Kafka's Hasidic Sidekick

 In 1894, boys like Jiří Langer were a dime a dozen: Born into an assimilated Jewish family in Prague, there was nothing notable about him until, at 19, he bought "a railway ticket to a little place in eastern Galicia," where he met the Hasidic rebbe of the town of Belz. He returned to Prague wearing traditional dress and observing Hasidic customs.

This was in an era when being a baal teshuva was unheard of. Years later, in the introduction to Nine Gates, Jiří’s collection of Hasidic tales, his brother František reflected: "Jiří resembled Kafka’s novel The Metamorphosis, in which a family finds its way of life completely upset when the son is suddenly changed into an enormous cockroach."

The allusion was not to a distant literary figure but to a real person in the young man's life. Though his parents tried to talk Jiří out of his new religiosity, the famous surrealist author took an interest in just that. Jiří, who was anything but a "normal" Hasid, started studying Jewish mysticism with Kafka, and circulating among Prague's avant-garde artists. He even published several books, including a volume of poetry called The Eroticism of Kabbalah. Probably not who you'd have expected to find in Kafka's inner circle.

- Matthue Roth

Lower Manhattan Supernatural

Every culture has its superstitions and its supermen: the German imp, the South African giant Abiyoyo, the golem of Jewish lore, and the jinni of Arabic mythology. What if, during one of America’s great waves of immigration, 2 of these mythic creatures collided?

That’s what happens in The Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker's compulsively readable debut novel. At the junction of 19th-century NYC's Little Syria and the Jewish Lower East Side, Chava, a female golem, meets Ahmad, a once-powerful jinni. Chava, who was created by a slightly sinister, failed rabbi to wed a man who died en route to America, now serves no master—not technically, anyway. But poor Chava feels compelled to help everyone whose fears or desires she senses: an impulse that can be a pleasure or a liability. And Ahmad has been trapped inside a metal vessel for centuries, imprisoned after a battle he doesn't remember.
As Chava's jealous creator and Ahmad's captor catch up with them, Wecker's writing jumps between magic realism and fantasy, existential exploration and adventure.
It's not quite your grandmother's immigration story. Or is it?

- Leah Falk 

The Gospel According to Jesus’s Mom

 
The more familiar a story, the greater the challenge for a novelist. How do you convince readers to look out for more than they already know? Naomi Alderman's 3rd novel, The Liars' Gospel, takes on this challenge: in 4 richly interior, interwoven narratives, Alderman reimagines the effect of Jesus's—Yehoshuah's—life and teaching on his Jewish friends, family, and their Roman-ruled society.

Rooted in primary texts—The Jewish War, the Talmud, and the Gospels themselves—the novel's dramatis personae isn't too surprising. We follow Mary (here known as Miryam), Judas (or Iehuda), and Caiaphas the High Priest of the Second Temple, all in the political aftermath of Yehoshuah's crucifixion. But we also hear from an anonymous Jewish rebel, Bar-Avo, who has a serendipitous encounter with Yehoshuah just before Yehoshuah is put to death.

Admirable in its ability to bring a few ancient facts vividly to life, The Liars' Gospel also puts forth a theory of storytelling: that the most powerful stories start with a lie. "Do not believe that an impartial observer exists," Alderman warns, suggesting that the multiple "gospels" of her characters—each biased for their own reasons—are as close to the truth as this story is going to get.

- Leah Falk for Jewniverse

A Bus Accident in Israel, and Afterward

"After living with a disability for 22-plus years and trying in vain to write about it for almost as many, I've finally gotten my thoughts down on paper." So Joshua Prager introduces his new memoir Half-Life, which details the aftermath of a devastating bus accident that occurred on his visit to Israel at age 19.

In the e-book Prager renders himself astonishingly vulnerable, in part by asking difficult questions: If I no longer feel like myself, am I still myself? And if I'm not, how do I interact with others?

In finely crafted language ("a cement staircase lined with dirt and dead thistles depositing me at the edge") Prager shares piercing details, ruminations, and conclusions about his journey through grief into recovery. He offers, for example, his experience with Brown-Séquard Syndrome, "which roughly meant that one half of me could move better, the other half feel better."

