Episode 66: Jon Bockian (Community Volunteer / Author)
Meet Jon Bockian! He's a longtime Watertown resident with a history of community involvement and an author. In this conversation we talk about being part of the PTA, Zoning Board, the group that started the arts center at the Arsenal property, a group that pushed for a Watertown Transportation Management Association, and being one of the first members of the Community Preservation Committee. Then we change topics to his new book What Was Forbidden, and the process of researching and writing a novel with philosophy, history, murder, romance, and mystery, and how he's surprising himself with the good reviews he's received as a first time author.
Released October 31st, 2025
(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)
Find out more about What Was Forbidden at whatwasforbidden.com
Book launch of the Mosesian Center for the Arts, November 2nd
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Transcript
Matt: 0:07
Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode, I sit down for a conversation with someone in Watertown to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This time I sat down for a conversation with Jon Bockian, who's a longtime Watertown resident, a community volunteer in various ways, and a new debut author. So the first half we talk about his Watertown involvement, and second half we talk about his new book. Before we hop into the conversation, quick reminder, I do have the Little Local Holiday Giveaway going on right now, where anyone who supports the podcast as a little local friend will have a chance to win something from the over $1,000 worth of gifts that I'm giving away from local businesses and organizations. So check out Little Local Conversations.com slash friend for more information on that. Now I'll let Jon introduce himself and then we'll get into the conversation.
Jon: 0:55
I'm John Bockian, and I’ve lived in Watertown for over 40 years, like probably about 45 years. And my wife and I did our obligatory stint in Somerville first and then came here. And it's been just a really great community for us. So I've been involved in community affairs and eventually had a solo law practice out of my home here for several years. And I'm now retired and I've written a book, a historical fiction, and I'm very excited about it.
Matt: 1:23
Nice. Cool. So we'll get to the book, because I know that's exciting for you. But first I always like to give listeners a little bit of insight into your connection with Watertown and your story here. So I mean you mentioned you've been here for decades, and you said you've been involved in the community here a little bit. What are some of the things you've been involved with in the community?
Jon: 1:42
Well, I guess the first thing that I got involved with was I was a practicing attorney. Oh actually before that, I mean I was a practicing attorney at this time also, but when my oldest kid, we have two daughters, went to the Hosmer Elementary School. I don't know what possessed me to do this, but I got involved in the PTA and I became co-president with Deb Peterson of the PTA for a year, and we would meet with the principal, and that was always interesting.
Matt: 2:10
Always something to talk about there.
Jon: 2:12
Yeah. So I guess that was my first involvement.
Matt: 2:14
Yeah.
Jon: 2:15
And my law practice was real estate law. So at a certain point there was an opening on the zoning board of appeals, and I applied to, you know, fill that position, and I did, and was on the board for was probably only a couple of years. And in truth, I found it very boring. But you know, it was a good thing to do. I mean, as someone who was newer to the community, it gave me some more insight into what was going on. And it was also interesting to me, the mindset that I perceived of the, many of the other members of the committee, not all of them, I guess, but which was that Watertown was sort of like a, I don't know, the stepchild around here, meaning that they felt like they couldn't expect or ask for what boards in, say, you know, Cambridge or Newton would be looking for. It was sort of like, well, you know, this is Watertown and that's about all we can expect, which I thought was really unfortunate. I mean, I understand, you know, there are market forces and it's probably true that there are certain things that a developer wouldn't want to pay for here or that they might pay for at a more, you know, prime location, whatever. But it just felt too bad to me that it was kind of giving up before trying.
Matt: 3:26
But you kind of moved on from that and you just settled back into your personal practice for a while.
Jon: 3:33
Yeah, I was working at a firm downtown, so commuting on the bus every day, you know, relatively long hours that attorneys have, and you know, trying to be home for supper with the kids and that kind of thing. And I don't know, I guess I had a long time of not being particularly involved in community affairs, but eventually did get my foot back in. The next thing that got me involved really deeply in community affairs was when the arsenal property here was being transferred from the U.S. Army from the, you know, with the testing lab, whatever it was. And back then there was a small nuclear generator. Actually, it wasn't a generator, it was just a.
Matt: 4:12
Reactor.
Jon: 4:13
Reactor, thank you. Yeah, a small nuclear reactor, just a small one.
Matt: 4:17
Yeah, just a little backyard reactor.
