See if you can keep up with the mind of Sheldon Greene.
His new novel, “The Seed Apple,” features a nuclear submarine fleet, a Holocaust survivor and a tribe of California desert Indians descended from King Solomon’s ancient mariners. He based it on the not-entirely-crackpot theory that Judeo-Christian wayfarers made it to the New World before Columbus.
Rest assured the 82-year-old San Francisco resident has done his research.
“I’m a policy wonk by nature,” says Greene, a lawyer by profession. “Anything in the world, in terms of knowledge, intrigues me and I start wrapping my head around it. I start with a seed, and then let the thing flower and grow.”
“The Seed Apple” is his fourth novel (he’s written seven) and part of a series featuring his protagonist, Holocaust survivor Mendel Traig. The book’s picaresque style reflects Greene’s hydra-headed interests in, well, everything.
“I look at history as an abstraction,” he says. “It’s a distortion of reality. It may be a perfect fragment but that fragment only represents a piece of the mosaic.”
When not writing, Greene still practices law and is a green-energy developer. When it’s time to play, he sails, hits the tennis court, practices yoga and sings with the Oakland Symphony Chorus, among other things.
Retirement is out of the question.
Greene’s story is not unlike many Jews of the 20th century. His grandparents came to America from Eastern Europe, eventually settling in a steel town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He describes his family as “small-town Jews”; he was the first in the family to go to college.
Initially, he intended to study medicine. But while majoring in speech at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, his thinking shifted. “I got turned on to the law,” he recalls. “I loved this idea of beating up on a subject, researching it like crazy, and expressing yourself.”
Because he admired the crusading lawyer Clarence Darrow — famed for his role as defense attorney in the famous Scopes monkey trial — Greene hoped to use law “in the way David slew Goliath. I always felt social justice and improving society through the law was a worthwhile goal.”
Once he passed the bar, Greene became Warden of Insurance for the state of Ohio, challenging unfairness and inefficiencies in the health care system long before it was fashionable.
He later moved west, serving as general counsel to California Rural Legal Assistance, which provides legal services to the poor. He filed suit to block cuts in health-assistance to the working poor under then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, and took on the U. S. Department of Labor in order to protect farmworkers.
After seven years, Greene opened his own law firm specializing in representing credit unions. His interest in wind energy (again, long before it became fashionable) led to his role as an investor, executive and board member with a leading wind-turbine company.
The small-town Jewish boy also grew up with a love of Israel and Zionism. He spent time living on a kibbutz in Israel near the Sea of Galilee, studying Hebrew at a Jerusalem ulpan, and working on an archaeological dig in the Negev Desert.
Greene’s attachment to Israel led him to co-found the New Israel Fund several decades ago. The organization is committed to expanding human rights and religious pluralism in Israel, though it has been criticized as too accommodating of the Palestinian perspective.
Proud of his Jewish heritage, Greene says he has cut ties to organized religion and does not observe Jewish holidays or rituals. “I decided God was life itself,” he says. “But the history, culture and contributions Jews have made in literally every walk of life is something to be proud of and celebrate.”
Though his novel has been well reviewed, don’t look for Greene to show up at a nearby Barnes & Noble to do a book signing for “The Seed Apple.”
“I love to write,” he says, “but I write for the process. If people like it, I’m happy, but I have never been one of those people who has to get out and market it. It’s like a birth. I’m happy, and then I move on.”