Angels Always Come On Time

by Chaim Linder, Mark Linder

KIRKUS REVIEWS: An American immigrant explores the sprawling history of the Jewish people...through the struggles of generations of his family... The illuminating book...is rich in history...The author tells his family's story with passion, charm, and exquisite detail...As a memoir, it's beautifully rendered, and as history, it's masterfully told...an engrossing and important look at the Jewish experience of the last century and a half. CLARION REVIEW ****: Chaim Linder's remarkable memoir reaches into widely interesting territory...This memoir stands with the best of its kind, rendered in delicious detail by a brilliant yet ordinary man...with an unflagging sense of aliveness... BLUEINK REVIEW: ...Linder transports readers from his childhood in Palestine to his pursuit of the American Dream...skillfully combines personal detail with historical facts...an engaging memoir about an uncommon individual...particularly compelling.

668 pages, Hardcover

Published November 27, 2017

Reviews

[John Lack · Rating 5 out of 5]

A riveting tale of one man’s path through life. Chaim Linder’s story of faith, struggle, resilience and triumph is told in such a remarkably effective conversational style, you feel as though he is sitting across the table from you sharing his story. The book captures a perfect blend of spiritual influence, historical reference and personal anecdote. The author shares opinions related to his observations, while at the same time, skillfully allowing the reader room to consider a deeper significance that touches their own lives in a meaningful way. In a world where every book gets described a “must read”, this one earns the label, “Should Read”.

[Jgknobler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite the saccharine title, this is a marvelous memoir, and something of a collaboration between a deceased father and a writer son. Chaim Linder trekked with his ultra-Orthodox Jewish family from Poland to pre-Israel Palestine in 1879 and grew up in the tight-knit, impoverished Hasidic community of Jerusalem. Unable to earn enough to provide necessary dowries for his daughters, his father left for New York in 1925, taking a job as a "collector," or itinerant fundraiser, for his Yeshiva. Chaim joined him in 1929, shortly after the massacres of Jews in Hebron. In New York he slowly made his way, became a printer, married a woman who also had roots in Jerusalem, and had four sons.

The book has warmth and charm in its depiction of everyday life in nineteenth and early twentieth century Turkish-ruled Jerusalem, mostly from the point of view of a child. The strong and practical mother finds ways to earn money, opening a fabric store and, later, during WWI, selling home cooked meals to the British and allied soldiers stationed nearby. The men spend their days in schul, praying and teaching. A plague of locusts--really!-- strips the plants and leaves a community hungry. The British blockade, a tactic against Turkish rule, adds to the poverty and misery.

Although there is a historical backdrop--the pogroms of Eastern Europe, the early Zionists, WWI, clashes with Palestinian Arabs, migration to the US, the Great Depression-this is a personal tale, and very affecting. It is a shame Chaim didn't live long enough to see what a beautiful job his son did in editing his memoir.