Humorous tales of woe and apocalypse

By: Rabbi Rachel Esserman

While it’s not uncommon for novels to offer wisdom about life’s absurdities, few manage to do so while being laugh-out-loud funny. That’s what makes two new tales of woe and apocalypse, "Isaac’s Torah: Concerning the Life of Isaac Jacob Blumenfeld Through Two World Wars, Three Concentration Camps, and Five Motherlands" by Angel Wagenstein (Handsel Books) and "The Cabalist’s Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption" by Yori Yanover (Ben Yehuda Press), so much fun to read. My first impulse is to fill this review with quotations from both works to show just how wonderful their dark humor is, but that wouldn’t do justice to the complex and interesting plots they also contain.

 The title character of Wagenstein’s novel, Isaac Jacob Blumenfeld, is an excellent raconteur, even if once in a while I was tempted to ask him to take a metaphorical breath. Whether writing about growing up in a small town in Eastern Europe, his experiences in the army, his time in a concentration camp or his life in the Siberian gulag, he can’t resist adding a joke or a funny story to explain the absurdity of the situations in which he finds himself. His Torah consists of five books, each focusing on the different countries or nationalities he acquired, all while being considered a member of the same home town, Kolodetz, which, over the years, changed hands and belonged to (respectively) the Austro-Hungarian empire, Poland, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, before again returning to Soviet hands.

Acknowledging that there is no logic to the historical events that direct his life, Isaac perfects an image he knows will protect him: "To pretend to be a fool, in order to survive, is an old Jewish art, comparable only to ancient Greek architecture, more precisely the Parthenon." Acting as if he understands less than he does helps him deal with bureaucrats, soldiers and criminals, and survive two world wars, three German labor and concentration camps and prison in Siberia. It also helps him cope with such absurdities as having a rabbi brother-in-law who also leads the town’s Atheists’ Club, and the Soviets’ demand for increased productivity in his and his father’s two-man tailor shop, which results in their receiving a flag with the phrase "Outstanding Worker In The May First Competition" as a reward, although Isaac reveals that "it wasn’t completely clear with whom we were competing and in what incomprehensible way (at least to me) we had excelled."

My favorite parts of the novel are Isaac’s jokes, stories and advice, particularly those discussing Jewish behavior. For example, he notes that, "if Jews bombard you with questions, listen to them calmly and go smoke a cigarette in the room next door. They won’t notice your absence at all but will start arguing among themselves. There’s another way out: instantly, at that very moment, agree with them and in no way take up the catastrophic initiative of disagreeing with them. This option, by the way, is probably even wiser. Like this rabbi of whom they asked: ‘Rabbi, what in your opinion is the shape of the earth?’ ‘Round,’ said the rabbi. ‘Why round? Can you prove it?’ ‘Well, then, let it be square, am I going to argue?’" Even when faced with the horrors of the Holocaust, Isaac remains a bit of a clown, if now a sadder and wiser one. And sometimes the wisdom of a clown can contain far more meaning than that of a scholar.

What is amazing about "Isaac’s Torah" is how different it is from another Wagenstein novel, the wonderful, but serious, "Farewell, Shanghai," which showed the fate of Jewish German refugees in Shanghai under Japanese rule during World War II. Although each book’s style is very different, in both Wagenstein reveals not only the absurdities of life, but also the small moments of kindness and caring that make living worthwhile.

While the events of "Isaac’s Torah" are loosely based on history, the same cannot be said for those portrayed in Yanover’s "The Cabalist’s Daughter." This offbeat look at contemporary messianic redemption and the end of the world starts slowly, but gathers steam as Nechama Gutkind leaves her adopted parents’ house in order to facilitate the beginning of the messianic age. On her side is a 130-year-old master kabbalist, Rabbi Lionel Abulafia, who has written "The Cabalist’s Handbook of Practical Messianic Redemption," which offers a humorous, and at times almost-fall-off-your-chair funny, look at how God created and developed the world. Against her is Samael, otherwise known as Satan, who is, as in traditional Jewish lore, an angel doing God’s bidding, even if his actions seem evil to humans. Samael has set in motion a plan to destroy the universe in order to return it to the wholeness that existed before creation. Nechama seeks to redeem humankind before his plan succeeds.

While the plot in the second half moves quickly and creates a great deal of suspense, my favorite parts are the work’s strange and wonderful theological discourses. For example, Abulafia writes that "some scholars suggest Creation is the handiwork of a sadistic celestial child, who delights in pulling the wings off butterflies and babies from their mothers’ bosoms. Soon, they surmise, God’s mother will come into the room and smack him, and thus bring an end to our suffering." (This is one of the milder interpretations of celestial behavior offered.) When explaining Abulafia’s interpretation of Samael’s behavior, Yanover notes that the unfortunate angel is only doing his job: Samael "is in charge of destroying the Jews, and so followed orders like a loyal soldier." Even though Jewish prophesies usually predict his defeat, that doesn’t stop him: "If Samael were to take every blasted prophecy seriously, he might have as well closed up shop and concentrated on his real passion, creating crossword puzzles for the New York Times."

Readers should be wary of the novel’s interpretations of Jewish history and mysticism: these sections are funny, but clearly biased. The branch of Judaism Nachama and Abulafia belong to is the Cosmic Wisdom movement, which is loosely based on the Lubavich Chasidic movement. The similarities between the movements include a rabbi who encourages his followers to open Cosmic Wisdom Houses across the world and the debate among members of both communities over whether their late leader is really the messiah.

The craziness featured in "The Cabalist’s Daughter" is closer to that of such works as "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams than it is to more traditional Jewish novels. However, it was a great pleasure to finally read a novel featuring a Jewish theological approach to the apocalypse.

Although Wagenstein and Yanover offer bleak looks at the world and jaded thoughts about the nature of God, their unflagging humor and enthusiasm prevent their novels from becoming depressing. Trying to compare these works is difficult because they each offer something wonderful. "Isaac’s Torah" is the more successful literary work and Wagenstein the better writer. However, for sheer fun and weirdness, "The Cabalist’s Daughter" excels on a scale with which the other novel cannot compete. Fortunately for me, I don’t really have to choose. Both books are welcome additions to my shelf.