MY FATHER, THE MESSIAH

Columbia University professor Hochberg delves into the dual life of her late father: an accomplished scholar and a self-professed messiah.

During her childhood in the 1970s and ’80s, the author developed a close bond with her father, Yosef “Yossi” Hochberg. He was a world-renowned statistician and a doting dad who was in the process of making a major breakthrough in his field. His analysis of the “false discovery rate” became a benchmark in biostatistics, allowing scientists to control for false positives in research studies. After his death in 2013, Yossi would posthumously win a major prize in statistics for his contribution to the field. Hochberg writes poignantly about singing, playing, and swimming with her father for hours on end as a child; as the author reached adulthood, however, her relationship with her dad began to show signs of strain. Yossi decided to move to Israel, as he was an ardent Zionist, the author writes; later, he came to believe himself to be the messiah. This belief, she writes, coincided with a significant deterioration in his mental health. During the late 1980s and early ’90s, Yossi wrote a series of letters to prominent Israelis proclaiming his messianic status and asserting the legitimacy of his claims, based on his rabbinical ancestry; his only follower, however, seemed to be his partner, Miriam.In 1989, the 20-year-old author was starting to identify as a queer woman, and when she came out to her father at a coffee shop in Tel Aviv, he seemed supportive; he responded, in Hebrew, with his own declaration: “I am the Messiah . . . Your father was chosen . . . I am the real Messiah.”

At the time, she was a philosophy major at Tel Aviv University, where Yossi taught, and she thoughtfully describes how she and her father, who were once so close, began to live their lives on parallel tracks. Hochberg delves into a series of letters that they exchanged between the ages of 7 and 17 to examine the evolution of their relationship. She also tells of dealing with her own mental health struggles, which the book details. During the pandemic, the author began to explore her relationship with her father more deeply, examining the archive of his materials that she’d maintained; she offers many insights as she analyzes her findings in light of her own personal experiences. In this deeply insightful book about memory and discovery, Hochberg ruminates on her father’s final days and deteriorating health in a manner that many readers will find relatable. Over the course of the book, the interplay of various elements of Hochberg’s and her dad’s lives yields a compelling portrait of someone slowly coming to terms with the death of a loved one. Readers who have dealt with similar tumult in their own lives will likely feel a strong connection with this work. Those with a specific interest in Jewish history and culture will also treasure the book as a deeply reported account of late-20th-century Jewish life amid various social upheavals.

A compelling and well-crafted family portrait.