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Tag Archives: golem

Magic in Manhattan: The Golem and the Jinni

02 Monday Jan 2023

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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1899, book review, complex narrative, desire vs reason, golem, Helene Wecker, historical fiction, immigrants, Jewish life, jinni, Kabbala, legend, Lower East Side, magical realism, occult, pleasure vs conscience, Syrian Desert

Review: The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker
HarperCollins, 2013. 484 pp. $16

The year 1899 witnesses two occult events, unnoticed by ordinary folk but with great potential for mischief. A Polish businessman sets sail for New York with a female golem in a crate, a creature made of clay through Kabbalistic magic. But he dies during the voyage, leaving the golem, who knows nothing about life, to cope once the ship reaches its destination—she walks ashore and takes up residence on the Lower East Side. She’s a newborn adult with immense physical strength and an ability to hear unexpressed human thoughts and desires.

Mikuláš Aleš’s 1899 rendering of the golem which, according to legend, was created by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel in 16th-century Prague (courtesy http://www.zwoje-scrolls.com/zwoje31/text06p.htm via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Meanwhile, blocks away, a tinsmith repairs an antique copper flask, unwittingly freeing the jinni trapped inside. A very different being, he’s lived for centuries, mostly in the Syrian Desert, and will probably live several more. And though he’s strong and quick, what sets him apart is the light he radiates and the warmth of his touch, which allows him to melt most metals, as the tinsmith soon discovers. But this jinni grants no one three wishes. He’s no slave and will fight hard against any attempt to change or modify his behavior.

The narrative of The Golem and the Jinni, besides telling the (somewhat) magical realist tale of how these two characters adjust to the New World—and whom they influence, and how—is much larger than that, wherein lies its charm. In vigorous, vivid prose, the novel explores what freedom, conscience, empathy, and pleasure mean to human existence, and how difficult it is to balance them.

The golem, who acquires the name Chava (via the Hebrew word for “life”) gets a job in a bakery, where she works like three women and tries hard to fit in, unnoticed. But she feels cursed by her gift of hearing what people would rather hide; a chorus of desire clamors in her head, and it seems to her that humans never stop wanting, especially what they can’t have. Aware of her terrifying strength and the need to act justly and carefully, Chava dares not let herself go, ever. What’s more, if an unscrupulous person ever learned her true identity and uttered the correct incantation, she’d be bound as slave to that master, likely for evil purposes.

By contrast, the jinni, called Ahmad, has no particular love for humans, sees nothing wrong with taking pleasure or profit where he may find it, and has little or no loyalty to anyone. Consequently, when he meets Chava, the two irritate each other no end, yet, as in the attraction of opposites, each realizes what the other represents and is curious. They seek each other’s company at night, because neither likes or needs to sleep, and there’s a lot of time to spend. So they take nocturnal walks, as with this excursion along the rooftops of Prince Street:

The rooftops were like a hidden thoroughfare, bustling with nighttime traffic. Men, women, and children came and went, running errands, passing information, or simply heading home. Workingmen in greased overalls held parliament around the rims of ash-barrels, their faces red and flickering. Boys idled in corners, eyes alert. The Golem caught the sense of borders being guarded, but the Jinni, it seemed, was a familiar face. Mostly their doubts were directed at herself: a strange woman, tall and clean and primly dressed. Some of the younger boys took her for a social worker, and hid in the shadows.

Naturally, there are complications; The Golem and the Jinni is an intricate book, maybe to a fault. There’s the rabbi who mentors Chava; the bakery; the social worker smitten by her; and the mysterious man-of-all-work who pretends to do his bidding but is really biding his time. You’ve also got the tinsmith; neighborhood characters like a physician turned ice-cream maker; a beautiful, young socialite; and Ahmad’s long back story in the Syrian Desert, often hard to distinguish from a dream—or, sometimes, to place accurately within the time frame of the novel.

Wecker’s rendering of the Lower East Side works well enough, but, though I get a sense of certain places or neighborhoods, the scenery sometimes feels more like a stage set than a lived-in place. I also note a few minor anachronisms, facets of life that didn’t yet exist in 1899, though would a few years later. The presentation of Jewish life stumbles in places—for instance, the rabbi doesn’t seem entirely rabbinical, and the bakery likely would have closed during Passover—but again, not enough to question authenticity.

