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4/12
2002
76
DBTROTT JEWISH NEWS
JN
On The Bookshelf
Transforming Beauty
In "The Illuminated Soul," author/doctor Aryeh Lev Stollman,
a Windsor native, reinterprets the medieval legend of the Wandering Jew.
she instead sees a gracious sign. In the Miscellany, those
words are illustrated by a pillar of cloud — and were the
inspiration for her scholarly father's great, still unfinished
work, Clouds of Glory.
am an expert on brains," the narrator of Aryeh Lev
She decides to stay in Windsor and later can't remember
Stollman's artfully written new novel, The
who guided her to the home of the Ivri family, who have a
Illuminated Soul (Riverhead; $24.95), says in the
room to rent.
opening of the book's first chapter. Joseph Ivri is a
When she appears at their door, Adele Ivri, a devout
successful neuroanatomist who has written a very success-
widow,
and her sons Joseph and Asa believe they have
ful popular book toward the end of his career, also titled
never
seen
anyone as beautiful as the red-haired Eva.
The Illuminated Soul, and now he's looking back.
"She placed one foot in front of the other, carefully, as if
Stollman's novel is richly layered with texts, including a
she were crossing a narrow bridge
15th-century rare illuminated manuscript, the
from a mysterious and enchanted
weekly Torah readings, Japanese stories and the
world we knew nothing about, into
author's own midrashim.
our small and quiet one."
It's a story about an exquisite woman who sud-
She moves into an upstairs room,
denly appears in Windsor, Canada, just across from
and
soon recounts stories of her
Detroit, in the late 1940s. Soon after, she departs,
family
and her travels, shows them
but her presence lingers on long after.
the Miscellany and shares her kind-
The author provides the reader with much to
ness and wisdom; she tells them
reflect upon about exile and wandering, the brain
that "anything you have ever seen or
and the soul, memory and beauty, and the afteref-
heard or held changes you. It
fects of the Holocaust.
becomes a part of you. It's a scien-
Stollrnan, a neuroradiologist, is also something of an
tific fact. Your brain changes. Why,
expert on brains, although he probably wouldn't
when
we look at each other right
describe himself that way. In an interview in his
now we are being changed forever."
Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan, he explains
Eva goes on to say that although
that the structure of this novel "weaves in and out of
many things can be lost or taken
time, recapitulating the way the brain works."
away over a lifetime, the soul can't
Although we may order our memories in a kind
"The Illuminated Soul"
be taken away. "The secret is not to
of time line, that's not the way our minds work. He tells the story of an exquisite
care too much for all those other
emphasizes that memory isn't linear; rather it's full
refugee who, along with
things you cannot keep."
of cross-associations. It's only at the end of this
a magnificent Hebrew
novel, after many shifts in time, that the story is
manuscript, profoundly
fully unfolded.
transforms the lives of a
Clouds Of Glory
beleaguered Windsor widow
The summer of Eva's arrival, Joseph
and her two young sons.
— a 14-year old perfectionist who
Eva's Story
couldn't fall asleep until he had
Eva Laquedem Higashi, an exile from Prague, car-
checked
the
silverware
drawers several times to make sure
ries in her handbag at all times a rare 500-year old manu-
that
the
meat
and
dairy
sets were lined up evenly — is
script in miniature called The Augsburg Miscellany. It con-
practicing
the
Torah
readings
so he can fill in for the ba'al
Book
of
tains 600 hand-written pages, including the
koreh in synagogue.
Psalms, Proverbs, Lamentations and philosophical treatises
Adele, who learned the trope from her father and usually
— all illustrated in lavish detail.
corrects the synagogue's reader from her place in the
It had belonged to her father, and she smuggled it out of
women's gallery, helps him. Eva looks at the text he is
Czechoslovakia and has had it with her as she journeyed to
studying and tells him, The solid consonants are like our
the Soviet Union and then Japan — she married a Japanese
material bodies and the invisible vowels are like our souls
doctor in Prague — before coming to the United States.
that make our bodies come to life."
She ends up in Windsor after taking what she thought
Some readers will take in the significance of the fact that
was an afternoon detour from Detroit to have a look at
he's practicing "Beha'alotecha" when she arrives: That
Canada, but she doesn't have the required paperwork with
chapter refers to the clouds of glory that enveloped the
her to cross the border back to the United States.
encampment of Jews in the desert.
That day in Windsor, she observes a great circle of
Eva seems to understand the hearts of Joseph and Asa, a
clouds above that bring to mind the biblical verse, "And in
child
of uncommon beauty who is losing his vision.
the place where the cloud abode, there the Children of
She
is visited in Windsor by the emissaries of a
Israel encamped."
Jerusalem
rabbi who knows of her father's fate in Europe,
For a woman who might think of herself as stranded,
SAN DEE BRAWARSKY
Special to the Jewish News
I