The Yeshiva, Volume 1

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Bobbs-Merrill, 1976 - Fiction - 394 pages
[The author is the] winner of the Jewish Book Council's award for best novel of 1978 ... [The novel] does not concern itself with the interaction between the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe and the hostile non-Jewish communities that surrounded the, but rather with what takes place within the Jewish community itself. It is a saga about Talmudic students and their teachers, laced with plots and subplots involving brooding moralists consumed by guilt and doubts. It presents a panorama of life in Eastern Europe's yeshivas, or Talmudical academies, that has never been depicted before in fiction. The novel teems with life. We meet a host of characters, students of the yeshiva, rabbis, teachers, merchants, townspeople, peddlers, workers, and even thieves and lunatics. We see all these people through [the author's] eyes, a gentle view but one never distorted by nostalgia or sentiment. However, this book is not all somber and serious. It is laced with humor, tragi-comic situations, and hilarious descriptions and incidents. Stories of yeshiva students' idiosyncrasies, the way a community picks its rabbi, the hiding of secular books under the Talmud during school and after, and a bungled burning of books from the town library are just a few of the many lighter and comic situations presented ... This is a novel for all persons and all emotions, a book that will remain in the consciousness long after it has been read.-About this book.

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About the author (1976)

Grade was born in Vilna, Poland, where he received a thorough education in the talmudic academies of the region. He began writing poetry in 1932 and soon won literary recognition. He escaped the Nazi onslaught as a refugee in the Soviet Union, only to return to Poland after the war to find his mother and wife killed and his hometown destroyed. His later work, both poetry and prose, reflect the tragic Holocaust theme and is dedicated to the re-creation of a world that is no more. His characters are deeply rooted in Jewish tradition and the lore of his native land; his poetry is forceful and dramatic, with the pathos of national and personal tragedy.

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