Nevertheless, despite occasional obscurities, particularly where the narrative’s disparate parts fail to fit together seamlessly, I recommend The Golem and the Jinni. It’s a wonderful tale, full of passion, adventure, and inquiry, told with imaginative flair.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Holocaust Superwoman: The World That We Knew

22 Monday Aug 2022

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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Alice Hoffman, anti-Semitism, book review, expository storytelling, folklore, France, Germany, golem, historical fiction, Holocaust, literary fiction, magical realism, no and furthermore, perceptions of evil, Second World War, superheroes

Review: The World That We Knew, by Alice Hoffman
Simon & Schuster, 2019. 365 pp. $28

In spring 1941, those Jews still left in Berlin live from hand to mouth, managing each day as best they can. But Hanni Kohn, who recognizes her end is near, determines that her twelve-year-old daughter, Lea, will escape. Hanni visits the household of a famous rabbi, seeking a miracle, but he’s not to be disturbed. It’s his seventeen-year-old daughter, Ettie, who agrees to help, and the task is most unusual and occult: to create a golem, who’ll protect Lea and see her to Paris, where she has distant cousins.

The golem, a centuries-old figure in Jewish mysticism and folklore, is a creature made of dust or clay with a human appearance, no soul or feeling, yet with physical powers craved by a people who live in peril. Sixteenth-century Prague provides a famous example of the legend, which Mitchell James Kaplan borrowed for his novel the Fifth Servant. But you can also link the golem to 1930s superheroes, fighters for freedom, and the rule of law in a world tearing itself apart.

Hoffman, however, has a slightly different game in mind:

The figure had cooled into the shape of a woman. She was tall, with long legs and a well-proportioned body. Her hair was flowing and dark, the color of damp soil. The form had been given ruach, the breath of bones, the life force that animates every creature on earth. Its lack of a soul would allow it to perceive the spiritual aspects of the world that no human could ever know or see. Good and evil appeared in their truest forms to a golem, death was easy to perceive and the spirits of the dead could be summoned.

Aptly named Ava, for she can speak to birds, she’s tasked with guiding Lea, Ettie, and her sister, Marta across the border, then to Paris. But Ava’s existence is an affront to God, and as such, must not outlast her usefulness. Once the war ends, she must die.

The narrative therefore relies on magical realism, Hoffman’s trademark, a genre I’ve never taken to. Yet The World That We Knew is a beautiful, passionate novel about life and death, love as miracle and sacrifice, and the nature of grief. It’s also a page-turner.

Just as the escape fails to go as planned for all parties involved, reaching Paris offers less shelter than the refugees hoped. After all, the Germans have invaded, and the French police vigorously help them round up Jews for deportation. Further, the cousins want no part of the refugees, though the younger son, Julien, falls for Lea.

Consequently, “no — and furthermore” abides in these pages, and though the increasing cast of characters has more than its fair share of luck, they suffer losses too. The realism has a magical component but also a satisfyingly hard edge.

Two women in Paris, June 1942, wearing the yellow star that marks them as Jews (courtesy German Federal Archive,
Bild 183-N0619-506, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

At times, the expository storytelling style bothers me, in which Hoffman explains the action. I want to be allowed closer, to be shown what’s happening. Similarly, the historical passages that teach the Holocaust in France sit wrong; they read like lectures and occasionally err in surpassing the knowledge people had at the time, particularly the precise destination of the trains full of deportees and what would happen to them once they got there.

Nevertheless, I understand Hoffman’s temptation to impart this information. I grew up conversant with the Holocaust, partly because my parents came of age during the war, an exposure that today’s generations lack. The author apparently wishes to redress that.

Fortunately, around the time the refugees leave Paris, the narrative kicks into a higher gear, and when it does, the storytelling shifts as well, showing more and explaining less. My favorite character is Ava, who comes to appreciate what life is, why humans cling to it, and its advantages and disadvantages. I like her transformation from unfeeling clay to sensibility very much. With evil pervading the world, it takes courage even to see what’s worthwhile, let alone to act accordingly, the problem the human characters face.

But that issue touches Ava too, in her own way, not least in her relationship with a heron, with whom she dances when his migration flight brings him through France. Also, she has a skill that comes in handy: her ability to perceive the black-robed angel of death, Azriel, as he hovers, waiting his chance to inscribe a victim’s name, a ledger in his hands. This image will stay with me; I think it comes from folklore.

As my regular readers know, I’m particular about Holocaust novels and won’t touch those in which Jews seem mere historical artifacts, depicted for narrative convenience. I’m pleased to say that The World That We Knew swept me away for its moral evocations, characterizations, and sheer imagination.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

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