Customer Reviews

The Frozen Rabbi

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Hard to rate this book because at least 2/3 of it was 6 stars, the other 1/3 didn't hold me fast. I had never read Steve Stern before and now I have put all his novels on inter-library loan. He is brilliant--brillliiiiant. His writing is crisp, intelligent, hilariously funny, original, and zany, too. My library places this novel in the fantasy category. I think of fantasy as vampires, zombies, aliens and all that totally stupid stuff that is the current rage--when will it be over I ask the universe every night.

The frozen rabbi himself dates from the 18th century. For 300 years he has been sealed in ice and transported from one eastern European location to the next until he makes the voyage to the Lower East Side and then on to Memphis, Tennessee. The book has alternating chapters--the historical periods of several centuries, the most pages given to the period of 1880 or so to 1920s, and contemporary times when the rebbe comes back to life and lives with a family in Memphis.

I loved loved loved the chapters from the past. We have pogroms, we have a girl disguised as a boy in order to escape certain death, we have the Jewish mafia, and we have an unlikely and tender love story. We have kabbala and numerology, we have kreplach and pickled herring. The contemporary chapters paled by comparison for me. A friend is reading the book right now as I type, and he loves both sections equally. He finds the rabbi-cum-entrepreneur falling in love with game shows and soap operas on TV, and via this medium learning English, the best part of the book.

Perhaps another reviewer who is a better writer can adequately describe the language of the book. There's a lot of Yiddish, only haphazardly defined. I remember bits and pieces from my childhood and the rest, either context would make sense of or I just passed it on by on my way to the next sentence. And as for the English--I don't usually need a dictionary, but I did for The Frozen Rabbi. It's a personal choice if a reader wants to whip through the pages of a 10-pound dictionary and then come up without the word being there! The erudition of Mr. Stern.

Cynthia Ozick who wrote the brilliant Puttermesser Papers and knows about flying souls and magical disturbances, says that Stern is our contemporary Isaac Bashevis Singer. And Singer was the heir to the Yiddish folklorist tradition that preceded him by hundreds of years. Give a look The Frozen Rabbi, disappointed you won't be.

I first ran across Steve Stern when I found "Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven" in the half-price bin at Barnes and Noble, where it didn't deserve to be, years ago. Ever since then, I've been watching his work carefully, and I'm glad I do.

In "The Frozen Rabbi," Stern returns to the vanished, quasi-mythical Jewish Memphis that he's been painstakingly reconstructing ever since "Lazar Malkin" with this story of 15-year old shlub Bernie Karp, and his accidental discovery of a Hasidic rebbe in a block of ice in his apathetic and assimilated family's deep freeze. The discovery sets off a rollicking account of how the ancestral Karps obtained and shlepped the old boy from Russian shtetls to the crime-sodden ghettos of Lodz and the Lower East Side, to British Mandate Palestine and ultimately to Memphis. Stern juxtaposes the historical account with the modern-day mayhem that the thawed-out holy man wreaks upon Bernie and his family when, intoxicated by the lascivity and commercialized banality of modern American spirituality, he gleefully fires up his own "name it and claim it" born-again cult, equal parts Jewish Renewal movement, Jim Jones, and Tammy Faye Bakker.

Stern's accomplishment is spin what could have been a clunky metaphor--a rabbi frozen in a block of ice as the Karp family's own Jewishness, with both its burdensome inconvenience and obligations and its rich vibrancy--into a compelling yarn. He deftly uses the symbolism of ice's dual nature--something that both petrifies and preserves--to shape the family's character, livelihoods, and destinies throughout their generations of the rabbi's stewardship, and does so amazingly entertainingly.

But the story, much like Bernie's family, begins to unravel and implode when the ice finally melts and Rebbe Eliezer is let loose upon modern Memphis. Bernie's travails and fate are, sad to say, not very interesting and ultimately unsatisfying. The narrative begins to feel rushed and sloppy, and the affectionately self-deprecating humor he lavishes upon Bernie's ancestors begins to curdle into something that tastes unpleasantly like vinegary mockery. We weep at the tragedies endured by earlier Karps, but we can't help feeling that the contemporary ones deserve what they get. The books' real richness is the clan's trek through the last two centuries of the Jewish experience. It's in the trip from Boibicz to Memphis where Stern's talent and his enviably encyclopedic knowledge bring forth his most richly realized characters and most enthralling stories. Along the way, he pays loving tribute to earlier Jewish writers like Isaac Bashevis Singer (Stern's sendup of "Yentl" is particularly enjoyable), Philip Roth, and Joseph Heller.

