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Sons and Daughters: A Novel - Hardcover

Grade, Chaim

 
9780394536460: Sons and Daughters: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0394536460 ISBN 13: 9780394536460
Verlag: Alfred A. Knopf, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

From “one of the greatest—if not the greatest—contemporary Yiddish novelists” (Elie Wiesel), the long-awaited English translation of a work, Tolstoyan in scope, that chronicles the last, tumultuous decade of a world succumbing to the march of modernity

“It is me the prophet laments when he cries out, ‘My enemies are the people in my own home.’” The Rabbi ignored his borscht and instead chewed on a crust of bread dipped in salt. “My greatest enemies are my own family.”

Rabbi Sholem Shachne Katzenellenbogen’s world, the world of his forefathers, is crumbling before his eyes. And in his own home! His eldest, Bentzion, is off in Bialystok, studying to be a businessman; his daughter Bluma Rivtcha is in Vilna, at nursing school. For her older sister, Tilza, he at least managed to find a suitable young rabbi, but he can tell things are off between them. Naftali Hertz? Forget it; he’s been lost to a philosophy degree in Switzerland (and maybe even a goyish wife?). And now the rabbi’s youngest, Refael’ke, wants to run off to the Holy Land with the godless Zionists.  
    Originally serialized in the 1960s and 70s, in New York-based Yiddish newspapers, Chaim Grade’s Sons and Daughters is a precious glimpse of a way of life that is no longer—the  rich, Yiddish culture of Poland and Lithuania that the Holocaust would eradicate. We meet the Katzenellenbogens in the tiny village of Morehdalye, in the 1930s, when gangs of Poles are beginning to boycott Jewish merchants and the modern, secular world is pressing in on the shtetl from all sides. It’s this clash, between the freethinking secular life and a life bound by religious duty—and the comforts offered by each—that stands at the center of Sons and Daughters. 
    With characters that rival the homespun philosophers and loveable rouges of Sholem Aleichem and I. B. Singer—from the brooding Zalia Ziskind, paralyzed by the suffering of others, to the Dostoevskian demon Shabse Shepsel—Grade’s masterful novel brims with humanity and with heartbreaking affection for a world, once full of life in all its glorious complexity, that would in just a few years vanish forever.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

CHAIM GRADE (1910-1982) is “one of the 20th century’s pre-eminent writers of Yiddish fiction” (The New York Times). Born in Vilna (now Vilnius), Lithuania. Grade fled to New York, in 1948, after losing his first wife and mother to the Holocaust. With his second wife, Inna, he lived in the Bronx for the remainder of his life. Grade is the author of numerous works of poetry and prose, including the novels The Yeshiva,?The Agunah,?Rabbis and Wives, and My Mother’s Sabbath Days, and his beloved philosophical dialogue, My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner.

ROSE WALDMAN is the translator of S. An-sky’s Pioneers: The First Breach and I. L. Peretz’s Married. She is the recipient of fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Yiddish Book Center.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

As they took a stroll—­Bluma Riv­tcha, the rabbi’s daughter, and Zindel Kadish, her prospective fiancé—­the eyes of the townspeople followed them indulgently, lovingly. Everyone knew how much suffering the rabbi’s other children had caused him, and so they wished him joy from his younger daughter, at least. Zindel’s grandfather, the elderly dayan, was also entitled to some joy from his grandson. Some years ago, Zindel’s parents had moved overseas to Canada, where they’d divorced and seemed to have forgotten about bringing Zindel across to join them. He remained at his grandfather’s home, the one consolation of the man’s old age.

Zindel was a young man of twenty-­three, with dark brown eyes and a head of black hair. He boasted a wide forehead and the straight nose of a sensible person, a dimpled chin like that of a pampered only son, cherry-­colored lips, and a sweet smile. Even in the heat of summer he wore a proper suit, complete with vest, shirt, and tie, and a wide-­brimmed hat tilted at an angle. He walked ramrod straight with raised shoulders, always looking straight ahead, as if he never—­not for a moment—­forgot that he was of marriageable age, the dayan’s grandson, and a student of Warsaw’s Tachkemoni, a yeshiva and university combined. As they strolled, he kept throwing sidelong glances at the fair, rose-­colored profile of his bride-­to-­be, her coal-­black hair swinging over her left temple.

Bluma Riv­tcha was not very pleased about having to wear long-­sleeved blouses, long skirts, and stockings every time she went out. Not that her father said anything, but when she put on something immodest, his face clouded with pain. And, of course, she didn’t want to cause him distress. The one thing she was still allowed to keep free was her hair, no scarf containing it until she got married. She squinted up at the sun and waited for a breeze to blow through her uncovered tresses.

The Moreh­dalye residents knew that every afternoon the rabbi studied Talmud and Jewish law with the dayan’s grandson. But over the last few days their schedule had been disrupted: the rabbi’s son-­in-­law had come to visit. This change gave the prospective son-­in-­law more time to take strolls with his bride.