He fills the pages with selections of poetry and returns again and again to Herman Melville, whose words he uses to investigate not just what it has meant to cope with the immense loss of the life he knew, but what it means for anyone to understand and accept themselves.

Watch Prager's TED Talk here.

- Jessica Young

Spotlight on Emily Michelson

 Dr Emily Michelson is a transplant from the United States, and has previously lived in Italy, Jerusalem, Salt Lake City, Manhattan, and other parts of the US East Coast. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1995 in History and Literature of the Renaissance and Reformation. Despite vowing never to go to graduate school, and taking a few years off after university to pursue other interests, she returned to the field to earn a PhD from Yale in 2006 in History and Renaissance Studies.

Emily is a cultural historian of the Reformation era, with a focus on Italy. She is especially interested in how religious change affects standards of behavior for individuals and for groups, and the tensions between external social norms and internal experience. Her recent book, The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation Italy (Harvard University Press, 2013), examines the role of Italian preachers during religious crisis and schism. The book credits preachers with keeping Italy Catholic when the region’s religious future seemed uncertain, and with creating a new religious culture that would survive in an unprecedented atmosphere of competition and religious choice. She is also the co-editor of A Linking of Heaven and Earth: Studies in Religious and Cultural History in Honor of Carlos M.N. Eire (Ashgate, 2012); among other topics, the book tackles head-on the question of how to study miracles in an age of skepticism. Emily currently runs a project, funded by the British Academy, studying how people heard (or misheard) sermons in the Reformation era, and whether audience behavior links to growing religious differences. From 2010-2012 she was interim director of the Reformation Studies Institute. 

Emily’s new research examines the social and theological significance of Roman Jews in the Catholic Reformation. This project has brought her speaking engagements in Edinburgh, Tel Aviv, Rome, and Dublin. She will be spending the 2013-2014 academic year in Florence as the Robert Lehman Fellow at Villa I Tatti (the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies), where she plans to complete the bulk of the research for this project.

Continue reading.

Letting It Go: A Post-Holocaust Delight

The world of Holocaust literature is filled with horrific stories of murder and gritty survival – think Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi and Art Spiegelman. Seldom does a book come along from a Holocaust survivor that can truly be called delightful.

Letting It Go by Miriam Katin is that book.
Katin, a New York artist born in Hungary during World War II, has created a graphic novel about moving past her anger toward Germany. On the surface, it's the true story of Katin's reaction to her son moving to Berlin – news that, at first, sends her into a tailspin.
But Letting It Go is not a memoir of Holocaust sorrow. It's a book full of life – a colorful novel of pencil drawings portraying a million small moments that make up Katin's current life: An obsessive crusade against kitchen cockroaches; a cheer-me-up shopping spree for expensive sunglasses; an embarrassing case of diarrhea in a hotel bed; and, throughout, a touching, loving, supportive relationship with her husband.
Katin emerges as an immensely likable, complex woman – a friend you'd enjoy meeting for a drink.

- Marc Davis

The Liars' Gospel

Review by Ada Brunstein

"It is important to quiet the lamb, that is the first thing." So begins Naomi Alder­man's The Liars' Gospel, a fictional account of Jesus' life set against the backdrop of the Jews' struggles against Roman rule.

Alderman gives us four points of view, or gospels, on the life of Yehoshuah (Jesus), focusing mainly on the time between his departure from home and his death. We hear from his mother, Miryam (Mary), who laments her son's departure and has trouble accepting him in his new role as a “teacher.”

We hear from his follower, confidant, and later his betrayer, Iehuda (Judas), one of the most compelling characters in this story. It is through Iehuda's eyes that we see Yehoshuah evolve from a man who has gathered a few supporters through his messages of forgive­ness and healing, to a man who is leading a movement of thousands of followers. Through Iehuda we see how Yehoshuah loses his way gradually, in small missteps, veering incrementally farther away from the messages he started his teachings with and into a more self-serving role.

We hear from the high priest, Caiaphas, whose life's work was to maintain the precari­ous balance between the desires of the Jews and the demands of the Romans.

And finally we hear from a young Jewish rebel, Bar-Avo (Barabbas), in whose hands lies the fate of the Jewish people at the time.

 Continue reading the review and an interview with the author, Naomi Alderman.