In all, a thoughtful and affecting addition to the literature of the Diaspora.
Three novella-length tales chronicle a devout family whose experiences parallel recent Jewish history.
In stories that are as much religious mediation (with generous quotations from the Torah, Talmud, and other holy writings) as they are accounts of a particular place—here Aleppo, Syria—the author vividly intertwines the ties of faith and family. Aleppo, long home to a thriving Jewish community, was ruled by the French between the two world wars, and the first two stories are set there during the French occupation. The third has an Israeli setting, as the family emigrates from what is now Arab-ruled Syria to Jerusalem. In “Truth Shall Spring from the Earth,” a young Yeshiva scholar learns that his great-great grandfather, once regarded as one of the foremost sages of Aleppo, was banned from teaching and that his baby daughter died soon after. Determined to learn what happened, and why the child died so suddenly, the young man consults old manuscripts and finally discovers the truth. In “The Wheel Turns Full Circle,” Raphael, a brilliant Aleppo student whose father had studied in France before WWII, also goes to Paris to study. His pious family expects him to become a rabbi, but, in Paris, he becomes involved in radical politics and disavows his religious heritage. This direction changes when a planned revolt against the French government fails and Raphael has time to think about his faith, his past, and Israel. The third story is a poignant tale, told by the grandson of an aging and distinguished rabbi who emigrates from Aleppo to Jerusalem but there lacks a congregation of his own. When a Hasidic rabbi dies suddenly on the eve of the Sabbath, the rabbi is asked to deliver the eulogy at the funeral. Preaching, he feels he is back in Aleppo with his old congregation, though the listeners find his accent strange and his sermon too long.
In all, a thoughtful and affecting addition to the literature of the Diaspora.Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-59264-051-6
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Toby Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