Jon: 4:19
Yeah, right. So anyway, so the property was being transferred to the town. A big part of the old arsenal had already been transferred before, and that became the Arsenal Mall and some housing. So this was the next phase to that. And there were a number of people in town who were really eager to see an art center on this property. And they had been trying to figure out where there could be an art center in Watertown and how it could get started. And so I got involved with them, and we were a group of people who were advocates for this to be part of the Arsenal development. Fortunately, the Arsenal Redevelopment Committee, the Arsenal Development Committee, the WADC, was very sympathetic to this. So when John Airasian was the chair of that, and there were, you know, a number of terrific members, and one of them was Roberta Miller, who had been a town counselor. At that time was no longer a town councilor, I think. She really liked the idea of having an art center there too. And she was very involved in the negotiations. Well, first the bidding process and as to what the town was looking for, and then the negotiations with the successful bidder. And part of what the town said they were looking for was to have as one of the amenities at the Arsenal property, an art center.
Jon: 5:37
So the developer who won the bidding process agreed to do that, well, agreed to dedicate a certain amount of space at the Arsenal project for an art center and donate a million dollars toward the art center. And I have to say at the time, I thought, oh, a million dollars, that's great. I didn't really understand that, this was back in the 19, late 1990s, how not far a million dollars would go. But anyway, I was involved. I was still practicing law as a real estate attorney. And so I volunteered my time to work on the legal contract, the lease, between the developer and the town. I mean, the town had its own attorney, but I was really sort of just pitching in pro bono to help. So that was a difficult negotiation. I'm sure that's not anything people are really interested in. But eventually it was resolved that the town would have a 99-year lease on building 321 at the Arsenal property and a million bucks to have an art center if it could be developed and the rest of the funds found.
Jon: 6:42
And again, John Airasian and Roberta Miller were really instrumental in raising money, particularly from Watertown Savings Bank and from Charlie Mosessian, who was still alive at the time, and he gave a very significant contribution. The bank gave a very significant contribution. And it was, I would say, really just enough to hire the architect and pay for the construction. So that was my involvement. I stayed on the board of the community organization that became a nonprofit corporation to operate the Arts Center, the Watertown Arts on the Charles, the formal name of it, WATC. So stayed on the board there for several years and continued my pro bono legal work on behalf of the center. And it was different from the rest of my legal work and really interesting. And it's just something that I'm just really very proud of that I was part of the team that made that happen. And it was a good team and we learned a lot, which means that we didn't know a lot when we were getting into it. But there are probably a number of other people. I know there are a number of other people I should mention, but
Matt: 7:53
There’s always, always a lot involved with the project like that. And they just celebrated their 25th anniversary, so.
Jon: 7:58
Yeah, whoda thunk it. I mean, it's just really wonderful that it exists. It's really a terrific place, and I'm, like I say, just really proud to be associated with it.
Matt: 8:09
Yeah. Nice. Well, thank you for your work on that. Anything else in Watertown you wanted to mention that you've been involved with?
Jon: 8:14
Well, yeah. Uh I say it that way because I feel like I became something of a gadfly in terms of, you know, a resident advocating for, either for or against certain things happening in town, particularly around real estate development. Because after the, I guess, recession of the early 2000s and at some point in there, the town began to attract more development, residential and commercial. A lot of residents, well, a significant number felt that they weren't sufficiently consulted in this process and felt that they should have a voice in what the developments, you know, looked like, how big they were, how dense the property would be, and so on. And, you know, today I can look back on that with the conversation about affordable housing in town and see that there was really a balancing of interests that maybe we didn't get perfectly right in terms of, you know, I think the successes of that resident advocacy did make it a bit harder for developers to develop in town. And particularly as a residential property, you know, that has a social cost. I mean, it's got a social benefit of community involvement and a social cost of, okay, well, it makes it a little harder to develop housing, and you know, the community needed more, still needs more housing, more particularly, you know, affordable housing.
