St., Harrington Park, NJ 07640.

CAREER:

Private teacher and freelance writer, 1989—. University lecturer in Beer Sheba, Israel, 2000-04.

MEMBER:

American Academy of Religion.

WRITINGS:

The Flight to Seven Swan Bay (novel), Feldheim Publishers (New York, NY), 1985.

Vivre à Hebron (memoir), Robert Laffont (Paris, France), 1995.

Cocav Nophel (novel; title means "Falling Star"), Aviv (Israel), 2000.

Storm of Terror: A Hebron Mother's Diary (memoir), Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 2002.

Esoteric Symbols: The Tarot in Yeats, Eliot, and Kafka, University Press of American (Lanham, MD), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including U.S. News & World Report, New York Times, Notes and Queries, International Herald Tribune, and Seventeen.

SIDELIGHTS:

June Oppenheimer Leavitt told CA: "Though it was always my dream to become a writer, I never dreamed that my diary, in which I poured out my personal pain, would be published. I was writing my first novel for adults (I had a novel for young adults already published) when I found myself trapped within the harsh political realities of the Middle East, which robbed me of my muse. I took to writing a diary to explain why I couldn't write my novel, describing the unsettling events going on around me that seeped into my life.

"When Hebron hit the news in 1994, after our family doctor Baruch Goldstein massacred twenty-nine Arabs in prayer, Neil Amdur, my brother-in-law at the New York Times, asked me to write a piece. I confessed to him that I was keeping a diary and in it had written all I could about Dr. Goldstein. He asked me to send him a few pages. Weeding out the overly personal segments, and thinking nothing would come of it, I sent him eight pages.

"Within a few weeks, the U.S. News & World Report decided to publish these pages as a feature article. On the basis of these excerpts, my entire diary was bought by a large international publisher based in Paris. The diary came out in French, then German, but the English rights were never sold.

"In the meantime I finished my novel, sold it to the same international publisher in Paris, who sold the Hebrew rights. The English rights again were never sold, to my great disappointment.

"When the second Intifada swept through Israel, Neil Amdur asked me if I was still keeping a diary. I confessed 'yes' once again. The result was Storm of Terror: A Hebron Mother's Diary.

"Since then I have been trying to break out of the memoir genre, particularly memoirs that are so politically charged. I have gotten into scholarly writing, short story writing, and have even begun a screenplay.

"The moral of my story is that you have to write because you love to write, because you need to write, because that was one of the things you were born to do. The consequences of your writing—your successes, your failures—are not really in your hands."