RACHEL JACOBSOHN
Law fails to satisfy Ozick's rabbi, who
Abraham's despair and Isaac's wound. As
begins to read Romantic poetry and to
the novel fills in these gaps in the original
seek out the "free spirits" of the natural
narrative, it augments our memory of the
world, abandoning the sacred texts, his
collective past.
wife and daughters. He knows that faith-
Two other recent novels carry the
fulness to the Law obliges him to turn
midrashic impulse toward more hopeful
away from natural beauty and the storied
visions of possibility. Allegra Goodman's
wealth of western culture. He learns that
Paradise Park (2001) embeds within a long,
"freedom" means the loss of family love,
picaresque tale of a girl's search for a spiri-
spiritual comfort, and the multiple bound-
tual "home" one dazzling, epiphanic
aries that regulate the lives of individuals
moment in which - as in the book of Job -
within this group. His profound ambiva-
the power and beauty of God's work
lence shows us ourselves, always working
become manifest. From deep within this
on the limits of our own freedoms. In such
dusty, littered fictional world a great whale,
circumstances the undertow of our sources
Leviathan, suddenly surfaces, "as if the
becomes irresistible. If only to reassure us
whole ocean was sliding open": "the sky
that conflict has always been with us. Isaac
swung back in liquid gold, the air mixed
walks in the field, and Ozick's rabbi leaps
with the water....all of a sudden I'd seen it -
the fence of the Law to fall in love with the
all the power under the world, all this pres-
heartless spirit of a tree. Thus the
ence and wisdom that wasn't human."
midrashic impulse "instructs" collective
There is no divine voice here, to ask this
memory, as Susan Sontag pointed out,
protagonist where she was when Leviathan
reminding us of who we have been.
was created. But the vision persists
While evil and turmoil wreak havoc
plation that may, just may, sustain us,
and bring us peace. Whom do I look
Todd Gitlin's The Sacrifice (1999) seems
through her journey, reassuring her (and
to rise from midrashic concern with famil-
us?) that even exile may include living
ial, rather than cultural, malaise. As Ozick's
human life: "Life is glass. What shatters,
visions from the collective past.
Aryeh Lev Stollman's The illuminated
Soul (1997) imagines also what it means to
be exiled from a past in which such visions
— and the accompanying voice of their
Creator — were first experienced. But the
novel brilliantly connects the experience of
contemporary exile with its Biblical proto-
type, suggesting that memory itself may
become home. Stollman's protagonist will
study all his life the brain and its power to
remember. As he prepares for public read-
ing the passage that describes the silver
trumpets used for "the calling of assem-
blies and for the journeying of the camps
[of the Israelites] in the wilderness," a
beautiful woman enters his house: she
stands in "two broad bands" of sunlight
Rachel jacobsohn is author of The Reading
stays shattered...." Told from both the
that seem to him like the "silvery trumpets" he
Group Handbook and writes/publishes the
father's and the son's point of view, the fic-
has been studying. A European refugee,
newsjournal Reverberations for the Association of
tion attempts to understand both
continued on page 23
"Pagan Rabbi" shows us — through the lens
of Isaac's unexplained walking in the field -
- our susceptibility to the seductions of the
natural and cultural world, Gitlin's novel
turns the lens. of Abraham's, Isaac's and
Esau's biblical experience toward the knot
of thwarted paternal love. Gitlin's patriarch
gets two tries: one, obedient to convention,
and another that follows impulse. Both cul-
minate in the sacrifice of a child to a father's
will. Scarred by his own father's failures of
love, Gitlin's patriarch attributes his pater-
nal failures to both the "endless begats of
neurosis," and the inescapable irony of
to among those blessed greatly with
the power to create words? Cynthia
Ozick, Grace Paley, David Grossman,
Natalia Ginzburg, Nathan Englander, ,
Shulamith Hareven, I.B. Singer, and
Rebecca Goldstein. These are the -
writers who create peace — something
.7 -• -
•
possible in words, if not in the world.
Book Group Readers and Leaders.
NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH CULTURE
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