Jon: 9:45
But at the time, I think that we were mostly concentrated on what the built environment in town would look like. So when the arsenal mall became sort of available for a different use and Boylston properties wanted to buy it and use it for what is now arsenal yards, they made a zoning proposal, a zoning amendment proposal to the town. My understanding was that the town, as we called it then, was pretty much supportive of what the developer wanted. I'm sure there were negotiations and there were probably things that I didn't realize the developer had, you know, proposed that even the town administration thought was, you know, a bridge too far. But the zoning that they proposed would have allowed even larger and more dense development of that property than was the final result. So a number of us in town, I'm thinking particularly of Barbara Ruskin, who was, I guess, the founder of Sustainable Watertown, and Joe Levendusky and Gary Shaw, who's a noted architect who lives in town, and a whole bunch of other people really got together to advocate for a less intense development. So there were some successes in that, and in other ways that, you know, what we were trying to change in the zoning proposal didn't happen. I think what finally resulted, the Arsenal Yards development, is a really nice development. Again, there are some aspects of it that I wish had been a little smaller, but I think it's all in all a good thing that that property and the stores and the housing and the offices are in town.
Jon: 11:26
So that was the next thing, and from there I went on to be involved in another project around transportation, because with the increase in development in town, the traffic congestion had become a problem. And it didn't seem as though there was a way that the town was trying to mitigate the traffic impacts other than by, you know, putting in some stoplights, maybe repaving some streets. I'm sure the folks who were in the administration at the time would disagree with me. They probably felt that they were doing what they could do. But, you know, to me and a bunch of other folks, it was clear that it wasn't really effectively dealing with the congestion that was being created. And the congestion by single-occupancy vehicles, just that there were a lot of people commuting within Watertown and through Watertown, and that public transit was really not providing a good enough alternative. And I think this was at a time when the MBTA was kind of falling apart. You know, the service on the bus lines in town was not dependable. And I'm not sure that it's entirely dependable today, but I think things are a bit better.
Jon: 12:42
And there was a lot of development on Pleasant Street, the so-called Pleasant Street corridor. And that either, I don't remember, but it either had, you know, no bus service or just an express bus that kind of passed through. And so again, Barbara Ruskin with Sustainable Watertown and Joe Levendusky. Well, I guess Barbara sort of suggested to Joe a platform that he could use in Sustainable Watertown. And Joe came up with the idea of the transit task force and recruited a bunch of people, including me, to be that transit task force. And so we were advocating for some kind of shuttle bus service within town or connecting town with the developing MBTA station over in Brighton and trying to find ways to reduce the single occupancy vehicle congestion in town. So one of the things that we did was to put on a forum, an educational forum, just about this concept called Transportation Management Associations, TMAs, which are something that existed in many other towns, and there's sort of a public-private partnership whereby there is local transit that connects with MBTA transit and kind of fills in some of the gaps. And so Aaron Dushku, who was on the town council at the time, was also part of that effort, and really the leading advocate on the council for addressing the traffic congestion. And Steve Owens, who's now a state rep, was also part of that.
Jon: 14:15
So we tried doing some educational work so more people would understand what a Transportation Management Association was and how it was a thing that we could have here. And eventually the town through the Department of Community Development and Planning did work with developers on Pleasant Street and on Arsenal Street. And just also a little shout out to Jon Hecht, who was the state rep at that time, who helped to bring people together, developers and city officials and community advocates to talk about what was needed and what could happen. And eventually a transportation management association was started in town. So from a little bit on the outside of that, I thought that the town could have done things so that the town would have some more leverage than it does within that. But like so many other things, you know, the one who's paying the piper calls the tune, and most of the money to operate in the shuttle buses was coming from the developers. So I like to think that the town struck what balance it could and did the best it could in negotiating the terms of how that was set up. And fortunately it's now in existence.
Jon: 15:28
And then COVID hit, and that group stopped meeting, and think we did not take up meeting on Zoom and whatever. And so I at least kind of dropped out of that organizing effort. And I guess the most recent thing that I did in community affairs was kind of to switch from the outside to the inside, which is to say I felt like I was getting tired of complaining about what was wrong. And I wanted to find a role in which I could feel like I was contributing more to making something good happen and not just reacting to something that I thought wasn't so great. And the residents of the town voted to adopt the Community Preservation Act in town. And so the town set up a community preservation committee. I applied to be on that and was recommended by the city manager as one of the four community members of that nine-member body. And so for six years till just very recently, I was on the community preservation committee. And the committee, I think, has already done a lot of good in town, and I think will continue to do a lot of good in terms of recommending funding for projects in affordable housing and in recreation and open space, and historic preservation in town. And there's a nice state match to local money that makes a bunch of stuff possible that would have been much harder for the town to do if it was just local money. And by the time that, say I was on there for about six years, somewhere in there I retired from my law practice. And I eventually decided that the time had come to retire from the community preservation committee, too. And so I stepped down from that.
