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PAGE 22 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE May 2, 1986
Semi-Annual
Half-Price Sale
Book review
‘The Book of Abraham’
by Susan Birnhaum
11 \
THU BOOK OTA BRA HA M, bv \1arek Halter. Translated from the
Trench by Lowell Blair. Henry Holt and Company, New )'ork. 722
pages. $ 19.95.
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It is now the turn of the English-
speaking world to be wowed by a
book that, in 1983. took the
French reading public by storm.
The French, being avid readers,
are a good source for criticism, and
when they turned Marek Halter’s
“The Book of Abraham” (La
memoire d’Abraham) into a best
seller, they made a resounding
statement, not only on a master-
work of contemporary literature
but on the public's readiness to
embrace the subject of Jewish
history.
“The Book of Abraham,” trans
lated faithfully and beautifully into
English by Lowell Blair, is a giant
love story with the Jewish past, a
testament to the indomitable will
of the Jewish people to continue in
the face of the most overwhelming
trials, and a very personal quest by
the author for his own family’s
history.
"The Book of Abraham” is a
novel, a fictionalized account of
2,000 years of Jew ish history. But
what a novel! Written in almost
liturgical style, this 722-page chron
icle of the wanderings of 80 genera
tions of one Jewish family is a
mammoth compilation of oral his
tory and the most imaginative em
bellishment, infused with Halter’s
thorough knowledge of Jewish
laws, Talmudic exegesis and a-
stounding historical research
brought together in soaring prose.
A master storyteller. Halter has
captured the sounds and smells of
each period, the landscapes and
architecture, wars and conspir
acies, bringing the very ordinary
people of the family of Abraham
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into contact with some of the most
renowned personalities of Jewish
history, from Rashi to l.L. Peretz.
And tying together all the genera
tions of this errant Jewish family is
the Scroll of Abraham, a marve
lous device that Halter created to
unify a long lineage of scribes,
who, in the fifteenth century, en
counter Gutenberg, inventor of
moveable type, and then go on to
become the famed Hebrew printers
of Soncino, turning the scroll into
the Book of Abraham.
From the baleful beginnings
with the sack of Jerusalem, the
family of Abraham, set upon by
murderous Romans and bereft of
wife and mother, makes its way
into exile, from Alexandria to
Hippo and Carthage, Cordova and
Toledo, Narbonne, Troyes, Stras
bourg, Soncino, Constantinople,
Paris during the Revolution, and
Warsaw as the ghetto closes in
around the ill-fated Jews. As Hal
ter’s grandfather, Abraham, falls
to his death pulling the pin of a
grenade in the Warsaw ghetto, the
5-year-old Marek is crawling into
one more exile with his parents,
Salomon, a printer, and Perl, a
Yiddish poet.
Indeed, it is this unusual choice
of Halter’s to meld the real with the
imagined, working back from his
memory of his family’s most recent
history to the constructive ima
ginings of a plausible past that
makes this work so unique. Inter
spersed with his chronological, fic
tional accounts are his own per
sonal memoirs of his years of work
on the book, his meetings through
out the world with Halters, his
talks with archivists and rabbis,
and personal musings on his own
quest. These italicized chapters,
sometimes blending dreamily into
the not-quite-certain, lend the
work both a most personal credi
bility and a unification of purpose.
He has written the book after the
passing of both his parents, “prob
ably as a way of making myself feel
less alone on this earth.”
This is truly the son of a poet
speaking, an artist, a man who has
gathered from around him, in
place and time, not just memories,
but the ethics of a people, and has
lent them to his perception of oth
ers:
“Abraham, known as Kosakl,
was a good Jew. ...His primary rule
of conduct was inspired by the
Chapters ol the Fathers: ‘Where
there are no men, strive to be a
man.’ And when, as often hap
pened, someone referred to the
Cossacks in front of him, he simply
said, 'Don’t judge others until
you've been in their situation.’ ”
And in his own situation of diffi
culty, Halter explains his own
choice for survival, and how, quite
clearly, he would become a w riter.
“1 became French,” he writes,
for in 1950 the family, at his behest,
chose Paris so that he might be
come a painter. “Paris...1 knew
Paris before 1 went there. ...
“In 1945, after having escaped
death in the Warsaw ghetto against
all likelihood, and after having
wandered between the plain of
Moscow and the steppes of Kazakh
stan, my parents and 1 found our
selves in Kokand, Uzbekistan. The
city was in the grip of famine. My
parents fell ill with typhoid fever. 1
had to get food for them but 1 did
not know how to steal, so in ex
change for a little rice I told them
about Paris.”
One sees, in this poignant pas
sage, how the writer and the artist
have been born of the long line of
scribes and printers, and through
the transition to manhood the
proud Jew has remained and de
veloped.
“The Temple and the sword
were not able to preserve the Jew
ish people from exile in the time of
Abraham the scribe, and I must
recognize that the Book and the
voice, exalted for centuries, failed
to protect them from barbarity.
There is probably no salvation in
one ol these triumphs to the exclu
sion of the other. But hope still
remains. 'Despair is not a solu
tion ’ the Israelis said after the dif
ficult Yom Kippur War of 1973.
'Not for us.’ ”
“The Book of Abraham" is a
monumental testimony to this ref
usal to despair.
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