Stern is a terrific stylist, and part of the fun of reading this book is to marvel over his exquisitely-crafted sentences, his gorgeous language, and his dead-on ability to reconstruct and capture the cadence and lilt of that weird linguistic nether zone between English and Yiddish. He's the kind of writer that makes you think, "Gosh, how in the world did he do THAT?" It's enough to make me forgive the disappointing conclusion. But that and the first 90% of it are enough to make me wholeheartedly recommend "The Frozen Rabbi."

The Yiddish literary tradition is full of bizarre characters, offhand curses and incantations, self-deprecatory humor, and a deep sense of humanity. It's a tradition spun by hearty survivalists who have been to hell and back and know how to laugh about it. Steve Stern's THE FROZEN RABBI fits the mold quite well.

There are two stories here. The first concerns the nominally Jewish teen Bernie Karp --- overweight, boring and irritating --- stimulated only by food and pornography. In Memphis, Tennessee, he lives with his equally reprobate family, as uncaring, unpleasant and spiritually deadened as he. One day, while rifling through the basement freezer, Bernie discovers an old Chasid frozen in a block of ice. His father casually remarks that it's a family heirloom, over a hundred years old, and lets the matter drop. And so it does, until Bernie is home alone for the weekend during a thunderstorm that cuts the house's power, and the rabbi thaws. And so begins the rabbi's --- a well-practiced, slightly batty mystic --- adventures into a consumerist America that treats enlightenment as both a commodity and a drug.

As Bernie wrestles with his newfound sense of Judaism, he studies the tract written by his grandfather that tells the second story of the novel: how the rabbi arrived in America from a tiny village in Poland, frozen all the way. This isn't your classic immigrant story. The characters are all pleasantly mad, and events range from magical to nonsensical. But the story winds up, like so many immigrant tales do, in New York's Lower East Side, depicted as an underworld and a fantasy, a home to gangsters and honest men. And yet this is the more grounded of the two narratives; unlike Memphis's banal surreality, this is recognizable as the home of our grandparents (indeed, at one point the home of most Jewish families in this country).

This is a novel of the burdens of our past and the challenges of what it means to be Jewish today. If that sounds like every generic piece of Jewish fiction for the past several decades, you're absolutely right. While Stern dresses his book up in flamboyant personalities, plots and language, this is the same story you've read before. THE FROZEN RABBI is something of a mashup of the grand Yiddish tradition. But that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. Let's take a closer look at that window dressing.

As the rabbi becomes the cynical Deepak Chopra of Memphis, Bernie begins his Jewish education in earnest and almost immediately delves into mysticism. Soon he's having out-of-body experiences and exploring the bounds of the cosmos. But Judaism isn't about life out there; it's about what's here on earth. It's a lesson Bernie learns from two sources. The first is the rabbi, fascinated by modernity's excesses (he is convinced he has died and that this world is a heaven for people of his time), embracing base material desires while shelling out two-bit enlightenment. The second is Bernie's newfound girlfriend, who would like him to stay on earth just long enough for them to actually consummate their relationship. In both cases, it all boils down to sex, which may seem cheap and trite, but says something powerful about Jewish life.

Stern is quiet about who is in the moral right in THE FROZEN RABBI; he leaves it to us to sort that out through all the deceptions and manic adventures. So separating the bodily and the base from the high-minded and the spiritual becomes an impossible task, a kabbalistic riddle with no answer that entices us all the same. This is the core of what Stern has done with his book: he takes religion off its pedestal and encourages us to play with it.

This isn't the most successful novel to tackle such themes. At times Stern gets ahead of himself, and the weirdness of his plot escapes him. Events become hard to follow, key pieces of information get lost in jumbles, and lines that are supposed to sound poetic fall flat. But that's okay for this book, at once strange but comfortingly familiar. This is a story we have heard before, and one that needs to be told again. And for all its play and moral ambivalence, it does something that Jews can never afford to stop doing: reconnect us with our history.

Like Nicola Krauss in THE HISTORY OF LOVE, Steve Stern appears to be trying to channel Isaac Bashevis Singer with his characters, tone and story-telling. The plot, however, is definitely original and he does a good job of switching back and forth in time. Where it falls down for me is in the overly-long section on the rabbi's trip to America, which leaves the story of Bernie less time to be told. Stern could have used a good editor here to sharpen the story.

I liked the metaphorical aspects but did not like the ending, which seemed rushed, inconsistent with the rest and downright.....well, loony would not be too strong a word. In all honesty, loony would also describe the key plot points so perhaps that is understandable.

No strong recommendation in favor of it but it's an interesting read, especially for those who like IBS or his brother. As another reviewer said, it definitely helps to know some Yiddish and something about Jewish culture in order to get the jokes.