Matt: 17:12
Gotcha. So you've been very involved in this community over the years.
Jon: 17:17
Well, it's been good to me. And I really liked living in Watertown and bringing up kids here. So I felt like it was a good thing to participate in town affairs.
Matt: 17:27
Yeah. Yeah. Well, so I know that's one side of you, but I know you're also here today to talk about your most recent project and a new turning of the page, if you will, in your life. Or is it a new turning of the page? So you've written a book, but where does writing come into your life? Have you been writing forever? Is this a new hobby? Like, how did this come about for you?
Jon: 17:47
It's a relatively new thing. I mean, I think like many readers, I as, you know, reading novels. I thought like, I would like to write a novel, wouldn't that be cool? But not in any, you know, didn't think about it in any serious way. I mean, bringing up kids, you know, having a job, doing all this other stuff in the community. It wasn't high on my list. At a certain point, probably I was in my 50s at that point, and the kids were getting older, were probably out of the house or almost out of the house by then, and I didn't find my law work entirely satisfying. So I took a couple of evening courses at Harvard Extension in short story writing. So that was kind of, you know, putting my toe in and getting some feel of what it was like to try to write a story with characters and some kind of plot.
Matt: 18:38
And do you remember what your first story was about?
Jon: 18:43
No. I do remember that I wrote a story that I liked about an architect who was kind of disaffected from his architectural work. I think probably I was projecting a lot from my own experience as an attorney into that character.
Matt: 19:01
Another A job there.
Jon: 19:02
Another A job in some downtown office with a, you know, partnership structure and all that that entails. But anyway, I didn't really hang in there and work at short story writing and keep taking courses and sort of set that aside. And then I guess I like to think of myself as a creative person, and I enjoy doing things that I think are creative. So I started taking art classes, and that was my creative outlet, doing drawing and sculpture and taking classes at, I guess, Brookline Adult Ed in the evening or at the Museum of Fine Arts, their adult ed program, and enjoyed that a lot. But again, when COVID times came, there wasn't the opportunity to go to classes. I'm sure there were online art courses that I could have been involved in, but you know, it's really.
Matt: 19:53
Not the same.
Jon: 19:54
Not the same. And if you've got a good teacher and they can come and look at what you're doing and give you some advice, that's really wonderful. And so I began to think more about writing a book. You know, I had no experience writing a book, but I thought foolishly, I thought, you know, how hard could it be? I also thought maybe I can write a mystery, because I really I looked down my nose at the mystery genre and thought there are a lot of really, you know, sort of mediocre mystery books. And I don't want to say that I thought that I could write a mediocre mystery book, but I thought that would be a type of story where there's a kind of familiar structure and that I could work with that. You know, fool that I was. So I had this idea in my head. And when COVID kind of receded, my wife and I took a vacation to Italy, went to Venice and spent a few days there and really loved visiting that city. I'm Jewish, my wife is Jewish, and we really sort of left it to the last minute to go visit the old Venice ghetto there, which is the place where we get the word ghetto. That was the Ur ghetto. But we sort of felt like, or at least I sort of felt like, well, okay, I'm familiar with sort of the Jewish story, and I'm here in this place which is predominantly not about Jews, and so I want to enjoy and absorb the parts that are sort of, you know, more foreign to me.
Jon: 21:25
But we did eventually get to the ghetto. And we visited a synagogue there that had been built in the 16th century, in the 1500s, which was really interesting to see. And, you know, in every synagogue there is a cabinet that houses the Torah scrolls. So there was one in this synagogue, and there were these marble steps leading up to it, and there was an inscription on the steps in Hebrew. My Hebrew is kind of rusty. So I asked the tour guide, you know, what's this? What's this inscription? And she said, Well, it's a memorial to somebody who died, but she didn't really know anything else about it. And I realized, I don't remember if I understood the words or how to look them up, whatever, but the inscription was, and I brought it along to read. So the inscription was an offering for the peace of a brother who was slaughtered like a lamb. The day of his birth was a day made hard for him. In his 44th year, his blood made a fire offering before God. Mordecai, son of Menachem Baldoza, Wednesday, the Jewish date, April 6th of 1672, buried May 23rd of the year. God welcome him with mercy. And I just thought to myself, whoa, this is a murder, and I'm thinking about writing a mystery. This really might be something that I could build on.
