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The Narrow Bridge: Beyond the Holocaust

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With breathtaking courage, Isaac Neuman, in The Narrow Bridge, evokes the lost world of East European Jewry as he knew it in the Polish town of Zdunska Wola, not far from Lodz. So infused with homely spiritual grace was his beloved community that even Puttermilch, the Jewish Mafioso, would dash into a burning building to rescue an old woman's prayer book, and a dotty crone named Reilla could break into a service at the synagogue and shame the congregation into rescuing a fellow Jew from sacrilege Through the eyes of Isaac, a stubborn little boy, easily bored, who loved his curly hair almost enough to risk perdition for it, we meet the gentle rebbe and the canny aunt; we hear the poignant, wrenching songs and the fables dense with wisdom; we smell the challah baking. Most of all we come to know Grandma, "engaged at twelve, married at fourteen, and widowed by thirty"--mother of ten and refuge for the next generation. So passionately did she read her Torah that she could weep for Joseph, sold by his brothers into slavery, and so intent was she on justice that she loudly harangued God when she thought He had let down their side. Then the rebbe is shot along with two others in the town square, Grandma is deported, and the horror begins. With the help of Michael Palencia-Roth, who shaped the narrative, Neuman recalls the ghetto where some Jews toadied to the Nazis while others gave bold, new meaning to words like "brave" and "hero." He remembers, one by one, the seven concentration camps where he was interned in a nightmare world few lived to tell about. An air of miracle hovers about The Narrow Bridge, a triumph of quiet story-telling when the more likely response to memories like these would be a demented scream. Though the family he left behind vanished, and his precious brother Yossel, who was with him in the camps, was murdered at last by the Nazis, Isaac survived, even in spirit-an abiding testament to the strength, depth, and richness of the world that made him, the world that is, in the end, the hero of this fine, indeed luminous book.

Rabbi Isaac Newman's book, The Narrow Bridge, is a series of thoughtful, well-written, accounts of Jewish life in Poland before, during, and after the Holocaust.

The chronicle begins with pictures of Jewish life in his small Polish town before the Holocaust. His stories of Reb Mendel show, in a way I've never seen, how a teacher used the study of Talmud to slowly teach thoughtful behavior to a tough but puzzled adolescent.

At the center of the book are accounts on life and death in his German occupied ghetto, and life and death in the concentration camps. These stories, of horror and terror, and are wrapped with portrays of human dignity and tenderness. We remember Shlomo Zelichowski, the cantor, and his full-voiced chanting of the closing prayers of Yom Kippur as he and ten men stood before their gallows. We remember the dignified, mischievous, and artful way Newman and his adolescent friends illegally baked matzo for Passover, and we remember the dying Shmuel, who gave Isaac Neuman his coat saying, "You have a duty, Isaac, it is to teach Torah and to help others understand what has happened to us."

These stories are particularly poignant because they are written through the eyes of an adolescent young Talmudic scholar, but informed by the sensibility of a Rabbi in his 70's.

I knew Isaak Neuman as a teenager when he was our Rabbi in Panama. He told us some of these stories but the impact of the whole history is deeply moving. It is a story of survival, not only of the body but of the spirit. He was the first person I ever saw with a number tatood on his arm and it really made me think about how lucky we were.

He taught us to pray and to think. He made us reach out and stretch our brains in directions that we were not used to. He was our friend and teacher.

I saw him once after he left Panama when he came to visit my grandmother. His book came to me by way of a friend who loaned it to me without really knowing who he is. It was like finding an old friend. He hasn't lost his stubborn spirit or his outspoken manner.

