Boek
It is Rosh Hashanah the Jewish New Year and Day of Judgment in Moscowduring the Stalinist purges of 1936. In the Lubyanka secret police prisonsenior investigator Grisha Shwartzman masterfully pursues the rigorous logicand obsessive legalism of the Soviet witchhunt. Facing an extraordinaryprisoner Grisha realizes that the Soviet system he has faithfully served ismurderously corrupt and that he himself will be the next victim but not aninnocent one. In despair he flees to his home where his deranged wife and anunexpected Rosh Hashanah letter from his fatherinlaw the enigmatic KrimskerRebbe in America await him. The Day of Judgment proves to be a startlingexperience as Grisha the once idealistic radical judges himself accepts hisresponsibilities and is guided to sublime passion and possible redemption byhis mad wife who for twenty years has been patiently awaiting him in a closedwardrobe.In 1942 a train of imprisoned Jews leaves the Warsaw ghetto for resettlementin the East. It is Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement and the holiest day ofthe Jewish year. In a crowded cattle car stands a lonely defeated individualwho is ashamed that he cannot even remember his own name. During the tortuousjourney Yechiel Katzman will overhear a talmudic debate and meet a dullwittedgiant who turns out to be none other than Itzik Dribble also from Krimsk. Asthey arrive in the death camp of Treblinka Yechiel remembers not only his namebut also the Krimsker Rebbes prophetic curse that exiled him from Krimsk fortyyears earlier. Yet as death approaches that curse will prove a blessing.Stalin and Hitler decree certain death but Grisha and Yechiel discoverJewishfates. The devil incites loneliness degradation despair and even complicitythrough memory the victims elicit community dignity and the awareness ofsanctity. Grishas Soviet Rosh Hashanah and Yechiels Nazi Yom Kippur aretruly Days of Awe. Even when deat «
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