Jon: 22:52
And as time went by and I researched it more, I realized that within that memorial statement, there were a bunch of things that provided additional structure. I didn't read it, but the memorial was given to the synagogue by his brother, and it mentions his father's name. And it says that he was slaughtered like a lamb and a fire offering before God. So I felt like each of those things could be built on. They were sort of seeds, if you will, that could lend some at least some basis for me to try to get creative with and try to think about, okay, so who is this family and why was this guy killed? And this business about a fire offering, it made it sound to me as if in some way that fire was involved in his death. So starting with those things, I did a whole bunch of research for a couple of years.
Matt: 23:47
And how do you do research on something that's in a Venice ghetto when you're back home? How do you do that?
Jon: 23:53
Well, fortunately, we live in a really library-rich environment here. And so with the library that we're talking in now, the Watertown Public Library, and as part of the bigger Minuteman system, that was available to me. Boston Public Library. I got a Boston library card, and particularly the main branch downtown. You know, they have a terrific map room, the Leventhal map room where there were really old maps of Venice. And I went to Harvard Law School, so I've got privileges at the Harvard Libraries and spent a lot of time going back and forth to a Widener library, which, you know, it's one of the great library collections in the country. And, you know, there's a ton of stuff online also.
Matt: 24:39
Yeah.
Jon: 24:40
And I realized early on that I did not speak Italian.
Matt: 24:45
That just occurred to you.
Jon: 24:47
And so I really couldn't use primary sources. I mean, a lot of the scholarly work that I read was based on primary sources in the archives of what is now the city of Venice, what had been the Republic of Venice. But even if I had gotten myself over there again, I wouldn't have been able to use that stuff. So I was really limited to the secondary sources. But there is a lot of scholarship on Venice. In terms of sort of the good fortune of being here, one of the world's experts, scholarly experts on the Guinness, Guinness, the Venice ghetto taught at Brandeis, and he was retired now. But I got in touch with him, and he was enormously helpful to me. A guy named Ben Ravid. Well, first of all, just reading his scholarly work. You know, stuff that really goes into great depth because it's his focus and it's one place that's not a large place, but with a long and interesting history. So reading his work, and then he was kind enough to read my work and point out where I had, you know, messed up and invented things. So that was how I did my research.
Matt: 25:59
Yeah. Yeah. So it sounds like there was a lot of research there. So then how do you go about creating the fictional part about that? Because you're doing all this research, you want it to be like historically accurate, but then how do you weave in your own fictional aspects to that?
Jon: 26:12
Yeah. And I should say that I eventually realized that people who'd be reading a mystery novel would not be interested in most of the things that I found in my research, that showing in my fiction writing what a great job I had done at research was going to be a big turn off to readers. And I really had to learn to limit that as much as I could.
Matt: 26:38
Not give structural details of the architecture in which they were taking place.
Jon: 26:43
Yeah, I mean there were a million rabbit holes that I started to go down. The early drafts of this read more, you know, like a history book than a novel, or sometimes like a philosophy book, because that was part of what I found interesting about this particular moment in 1672. But in terms of the characters, I had this victim, this murder victim. And in my research, I found that his family wasn't just some family in Venice in the Venice ghetto, that they had been a prominent merchant family in the ghetto. And because of the way he died, because he was murdered, and because of some other stuff that I read, and I just need to digress here, one of the things that I came upon that people who study this field know well about, but to me it was a discovery, was the autobiography of a rabbi who lived in Venice like the early part of the 1600s. And it was just first of all remarkable to me that this guy had written an autobiography and that, you know, it still exists. I mean, you can go read it, or at least I could read it in translation.
Matt: 27:53
Right.
Jon: 27:54
And one of the things that he writes about is his children, his sons, his adult sons, one of whom was murdered. And, you know, one of his sons kind of followed this rabbi's path into being a rabbi on scholarship, but it seems like the other sons were kind of rebellious. And he was one who was murdered by his friends, actually. And so I thought, okay, so this Baldoza guy who was murdered, the son in this prominent merchant family, it would make some sense if he was kind of disaffected from sort of the mainstream of the family, if he was kind of a rebel. And so I began to think about him more as, you know, not wanting to be in the family business, being in the family business, but not wanting to be in the family business. Also being something of a rebel in terms of the religious community there. I mean, there he is in this, you know, Venice is made up of little islands, basically, with canals in between. So the ghetto are these three little islands with at the time, I don't know, like 5,000 Jews, and of course, like four synagogues. Just the sort of intense hothouse of that kind of ghetto and the religious community, the family community, a lot of people would know each other.