As a Christian, I consider this book to be a "must read" -- especially for people of faith. This account will give you insights into a civilization which was essentially destroyed by the Nazis -- stories of the triumph of religious faith, survival of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable suffering and misery. You can read this book on a three hour flight or in one rainy (or sunny) afternoon -- I could not put this book aside until I had finished the entire account. You won't forget this highly readable and insightful account. In bearing witness for the sake of his family, Isaac Neuman has given all of us a literary gift -- but an inspiration that will endure for generations to come

The author in candid words makes a recount of the life in a small Polish town before the war and enters in many details of how terrible was life during the war and how vicious the Germans were in taking away any dignity from the Jewish population. It is something unbelievable how the author had to strugle and the suffering he had to go through. What amazes me more is how Rabbi Neuman in spite of the suffering he went through he still has faith in G-d

I am not as eloquent as some others who have provided their perspectives, but I wanted to share my thoughts on this great book and author nonetheless. I live in NYC but grew up in Champaign, IL recognizing that Rabbi Neuman was and is a very bright and strong-willed man who packs great wisdom into relatively few words. But only after reading this book, and the brutality and hardships he faced, obstacles so great they are hard for most of us to even fathom, could I, or most anyone, fully appreciate the depth of his strength and courage. I have read very good books that more fully illustrate the details of the day-to-day murder and brutality (books such as Ordinary Men and Treblinka), but Rabbi Neuman makes it clear that not only were numerous innocent people murdered, but many wonderful communities and ways of life were forever destroyed. And yet, he, like many others, found the strength to move beyond the worst event in human history in order to make a difference and help others. This is among the must read books for anyone who wants to understand what was lost, particularly in Poland, in the genocide and devastation of the holocaust, all the while getting to learn about the courage and strength of survivors like Rabbi Isaac Neuman. Thank you for everything Rabbi Neuman!

Rabbi Neuman tells his story starting through the eyes of a young boy and ending through the eyes of an elder Rabbi. The Story is told in a calm and matter of fact manner, leaving the adjectives describing the German brutality to the mind of the reader. Thus, the reader can get a much broader picture of the times without getting hung up with anger at specific transgressions. Most everyone would enjoy this book, but especially anyone who is old enough to remember the time when all this was happening.

In the Narrow Bridge: Beyond the Holocaust, Isaac Neuman set himself the most of difficult of tasks to write the "silent song of my vanished people.

He succeeds so well in invoking the presence of those who are absent that this reader feels as if he had sat at the study table of Reb Mendel as he taught a page of Talmud and told ancient stories that echo again and again the most contemporary of wisdom. The memoir is passionate and deep, religious in its intensity, and yet so very compassionate in its understanding.

Isaac Neuman makes the characters of his past come alive. We gain an insight into the world that ways and is no longer. We learn the streets of his beloved cities and its courtyards, more importantly we are privileged to enter the inner lives of its inhabitants. Unlike most Holocaust memoirs, which are most intense in their portrayal of the evil the survivors experienced, Neuman is most passionate about the past that has vanished and most successful at calling it forth.

Religious Jews will hear the echoes of Jewish legends in the last moments of minyan of martyrs who accepted their decree with dignity and had more faith in the divine that a God present in the Holocaust could ever possibly merit. Secular readers will read of Passover in the camps and glimpse the power of tradition to speak forth even in the most atrocious of circumstances. They will experience the consolation of the invocation of a miraculous, redemptive past in a world without miracles, without hope.

This lyrical work will touch the soul. One laughs, one cries, one mourns and indeed one even celebrates. Restrained prose glisten with insight. The work is deep, passionate, charming -- and ever so welcome.

Michael Berenbaum

Rabbi Nueman tells his story starting through the eyes of a young boy and ending through the eyes of an elder Rabbi. The Story is told in a calm and matter of fact manner, leaving the adjectives describing the German brutality to the mind of the reader. Thus, the reader can get a much broader picture of the times without getting hung up with anger at specific transgressions. Most everyone would enjoy this book, but especially anyone who is old enough to remember the time when all this was happening.

Rabbi Nueman tells his story starting through the eyes of a young boy and ending through the eyes of an elder Rabbi. The Story is told in a calm and matter of fact manner, leaving the adjectives describing the German brutality to the mind of the reader. Thus, the reader can get a much broader picture of the times without getting hung up with anger at specific transgressions. Most everyone would enjoy this book, but especially anyone who is old enough to remember the time when all this was happening.