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Search - A Seat At The Table: A Novel of Forbidden Choices

A Seat At The Table A Novel of Forbidden Choices
Author: Joshua Halberstam

A Seat at the Table tells the story of the young man, Elisha, who grows up in post-war Brooklyn in a family of Chassidim, a Jewish sect with one hundred thousand people in America. A cipher to most Amercans and even to most Jews who live blocks away, the movement's renaissance after near total extinction in the fires of the Holocaust is a... more » remarkable achievement not only in Jewish history but for America as well. Elisha is a scion of the major Chassidic rabbinical dynasties, the Rebbes charged with nurturing the spiritual life of their followers. The novel depicts the profound - and largely unknown - social network of this resurgent, still traumatized community, into which Elisha is born. Every member is every member's responsibility: the sick and elderly are visited daily, the poor are fed and clothed, the unemployed given work, and the children taught in bustling Chassidic schools. The central, sustaining focus of this faith community is its devotion to the Chassidic mystical movement that originated in the Carpathian mountains in the eighteenth century. At the fulcrum of this voyage is Elisha's bittersweet relationship with his father, a Chassidic leader, Holocaust survivor, sophisticated and learned, determined to chart a course for himself, his family and community in modern America but confronted now with the stirrings of his son whom he loves with such devotion and anxiety. As Elisha explores the world beyond the closed and isolated Chassidic community, he presents the most difficult of all challenges to his father: he has fallen in love with a non-Jewish girl, Katrina, whom he met in college, an almost stereotypical "shiksa," a vivacious blond, from the heartland of the Midwest. She and her world are as foreign to him as he and his world are to her, and the two learn to navigate across their mutual planets, zigzagging between the promise of their relationship and its seeming impossibility. Elisha at first toggles between solace in her embrace and the tears on his father's face. But there are limits to tradition's tolerance, and Elisha must finally choose. His estrangement from his father becomes a bitter sore that festers and contorts his spirit. And it is, finally, the alien Katrina who shows him how to overcome alienation, how to recoup his sense of joy, how to make peace with his heritage and his father, how to reclaim his legacy. She will become his full partner as he returns to his waiting seat at the table.

Because this is a Chassidic novel, it is also a novel about storytelling itself. Chassidism teaches that a story is a form of prayer; Elisha's tales are his prayers both for and to his son. These fables (Chassidic legends translated from the Yiddish by the author) challenge and soothe Elisha - and the reader - as he forays into his new world. In the novel, he must somehow embrace and refashion these ancient legends to help him along his own, different path.

Unlike the Chassidim of Chaim Potok's popular The Chosen, published forty years ago, the Chassidic world of A Seat at the Table has already taken deep roots in this country. And unlike that pioneering novel in which the lure confronting the protagonist was modern Orthodoxy, the alternatives in this novel are the far more enticing yet far more transgressive -- secularism and its pivotal values of individual choice and individual love. The conflict here is starker, the stakes more heartbreaking.

ISBN-13: 9781402208393
ISBN-10: 1402208391
Publication Date: 3/1/2009
Pages: 304
Rating:

Currently 5/5 Stars.

5 stars, based on 2 ratings

Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Literature & Fiction >> World Literature >> Jewish
Literature & Fiction >> General >> Contemporary
Literature & Fiction >> General >> Literary
Religion & Spirituality >> Literature & Fiction

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