Displaying 21 - 24 of 24
By Fire, By Water
Palace intrigue, ethnic cleansing, murder, unrequited love, and the quest for new lands and their riches are all woven together in Michael James Kaplan's novel By Fire and By Water. The story takes place in Spain during the mid 1480's through the late 1490's in the reign of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. In that time frame four world-changing events were simultaneously occurring: the establishment of the New Inquisition in Castile and Aragon, the reconquest of Granada, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and Cristobal Colon's (Christopher Columbus) so-called discovery of the Western Hemisphere.
The Last of the Just, by André Schwarz-Bart
Ernie Levy, last of the Just Men leaves this world clinging to his raw belief of a better world to come. According to modern Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, the zaddikim (usually translated as the 'righteous') actually means "those who stood test" or "the proven." (from Tales of Hasidim, The Early Masters, Schocken Books, NY, 1961). The generations of the lamed vovnikim, the thirty-six righteous men of the Levy family carried the burden of Jewish suffering. Have we seen the last of the Just Men?
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a novel about magic, manhood, superheroes, and growing up Jewish in America in the 1930s and 1940s.
The Fixer, by Bernard Malamud
Russia, 1911. Yakov Bok, a luckless Jewish handyman, abandoned by his wife, decides to leave the shtetl, seeking improved fortune in the outside world.