Isaac's Torah: A Novel

(Paperback)

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This novel is the saga in five parts of Isaac Jacob Blumenfeld, who grows up in Kolodetz, a small town near Lvov, which, when he's a boy, belongs to the Hapsburg Empire, but which subsequently belongs to Poland, Soviet Russia, Germany, and then Russia again. Isaac survives the absurdity and horror of Eastern Europe during the 20th century by pretending to be a fool. If this is an old Jewish art, then Isaac is a consummate artist. He plays the fool all his life, from his boyhood in Kolodetz shetl to the time when he is an accused war criminal in a Gulag in Siberia. Inseparable from Isaac's life and story are the Yiddish jokes and fables of Kolodetz. These and the counsel of his dear friend, the rabbi and chair of the atheist club in Kolodetz, Shmuel Ben David, sustain Isaac through two world wars, three concentration camps, and five motherlands. The book puts on record, with full art, what is perhaps the central story of the last one hundred years. It is a wise book.

Reviews

Named an Editors Choice by the Denver Post

A powerful novelIsaacs mesmerizing voice charms through every disaster, and engages and delights the reader without distracting from Wagensteins profound insights into lifes absurdities. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Intelligent and deeply felt.Kirkus Reviews

In Wagensteins engaging historical novel, the wry humor reveals both the unbelievable horrors of history and fleeting moments of transcendenceGreat for reading groups. Booklist

Wagensteins picaresque story portrays Jewish humor and Jewish wisdom as inextricable twins and time-tested agents of survival. The Nation

A very funny book about very sad events. Isaac Blumenfeld suffers at the hands of the Nazis, loses his entire family when his village is invaded, and is sent to a Siberian labor camp because of mistaken identity. But, incredibly, Bulgarian author Angel Wagenstein makes us laugh. Foreword Reviews

Angel Wagensteins novel is an important monument to the lives of those who suffered the horrors of the two World Wars and all those wars extenuations, but rather than a lamentation of Blumenfelds, and the Jewish peoples, loss, it is a celebration of his and their lives. As uplifting as it is tragic, Isaacs Torah is a great contribution to the literature of the period, the Wars, and the Holocaust, and to world literature as a whole. Three Percent

Armed with Yiddish lore and the wide-ranging advice of a colorful brother-in-law who is alternately a rabbi and an atheist, this simple tailors son from the shtetl of Kolodetz tries to navigate a course through the great terrors of his age. Washington City Paper

Author Bio

Angel Wagenstein is a Bulgarian screenwriter and author. His film Stars, shot in 1959 by the German director Konrad Wolf, was awarded the Special Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival. His fiction includes the triptych of novels Isaac's Torah, Far from Toledo, and Farewell, Shanghai, which have been published in French, German, Russian, English, Czech, Polish, Macedonian, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, and other languages. Farewell, Shanghai received the Jean Monnet Prize of European literature in 2004, and in 2022 was adapted into a six-episode television series directed by Radu Mih_x0103_ileanu. Wagenstein is a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Merite and a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Elizabeth Frank is a Professor of Modern Languages and Literature at Bard College. Deliana Simeonova was born in Bulgaria and studied English philology and American literature at the University of Sofia. She has worked for civil-society NGOs in Tajikistan, Serbia, Liberia, and now does that work in her native Bulgaria.