FEATHERS

Name: FEATHERS
Author: Haim Be’er
ISBN: 1-58465-371-X

by Haim Be’er & translated by Hillel Halkin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 30, 2004

A richly crafted ode to the past, this 1979 classic, now in a first English translation, was chosen by the National Yiddish...

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Israeli Be’er (The Pure Element of Time, 2002, etc.) evokes a Jerusalem neighborhood as magical and surreal as a Chagall painting. Meanwhile, a young soldier recalls growing up there in the 1950s and ’60s.

Framed by the Yom Kippur War, the soldier, whose job is to collect the dead from the battlefield, dreams he meets the long-dead Reb Dovid Leder. He never knew Leder, but he did know his son Mordecai. Waking, he finds himself remembering how he first met Mordecai, a memory that sets off others as he looks back at his boyhood and adolescence in a time of peaceful innocence. On his way home after school, he met Mordecai, whose alleged job was to collect alms for the blind, standing outside the Russian Bookstore. When Mordecai saw him, he declared that the Communists would never last, and then asked if he had heard of Popper-Lynkeus, a 19th-century Utopian. Mordecai wants to create a Nutrition Army that will establish a vegetarian state honoring Lynkeun precepts. The soldier is enlisted as the only follower, and, as Mordecai recalls prewar Vienna, his father’s illustrious political connections, and his attempts to further the cause, the soldier introduces other colorful characters in his Orthodox neighborhood—characters like his father, who searches for proof that the Eucalyptus, not the willow, is the tree referred to in the Bible; or Riklin, the undertaker who is rumored to have once stopped the sun in its path; and the Ringels, who venerate the last Austrian Emperor in an apartment filled with imperial memorabilia. As the narrator grows up, Mordecai’s behavior becomes more eccentric: he’s hospitalized after trying to rob a bank with a wooden gun, and, when released, sets on fire a cloth cow festooned with cheeses and sausages, which he calls the “calf-idol of food” worshipped by his fellow Israelis. Then, as the narrator continues his burial detail, he encounters an unexpected legacy from Mordecai.

A richly crafted ode to the past, this 1979 classic, now in a first English translation, was chosen by the National Yiddish Book Center as “one of the 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature.”

Pub Date: April 30, 2004

ISBN: 1-58465-371-X

Page Count: 272

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PURE ELEMENT OF TIME
by Haim Be’er & translated by Barbara Harshav

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THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

by C.S. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1942

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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

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ALL MY ROAD BEFORE ME
by C.S. Lewis

- BOOK REVIEW
PRESENT CONCERNS
by C.S. Lewis

- BOOK REVIEW
BOXEN
by C.S. Lewis

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THE CHOSEN

by Chaim Potok ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 1967

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This first novel, ostensibly about the friendship between two boys, Reuven and Danny, from the time when they are fourteen on opposing yeshiva ball clubs, is actually a gently didactic differentiation between two aspects of the Jewish faith, the Hasidic and the Orthodox. Primarily the Hasidic, the little known mystics with their beards, earlocks and stringently reclusive way of life. According to Reuven's father who is a Zionist, an activist, they are fanatics; according to Danny's, other Jews are apostates and Zionists "goyim." The schisms here are reflected through discussions, between fathers and sons, and through the separation imposed on the two boys for two years which still does not affect their lasting friendship or enduring hopes: Danny goes on to become a psychiatrist refusing his inherited position of "tzaddik"; Reuven a rabbi.... The explanation, in fact exegesis, of Jewish culture and learning, of the special dedication of the Hasidic with its emphasis on mind and soul, is done in sufficiently facile form to engage one's interest and sentiment. The publishers however see a much wider audience for The Chosen. If they "rub their tzitzis for good luck,"—perhaps—although we doubt it.