This is the final installment of the 2008 Summer Reading series. To read other articles about books written by members of our local Jewish community, visit www.jewishchronicle.org.
I have a friend who can walk the streets of ancient Jerusalem in her mind. One night, she took me with her.
As we spoke, I felt the sand under my feet, and felt myself trudging up and down the old paths, touching the walls and seeing the people.
It wasn’t exactly time-travel, because I knew I was physically in Oconomowoc in 1993. But it left an imprint on my mind — one that historical fiction stimulates every time a good storyteller or author reels me in.
This summer, I immersed myself in Jewish books of that genre: A. B. Yehoshua’s “A Journey to the End of the Millennium”; Maggie Anton’s “Rashi’s Daughters Book I: Jocheved” and “Rashi’s Daughters Book II: Miriam”; and Noah Gordon’s “The Physician.”
Jewish historical fiction – including novel-length midrash – helps me feel at home in a particular time-period of Jewish life, and as I continue to develop as a storyteller and traveling teacher/performer, these vignettes particularly come in handy.
All these books are set about 1,000 years ago and describe the lives of the Jews and their non-Jewish counterparts in great detail.
"Journey to the End of the Millennium" focuses on the cultural clash between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews. In it, a prominent Jewish man with two wives travels from his home in North Africa to Paris and then to the Rhineland, in an attempt to convince his business partner/nephew’s new wife to allow her husband to continue the business partnership.
The problem? She grew up in Germany, where Ashkenazi Jews were horrified by the idea of polygamy. The journey is an adventure that opens our eyes and our hearts.
This novel never allows us to forget that the majority culture in Europe, the Christians, are gearing up for what they expect to be the return of their messiah, increasing the danger to both Jews and Muslims who are traveling together.
The "Rashi’s Daughters" books also take readers on a journey, to 11th century France. Anton’s descriptions not only reveal the challenges women may have faced but also give readers insight into how certain advances — like the horseshoe and plow — may have helped usher the change from subsistence farming to commerce.
The book explores the nature of love and includes liberal sprinklings of Talmud and citations from the historic (and at that time secret) commentary that Rashi was compiling about the Talmud.
Gordon’s “The Physician,” published in 1986, follows Robert Jeremy Cole from his 11th century boyhood in England, through Europe to an Arab medical school in Ispahan, Persia, where he studies under the immortal physician Avicenna.
Reading it, I felt transported. I swear I could smell the mushrooms and herbs being cooked over the open fire as two characters foraged for supper out in the countryside.
I was intrigued by the description of the overland travel, and the notion that Jews could always be counted on for hospitality to fellow Jews.
These books made me realize how easy my own travels are. This summer, as I traveled to and from the East Coast three times, I thought about how this trip would have been 1,000 years ago.
As I stayed with friends and acquaintances in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Boston, Maryland and everywhere I stopped, I felt the modern equivalent of that Jewish hospitality. We shared meals and discussed the state of creativity in Judaism. As a modern-day peddler of Jewish ideas and arts, I feel like the heir to a wonderful tradition.
Marge Eiseman is an award-winning Jewish educator and singer/songwriter with two CDs of original music.
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