Jon: 29:10
So just the pressures for conformity, and not to mention that this was in the 1600s, so I figured there was a lot more pressure of conformity back then than now. But that if this guy is a bit of a rebel, that he's also, you know, a rebel in that area. And then I also figured, well, I don't want to write a novel that just has male characters. So I needed to invent some female characters because what I could find out about the family was really all about the men and the family, which is not surprising, but didn't help me. So I invented a sister for him. And then I threw in an old aunt who was his father's sister, also living in the household, this multi generational household crammed in the ghetto. And then the research that I did showed me that there were two historical things happening at the time leading up to the time of this guy's murder. And the biggest one that affected Venice locally was a movement that spread to quote a cliche like wildfire through the Jewish community everywhere in the world that there was a Jewish community was the belief that the Jewish Messiah had come. And needless to say, maybe not needless to say, but it was a false messiah. But there was an enormous popular movement, you know, within the Jewish community that sincerely believed that this guy in Palestine was the messiah that had been, you know, prophesied for thousands of years as you know redeeming the Jews from the exile from the Holy Land.
Matt: 30:47
And what was his name?
Jon: 30:48
His name was Shabbetai Tzvi, and he had a sidekick, if you will, by the name of Nathan Ashkenazi. And they were in Gaza, is you know, where they lived. And Nathan was a mystic that was very well respected as a mystic. The line that I kept reading about him was that people said that he could see the root of your soul. He could see the root of anybody's soul. So he was well regarded as a Kabbalistic mystic. And he announced one day that he had a vision, a prophecy, and that indeed Shabbetai Tzvi, who had been saying that he was the Messiah, was in fact the Messiah. You know, today we can see that Shabbetai Tzvi was probably bipolar, so there were lots of times when he had delusions of grandeur, doesn't even begin to describe it, and other times where he would withdraw and just be uncommunicative and whatever. So the central character in this book, this Mordechai Baldoza, would have lived through the experience of the mania for Shabbetai Tzvi, and also lived through the fall of Shabbetai Tzvi, who faced with an ultimatum from the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, which included Palestine, to either convert to Islam or be executed. And Shabbetai Tzvi chose to convert to Islam. And you know, so you can just imagine for all the people who had been his believers, his followers, whose hopes had been raised that this incredible miracle was happening, to suddenly have it not just not work out, but not work out in such an embarrassing and spectacular way. So I figured that my central character would have been among the skeptics who thought that people who believed in this false messiah were nuts, but that it wasn't a small or casual thing to be in opposition to this movement. I mean, if you take the situation in the US now with the far right MAGA movement, it at the very least it would have been equivalent to being in vocal opposition to that movement, but probably multiplied by, you know, a factor of, I don't know, six or something. Anyway.
Matt: 33:14
Yeah. So the story itself, I mean, we don't want to give away too much of the plot here, but what are, you know, some of the tastes of the themes in the book that might pique people's interest into why they would want to get into this story?
Jon: 33:27
Sure. Well, when Mordecai Baldoza is killed, fortunately for the sake of my novel writing, his sister feels that nobody is really investigating this adequately, the law authorities in Venice and not the leaders of the ghetto. And so she takes it upon herself to investigate to try to figure out who killed him and why. And she discovers various things about his life and conflicts in his life that might have led to his death. And so as it transpires, he was having an affair with a Venetian courtesan, a so-called honest courtesan, which means that she was a courtesan to the nobility. The Venice Republic was a very hierarchical, aristocratic society. And so here's this Jewish guy from the ghetto who's having an affair with this courtesan, and that would have been taboo for both of them. It was against the law for either of them to cohabit with the other. It would have been disgrace in the ghetto if this had been found out.
