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The Chaff
A novel about the precursors of the Russian Revolution and the foundation of the State of Israel.
260 pages, Paperback
First published June 6, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 16, 2013
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This review is from: The Chaff (Paperback)
The Chaff: what you throw away. Chafetz recreates a 19th Century Russia steeped in racism and anti-semitism and in so doing he creates a reminder that the Holocaust had deep roots. When an Empire tries to destroy an entire people and their history, when an empire corrals its citizens like cattle, you know you're looking at the deepest kind of hatred. But here, the throw-aways fight back. We see a revolution in its infancy, a revolution that won't play out for another forty years.
This novel explores racial and ethnic hatred while it examines the conflict between love and duty.
Focusing on a girl, Usell Binah, caught up in the complex and bloody battles following the assassination of a Tsar, Chafetz sets her on an empowering journey of self-realization in which she discovers her inner strength, sacrifices herself for love and at the same time finds the power of duty. Usell Binah epitomizes the strength and will of the Jewish people to recover their homeland. At once an adventure tale, a social critique, a commentary on the politics behind the birth of Communism, and an allegory of the long and terrible battle leading to Statehood this novel is a call to eternal vigilance. Chafetz shows the determination and the strong will to survive embodied in the words: Never Again.
This review is from: The Chaff (Paperback)
The Chaff: what you throw away. Chafetz recreates a 19th Century Russia steeped in racism and anti-semitism and in so doing he creates a reminder that the Holocaust had deep roots. When an Empire tries to destroy an entire people and their history, when an empire corrals its citizens like cattle, you know you're looking at the deepest kind of hatred. But here, the throw-aways fight back. We see a revolution in its infancy, a revolution that won't play out for another forty years.
This novel explores racial and ethnic hatred while it examines the conflict between love and duty.
Focusing on a girl, Usell Binah, caught up in the complex and bloody battles following the assassination of a Tsar, Chafetz sets her on an empowering journey of self-realization in which she discovers her inner strength, sacrifices herself for love and at the same time finds the power of duty. Usell Binah epitomizes the strength and will of the Jewish people to recover their homeland. At once an adventure tale, a social critique, a commentary on the politics behind the birth of Communism, and an allegory of the long and terrible battle leading to Statehood this novel is a call to eternal vigilance. Chafetz shows the determination and the strong will to survive embodied in the words: Never Again.
July 5, 2013
Separating the Wheat from the Chaff
The metaphor of "the chaff" usually refers to disposing of something unworthy or worthless, e.g., Matthew 3:12. However, the title of Joel Chavitz's book The Chaff brings to mind something stronger and more terrible than even the words of John the Baptist in the New Testament, namely, how can we consider those people we perceive as outsiders as "Chaff?" Such is the case in this good book about the pogroms of self-confessed Christians done on Ashkenazi Jews living in the shtetl of Tsarist Russia.
Reb Samuel Binah raises his daughter, Ussel to be an independent thinker without a mother. Differing from the usual Jewish village girl, his daughter reads, learns languages and wonders about life outside her closed world. In the threat of an onslaught, Samuel notes, "We must hold tight to the stalk ... or like this chaff, the wind will drive us away."
Ussel uses her learning, her skills and her wile to survive while searching for the mother she lost as a child through clouded circumstances. Clinging to her Jewish identity, she tempers her ethics and culture with reason begotten from necessity during a tempest of political, economic and ethnic cleansing so as not to be blown away by the winds of hatred and violence
The metaphor of "the chaff" usually refers to disposing of something unworthy or worthless, e.g., Matthew 3:12. However, the title of Joel Chavitz's book The Chaff brings to mind something stronger and more terrible than even the words of John the Baptist in the New Testament, namely, how can we consider those people we perceive as outsiders as "Chaff?" Such is the case in this good book about the pogroms of self-confessed Christians done on Ashkenazi Jews living in the shtetl of Tsarist Russia.
Reb Samuel Binah raises his daughter, Ussel to be an independent thinker without a mother. Differing from the usual Jewish village girl, his daughter reads, learns languages and wonders about life outside her closed world. In the threat of an onslaught, Samuel notes, "We must hold tight to the stalk ... or like this chaff, the wind will drive us away."
Ussel uses her learning, her skills and her wile to survive while searching for the mother she lost as a child through clouded circumstances. Clinging to her Jewish identity, she tempers her ethics and culture with reason begotten from necessity during a tempest of political, economic and ethnic cleansing so as not to be blown away by the winds of hatred and violence
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews