The frozen rabbi of Steve Stern Review

The Jewish boy Bernie Karp is full during puberty. Thick and full of acne pustules on the face he does not know his erotic fantasies where. In the newspaper he discovered a variation of masturbation with a piece of liver. How could he try out the times? Looking for the piece of meat he opens the freezer in the basement of his home and ransacked it – until he quite low to the ground a large block of ice discovered, and in the interior of an old man with “gaunt Falk face, yellowish beard, a cap, a Damenmuff very similar.

” Under the body Bernie finds a tattered book he creates aside immediately.

At dinner asks Bernie after block of ice in the freezer. Father Karp says, “Oh, that thing, it’s an heirloom Some people have groomed pets in memory; we have a frozen rabbi in the basement An old family tradition…” This is done in 1999.

Now, the novel returns to the late 1880s in Poland.

The Jewish population lives under the yoke of the Russians. Anyone who has a little money, cruises across the pond to the land of opportunity: to America. Those left behind are harassed mercilessly by the Russians.

These are the circumstances in which Rabbi Eliezer ben Zephyr, a holy man ( “the Boibiczer miracle”), one day sets a pond to the ground at the edge, to meditate. The world caught up, he does not notice that storm and cloudburst umtosen him that the water rises, that he is slowly washed over by the waves and eventually worn away.

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Gone is the spiritual leader of the community! Everyone is looking for him for days, but without result. What else can you do? The rabbi can not ask more, neither Scripture nor the Torah give information.

One harsh winter freezes the pond to, and Josi, the widower, would like to cut blocks from the ice. After the baron who owns the pond, his permission was granted to Josl makes his no-good son Salo to work. While father toils, Salo roams along the shore – and accidentally discovered the Rebbe in the ice. The municipality decides not to thaw him but certainly aufzubahren him in an icehouse.

This wise decision not only saves the Iceman, but Salo life because this keeps up straight at that when the Russians organize among the remaining Jews in the village a sadistic slaughter. Salo shipped the rabbi in block of ice in a coffin, loads it onto a cart and makes his way to Lodz. Go Salo exchanges its decrepit mare against the emaciated and tortured a farmer’s wife, and this addition establishes the pedigree of the Karp family. Then the adventurous journey of Rabbi block of ice-coffin from Lodz via New York to Memphis begins as grandfather Ruben wrote them in the book, which is now – one hundred years later. Read together Bernie and his girlfriend Lou.

But what will become of our saint, the Boibiczer miracle? After a power failure, he awakened from its slumber and now finds himself in the middle of the American way of life catapulted. Immediately fascinated the American depravity which presents itself to him in daytime talk show. He realizes that gluttony and spending spree, they can not make you happy, and developed an ingenious business idea: He founded the “House of enlightenment”, where the stressed-out Americans may occupy against good money courses that teach him to true happiness and true salvation to find. Quickly grows out of the idea, fueled by media campaigns and its own Internet platform, a gigantic enterprise, commercially through and through. The boss has a bodyguard and two lovely ladies who care intensely about his physical well-being.

While Rabbi Eliezer thus completely turns to the earthly, Bernie takes a line to the mystical. After intensive study of relevant Jewish literature, the “couch potato” sublimated into a saint. Has him earlier his lust dominates, so he can in a kind of ecstasy even his body to leave whenever he wants.

At the end there is a confrontation, Ben as Bernie Eliezer Zephir one last time visited, to save him, but he has a high price to pay for it …a Impetuous novel, full of tragedy, drama and comedy. The writing style of the author is marked distinctively Jewish, both in terms of the peculiar humor and the Yiddish pronunciation. A glossary helps to understand the Jews to the uninitiated, the special terms used plenty of religion, culture and everyday life. All this gives the extraordinary epic authenticity affairs and -kolorit of the late 19th century. Focuses on life in the Jewish ghetto and on Ellis Iceland – the author has captured masterfully. How much misery can a person endure? At that time, Russians, now Jewish Mafiosi suck their fellow unscrupulous to the last drop of blood from.

The superficial American society of the 20th and 21st centuries forms the stage for the role Eliezer ben Zephyr in a burlesque, bawdy comedy , A bizarre and macabre narrative material with a taste of bitterness in a novel, not omits the suffering of the Jews for thousands of years. Steve Stern, born in 1947 in Tennessee, has received many awards for his work, among others with the Washington Post Best Book of the Year Award and the National Jewish Book Award.