Jon: 34:33
And it just so happens that in this story, there are a couple of noblemen who really, they want to be the sole patron of this courtesan. So the one of them who finds out about Mordechai's affair basically threatens his life unless he ceases this affair. And his sister also looks into Mordechai's opposition to the false messiah and how the zealots of that movement really never forgave him for his opposition. And it turns out that there are zealots of that movement who have not given up the faith and who continue to believe that their Messiah's conversion to Islam was really part of the plan and that it was mistaken to give up hope. So they also bear him ill will. And finally, our Mordechai comes upon a relatively newly published work by the philosopher Benedict Spinoza, who is an excommunicated Jew living in Amsterdam, and who did at this time anonymously publish one of his first books, which was a treatise that was advocating for freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. This is what Mordechai really wants to hear and wants to believe is possible. He takes it a few steps further than Spinoza was advocating, because Spinoza was not advocating anything in particular about Judaism or the Jews. He wrote pretty negatively about the Jews. But Spinoza used the history of the Jews, particularly when they were still in the Holy Land, as a way to advocate to the Gentile leaders of the world how a republic is best run so that it is peaceful and prosperous and pious. In other words, not eliminating religion from public life, but really separating the church and state in a way that, you know, had never existed before. That book was banned by both secular and religious authorities.
Matt: 36:41
And again, this is a real book, real person.
Jon: 36:43
Yes, real person, real book. Spinoza, one of the original thinkers in what became known as the Enlightenment. So getting into Spinoza's philosophy can be pretty dense for a fictional work. But having this character, Baldoza, believe in this philosophy and foolishly advocate for it in a coffee house in Venice, brings him to the attention of the highest Venetian authorities because they see this book as anathema, as fomenting trouble among the people and really criticizing the way that they ran the government. Spinoza wasn't focused on Venice, he was actually focused on Amsterdam, but the point is that advocating for Spinoza's ideas was seditious, was treasonous. And so that brought Mordechai into conflict with really the highest levels of the Venetian Republic.
Matt: 37:38
So he had a lot of enemies.
Jon: 37:40
We have enough enemies, yeah. And various people and entities with motives to silence Baldoza. And you know, the mystery is: well, who done it and how, and some more details about why, because burning somebody is a really, you know, a super violent act and a very odd way to kill somebody. So I saw that that needed to be explained as to how that happened, why that happened.
Matt: 38:06
Yeah. Yeah. So it's got mystery, it's got historical aspects, it's got philosophy aspects.
Jon: 38:13
It's got romance with his affair with the courtesan, and his sister also has a romantic relationship. So that develops in various ways in the course of the novel.
Matt: 38:23
Gotcha. So there's a lot going on in this, what is this? 360 pages? So there's a lot going on in there. So are there any other major things about the book that you want to make sure you get out there that you want to explain about or intrigue people with that we didn't hit on yet?
Jon: 38:40
Well, it's got some good reviews. I don't think I can quote them, but.
Matt: 38:44
Yeah, and that's another aspect we haven't actually talked about. There's the writing of the book, but like then as a first-time author here, the actual going out and promoting and publishing it. Anything interesting that you learned along the way of that process?
Jon: 38:57
Well, it's all been a learning process for me, and it's really painfully fascinating, if I can put it that way, how the publishing industry works, particularly someone with a kind of a niche book without one of the whatever there are, three now big, prominent publishing companies in America. So that's been and continues to be really interesting. Also figuring out how to get the book noticed and how to get the book reviewed, which it turns out requires a lot of effort. And the reviews are starting to come in, and I'm very happy to say that so far they've been very positive. A couple of relatively significant reviews that, again, I'm kind of blown away by them just because, you know, here I am, 76 years old, writing my debut novel, and I really just hope that I wouldn't embarrass myself, and I'm really flattered by these reviews. So that's very positive to say the least.
Matt: 39:56
And you're shortlisted for a prize as well, right?
Jon: 39:59
Yes, I already know that I did not win the prize, the Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize, but it was an honor to be shortlisted. I mean, you know, of all the entries that they got. I've kind of amazed myself if I can say so.
Matt: 40:12
It's good that you can still surprise yourself and finding new surprises and new skills at any stage of life, right?
Jon: 40:20
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I know when I decided to retire, a lot of people said to me, you know, you're gonna be bored out of your mind, you're gonna drive your wife crazy, you know, you're gonna drop dead in two years. Don't do this. But I really felt like I wanted to see, you know, what I would be like not being an attorney, which had been, you know, my work identity for so many years, just to see what else I might want to do with my life. And so this has been a great thing to do with my life.
Matt: 40:52
Yeah. Cool. Well, again, What Was Forbidden is the name of the book. Where should people go to find out information about it and give it all those details?