The couple walked to the edge of town, down the path that led to the Narev River, until the curious onlookers could no longer see them. With the couple out of sight, the inhabitants pulled their heads back from the windows. The rabbi’s house sank once again into gloominess despite the dazzling summer’s day outside, with everything glinting like brass.

The rabbi’s home was the first house you saw when you entered Moreh­dalye, and the last one you saw when you left. A long wooden structure, it stood at the corner of the synagogue street with windows on all sides, looking out on the row of houses with balconies, the beis medrash on the hill, and the dirt road winding through Moreh­dalye toward Zembin and Lomzhe. Some of the bedroom windows provided a view of the yard and garden opposite the dilapidated stable, chicken coops, and dried-­out, broken-­down well. The low shingled roof of the rabbi’s house was overgrown with greenish-­yellow moss, and it sunk lower each year. Bushes and tall grass went untrimmed. Alongside the path, willow trees drooped, their thick leafy tops sagging, barely stirring in the breeze, mumbling, as if in a trance, that they’d gotten lost somehow. How they yearned to be growing along the shore of a wide, happy river where cold, fresh water flowed.

On the windowsill of the rabbi’s beis din chambers stood a copper menorah ornamented with two small lions. It remained in this very same spot all through winter, all through summer. Some of the shutters were perpetually closed; the rabbi and his wife rarely looked out those windows. When you walked up the steps of the long, narrow veranda, the floor planks creaked and sighed “Time for some home improvement.” And when the front door was opened, its hinges squeaked, as if in reply to the planks, “It’s falling apart outside because it’s falling apart inside.”

In the drowsy silence a dry August heat glowed. The brief shadows lay motionless. Dazzled by its own brightness, the sun peered out fiery-­peeled, hovering mid-­sky, as if it couldn’t figure out where to go from there. On the other side of the bridge, a dust cloud floated from a peasant’s wagon plowing through deep white sand. A student’s weary voice wafted out of the open windows of the beis medrash on the hill and zigzagged through the empty daytime synagogue street.

The plaster was peeling on the bluish-­white outer walls of the rabbi’s house; inside, in the cold hall, it was dim. Pale green and yellow-­spotted plants sported bizarre shapes, as if they were beings from another world with prickly heads and round hands—­half plant, half creature. The tall gray mirror, the round table on heavy curved legs, the armchairs with sunken seats, and the shadow of the sukkah room’s winged roof—­all were mired in outdated rigidity. Speckles of light trembled through the trees at the window, becoming lost in the folds of faded materials like rays of sun in stagnant water.

With his elbow pressed against the wall, the Moreh­dalye rabbi, Sholem Shachne Katzenellenbogen, stood at one side of one of the windows, his son-­in-­law, Yaakov Asher Kahane, at the other. Yaakov Asher was the rabbi of Le­cheve and also the head of its yeshiva. The father-­in-­law was tall, thin, with narrow shoulders. His gray beard rose past his cheekbones but barely grew below his chin. Through his large round glasses peered sharp eyes, veiled by an aged sadness that had set in years ago, like gray spiderwebs hanging from the branches of an evergreen.

The rabbi was almost sixty-­five, and his son-­in-­law nearly forty. Shorter than his father-­in-­law, Yaakov Asher was broad-­shouldered, corpulent, with a strong, brick-­like forehead, fat lips, and a red beard. Yellow sun spots dotted his face and his stubby fingers. His lapels were dirty; the jacket itself was tight beneath his arms and across his stomach. He kept twisting his face as he spoke—­his collar and tie were tight—­and stubble from his beard pricked his sweaty neck. Anyone with a bit of perceptiveness could instantly discern that this rosh yeshiva was a zealous man, one who toiled in the study of Torah. Like his father-­in-­law, the son-­in-­law gave off a sense of sadness. In his eyes, sorrow smoldered.

Yaakov Asher stuck a finger of his right hand into his beard and sighed. “Well, she certainly tries to conform. She tries to be friendly with the townswomen and my students. But you can’t fool the world, and Tilza can fool herself even less; she’s not that sort of person. So it’s no good. The yeshiva’s growing, may no evil eye harm it. Our family has a respectable livelihood, thank God. But your daughter doesn’t want to be a rebbetzin. Or, more precisely, it’s not so much that she doesn’t want it, but she can’t. She’s not cut out for it.”

Sholem Shachne was annoyed. He felt that his daughter’s husband was reproaching him. Still, Yaakov Asher was considered one of the Torah greats, so despite his annoyance, his father-­in-­law addressed him with respect.

“I warned you before the wedding that Tilza doesn’t want to lead a rebbetzin’s life. But you answered me, ‘My soul desires her,’ and that you hope...

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Verlag
Alfred A. Knopf
Erscheinungsdatum
2025
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0394536460
ISBN 13 
9780394536460
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
704
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Knopf
https://knopfdoubleday.com

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