I was very disappointed in this book.
It had a good beginning and I thought it would
be a great story, but it bogged down, and really
turned out to be a rambling text. There were some
historical and biblical references but overall
it missed the mark. I definitely would not recommend
this book. The author had a great opportunity to build
on an interesting concept, but dropped the ball.
Offbeat turned into off-putting.

Pubescent teenager, Bernie Karp, is searching his family's deep freeze Kelvinator for frozen liver and finds an 18th century Rabbi preserved perfectly in a block of ice. So begins the story of how this Rabbi impacted Bernie's ancestors and is the jumping point for how this Rabbi will impact Bernie's life.

The chapters in this book alternate between past and present. Overall I enjoyed the chapters that covered the Rabbi's journey from Eastern Europe to present day Memphis, Tennessee over the current day chapters. However as the book progressed these preferences began to shift till I was totally engrossed in the current day dynamic ending.

So what did I love most about this book? Talk about innovative, imaginative and out-of-the box!! This book had me laughing, mourning and sometimes slack jawed over what I read either from disbelief, shock or turn of events.

This book reminded me of my current most-favorite book, "Slave" by V.S. Williams. Themes they both shared included: spirituality, present day absurdity of life, myths, reality, and redemption.

Now I do have a significant complaint about "The Frozen Rabbi". I read books such as this not only for entertainment but to learn more about Judaism. There are so many words and phrases were Yiddish or maybe even something else (I am clueless here) that my Kindle could not define, I felt like I missed quite a bit that the book had to offer. People not of the faith, need Hebrew and Yiddish dictionaries and a Hasidic customs book. Perhaps future printings can have a glossary?

I found this book to be terribly disappointing. The premise was phenomenal. The book was extremely engrossing throughout the first half. But the second half was just weird--not interesting or engrossing. This book could have been great literature. Instead, it's just weird.

I am an old fan of Steve Stern, I have to admit, but if I had never heard of him before, this book would have instantly catapulted me into the first rank of his admirers. He himself is a writer of the first rank and should be far more widely recognized than he is. My previous favorite among his works had been his collection of three novellas, A Plague of Dreamers, but The Frozen Rabbi surpasses even that superb performance.
The Frozen Rabbi is a terrific read, to put it in everyday terms. But it's hardly an everyday book. It is at once a tale (of the once-upon-a-time variety, with all the conventions that belong to that genre) and an historical novel, now fantasy, now stark realism, with parables, diary entries, trips to the beyond and the before, all handled with untiring verve. Stern deals in archetypes, but never in cliches. As you approach the end of this un-put-downable book, you still cannot guess how it will end. But when it does, you understand that it cannot have resolved itself in any other way. It's a beautiful, astonishing, masterful ending, utterly satisfying.
I read an online review somewhere that criticized part of the book (the diary portion) for being too short or too stylistically different from the rest. But I disagree. It is an account taken from the diary of a very taciturn character, one who says little and represses much. In fact, the diary, though a paraphrase, accurately expresses the character of its own author. Narrating it in the style or voice of the rest of the novel would have betrayed its purpose.
Except for that section, the novel's omniscient narrator, even as he enters into the minds of his characters, has his own distinctive voice through which he imitates, but not slavishly, the way his characters would speak--if they could express themselves as well as he can. Stern reminds me of Dickens, who also convincingly put language in the mouths of characters who could never have spoken that way in real life or in a completely realistic novel. Both Dickens and Stern give their normally inarticulate characters the ability to express what they experience with beauty, precision and grace, so that we can be moved by their virtues, flaws, struggles, and joys.
Don't miss this book. It's high and deep, hilarious and frightening, complex as a theological disputation, redemptive as a fairy tale. You'll love it.
P.S. You DON'T want to miss the Rabbi himself. In fact, you're going to want to know where to find him when you've finished the book.

This book is a riot. It held my interest right through to the end. My husband is reading it now and I can hear him chuckling from another room.

If there were ten stars permitted for a review, that's the number I'd choose. What a tour de force!! From page one, you'll be absorbed in the tale(s), and, once you are into this saga, you'll be more in the world of the book than your real world (and you'll begin to see how funny this statement is, LOL).
The language is thrilling, for anyone who reads as much for love of words as for their content. Steve Stern does dialect brilliantly, he's not afraid to use the vernacular, as well as sublime prose.
Each of the characters in this story is fully realized, apparently Stern can see out through anyone's eyes. Scenes become increasingly funny, I finished the book in Starbuck's, laughing out loud from final to ultimate pages like a madwoman. Do you like magical realism? History? Psychological studies? You'll love and cherish "The Frozen Rabbi".