Jon: 41:02
Okay, well, really wherever books are sold, as they say. So the publication date is October 20th. And I don't know when this will air, if it will be after that. So you can order it from your local bookstore. Hopefully, some local bookstores will be carrying it. But if they don't have it on the shelf, you can order it. You can order it from bookshop.org, and of course, from all the usual online suspects of you know, Amazon and Apple and Barnes and Noble and so on. And it's available in ebook format and in paperback.
Matt: 41:36
Excellent. Well, everyone, go check that out. And thank you for taking the time today to share your thoughts and stories of your time in Watertown and your time with your new author hat that you wear now. And uh yeah, thank you.
Jon: 41:49
Well, and thank you. It's been great to do this with you.
Matt: 41:51
So that's it for my conversation with Jon. You can find out more information about him where he mentioned, and I'll put links in the show notes as well. We didn't mention it in this episode, but he also does have a book launch event at the Mosessian Center for the Arts coming up soon. If you're listening to this when this comes out on November 2nd, I'll have a link for that in the show notes as well. And if you like this conversation and like to hear more of them, you can head on over to Little Local Conversations.com, where I have all the episodes, all the interviews, all the live panels, government updates, arts and culture roundtables, live creative chat events, lots of different types of episodes for you there. You can also sign up for my weekly newsletter there to keep up to date on everything going on from episodes to events to the Little Local Holiday giveaway, which I mentioned at the beginning episode briefly, but to give a little more explanation here. I've really tried to keep ads out of the middle of this podcast. So as a model, to try and keep that going, I have started a what I call Little Local Friends program where you can sign up to be a supporter of the podcast on a monthly basis. And for people who do that before Thanksgiving, they will be entered into what I'm calling the Little Local Holiday Giveaway, where I have over $1,000 worth of stuff to give away from local businesses and organizations that have been on the podcast.
Matt: 42:58
So let me give you a rundown of what you could possibly win. If you support the podcast, as a little local friend. So we have from Arsenal Yard giving away a $100 gift card from Buttermilk and Bourbon, $100 gift card from Condesa, $100 gift card from Medium Rare, $100 gift card to Mighty Squirrel, $100 gift card to Tori Jiro. Boston Gold Kings are giving away four tickets to an upcoming home game. Campolongo Cookie Company is giving away a gift package of chocolate chip cookies, vanilla extract, and brown sugar. Cass School of Floral Design is giving away a free floral design class. Farina’s is giving away a $100 gift card. Gore Place is giving away tickets to a free tour or concert in their carriage house. Mosessian Center for the Arts is giving away tickets to their December 9th Chords and Cocktails with the Eric Mintel Quartet doing the Charlie Brown Christmas. Mount Auburn Cemetery is giving away a free one year Friends of Mount Auburn membership. Revival Cafe and Kitchen is giving a $25 gift card, and Ritcey East is giving a $50 gift card. So there is so much that you could win here. And of course, you'd be supporting the podcast and help keep these conversations going and some of the events I've been doing as well. Which there are play events to look forward to too. Briefly just mentioned those on Friday, November 7th. Have a creative chat at the Mosesian Center with documentary filmmaker Margo Guernsey. Then the next Watertown's Open event is on Thursday, November 13th at Italian Design Interiors in Watertown Square. And that will feature a panel discussion on the state of development in Watertown. So again, lots to look forward to here. Check out LittleLocal Conversations.com for all of that, or sign up for the newsletter there. Keep up to date on everything.
Matt: 44:30
Alright, I want to give a few shout-outs here to wrap things up. First one goes to podcast sponsor Arsenal Financial. They're our financial planning business here in Watertown that's owned by Doug Orifice, a very committed community member, and his business helps people close to retirement, busy families, and small businesses. So if you need help in any of those areas, reach out to Doug and his team at arsenalfinancial.com. I also want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast. So I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. To find out more about them, watertowncultural council.org and masscultural council.org. And a couple more shout outs to promotional partners. First one goes to the Watertown Business Coalition, they're a nonprofit organization here in Watertown that's bringing businesses and people together to help strengthen the community. Find out more about them at Watertown Business Coalition.com. And lastly, promotional partner Watertown News, which is an online newspaper focused purely on Watertown. It's run here by Charlie Breitrose. Great resource. Go check that out at WatertownMANews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.
