Customer Reviews

A Blessing on the Moon

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Joseph Skibell has written that rare book that I couldn't put down. Telling the story from the viewpoint of a Jew shot to death in the Holocaust who must roam the earth dead before going to the World-to-Come, "A Blessing on the Moon", while a story of the agony of the Jews in the Holocaust, is at times funny, sardonic, tender, horror-filled--there just aren't enough adjectives. This Christian found it to be more revealing to me of the Jewish mind, religion, and the atrocities committed against the Jews than any other book I've ever read. The only thing that made me sorry was my lack of understanding of some of the Yiddish words and expressions. However, I will read this book again and again, and recommend it to anybody who appreciates well-crafted writing.

After his murder by the Nazis, Chaim Skibelski finds himself giddy and ecstatic, despite lying dead in a pit with all of his neighbours. He begins a fantastic quest, searching to be reunited with his family and community, and to find the peace of the World To Come. But in the meantime, he wanders "the earth like an audience at intermission waiting for the concert to resume , unaware that the musicians have long since departed for home ?". In this imaginative work, Joesph Skibell succeeds magnificently in conveying the tragic scope of the Holocaust. But he never succumbs to the sentimentality or self-righteousness of other holocaust memoirs. With humor, a fine ear for dialogue, and a piercing wit he weaves his allegory. Truly, I laughed and I cried - but never felt manipulated. This is a an important work in its own right and a major step forward in the breadth of artistic expression that the Holocaust has inspired.

A great book and a gripping page-turner, this novel will appeal to many who would not otherwise pick up anything from the Holocaust genre.

Of the many Holocaust related books I have read, this is truly one of the most unique. Skibell requires that we use our imagination to enter a world beyond our earthly reach. Put yourself in my soul, imagine with me. Die needlessly, lose all your loved ones due to hate and prejudice and watch others greedily take over all you had. Scream silently. What would we do?

Skibell uses warm humor to depict the ugiliness and ignorance. We imagine, pain, yearn, cry out with him. How dear and wise is the Rebbe. How vulnerable is Chaim, even in death. Is this mystical or are our own dreams and nightmares close? Who would or could even dream anything as horrifying as the Holocaust? Who could imagine visualizing the aftermath? Skibell found a way to take us through it in a captivating, imaginary, witty, compassionate soulful way. In this, his first novel, he reaches deep to reveal such honesty and surrealism through 60 year old Chaim. Skibell's piece of imagination captures, grips, pulls, tugs, at the heart strings. The photographs, the reunion, the tenderness, the compassion, and mother's chicken soup.....all mixed in with blood, horrow, guns, graves, hatred and grief. Such is life!!! There is the magical and the morbid. We don't escape it. There was the Holocaust and we should never NEVER forget it!!! Not in life or in death. Through a good soul's spiritual journey and quest to find rest, and a lost moon...which too is helped to find it's home of rest in the sky...we learn. There are correlations between both. Through it all, we are to bless what we have learned and teach others. We are never to forget. May the blessed moon which shines down ever so brightly from the heavens remind us that Jews will not be smothered, as the moon will not remain lost or lose it's shine. You may bury the moon and bury people, but the glow will be restored and emerge shining. We can't kill spirits, only bodies. The moon shines. The soul moves on. A Blessing on the Moon is captivating and mystical with so much brilliant and shining symbolism.

Thank you Joseph Skibell for not being silent. Thank you Chaim and Rebbe who will live on in our imaginations long long after this book is read and into many lives.

It is nothing short of magic to be swept inside a book. `A Blessing on the Moon' captured both my heart and my imagination. Starting from the point where most stories of the holocaust end, Skibell takes the reader into a spiritual world mixed with realism and fable, warm humor and the ugliness of hatred and ignorance. Within the first few lines of the book, the main character is killed. But Skibell does not end the character's life there. That is where the story is just beginning. Skibell takes the character and the reader on a journey of the soul. It's an exploration into compassion and grief, love and the depth of hate. I didn't want to put the book down and when I did, I found myself thinking about and worrying about the characters. They seemlessly worked their way inside me. Brilliant and insightful writing. Thank God for a book that is imaginative, intelligent and that offers hope in the worst of despair.

One of the best books I have ever read and perhaps the most effective embodiment of the holocaust in fiction ever accomplished. Combining magic realism, chassidic folktales and narrative inventiveness beyond anything I've read, this is nothing short of a masterpiece. I eagerly await whatever Joseph Skibell comes out with next. For another inventive read, try WAS by Geoff Ryman.

As a fable on the Holocaust, the book reaches many levels of meaning. The living murdered Jews in the book, and the main character Chaim Skibelsky are testimony to the fact that we can die many deaths. Their wandering in the forest, frequently a symbol of confusion, their one night rescue in a fantasy hotel, and their ultimate redemption are powerful reminders that reality is not the only sense of life.

With the return of the lost moon, the sacred cycles of life for Jews can resume.

The details of the murder are devastating, and the life of the dead are told with great humor. For any one familiar with Hasidic tales, A Blessing on the Moon will be a contemporary masterful addition to that literature. For those uninitiated to its magic realism, you are in for a treat.

I recommend reading The Far Euphrates in conjunction with this book.

With perhaps thousands of new books published each year, it's a guarantee that many very worthy books are going to be overlooked by both reviewers and readers. This is one of those books.

We have what could be a fable, a folk tale, a dream, an allegory, or just about anything the reader wishes it to be. The protagonist is an elderly Jewish man who is executed by the Nazis, but climbs up out of the grave and can walk, talk and feel, even though he is dead. His rabbi has turned into a crow and leads him around, and gives him instructions. Soon enough, the entire population of his town, all dead, rise from their graves and accompany him on his journye. But where is he going, and why is he one of the walking dead?

You must read this book to appreciate the beauty of the writing, and the heartfelt feelings that the author puts into almost every page. It's difficult to describe the plot beyond what I have said above, but I can only say, read this overlooked treasure and see for yourself why I feel it is one of the best books published in the past several years.

I loved this book. The blurb on the cover had it right; a most unlikely pageturner. By coincidence I read this right after reading a short story by Gogol also featuring a stolen moon.

The fact that the story is like a fairytale or a dream gave me an entirely different perspective on the atrocities of WW2. I certainly didn't "understand" this book, but maybe one isn't meant to understand annihilation, brutality, sorrow, etc.

This is a surrealistic journey of a deeply wounded soul. Once you get caught up in the drama, and heart-breaking humor, of the journey, you cannot put this book down until the incredible journey's end.

I thought this book was very engaging and superb at the emotional play. There's a scene where, after encountering the horrors of his fellow Jews beginning to rot, Chaim meets a soldier (now beheaded and carrying his head around) and in a fury starts kicking the head down the hill. And yet later, he carries the soldier's head for him. To me, that combination (horror, hilarity and unowed kindness) somehow characterizes the experience of the Jewish people in an intimate, gut-level way that is hard to capture.

Though other readers may be disconcerted by a certain lack of connection between the pieces, I enjoyed it quite thoroughly.