Customer Reviews

The Promised Land

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Ruhama Veltfort's The Promised Land should be added to the list of Great American Literauture of the 20th Century. As an African-American woman I was expecting (a friend recommended the book to me) to read a "good" novel about a group of people I know little about. I started the novel with an open mind and trust in my friends' choice in literature and finished the novel with a deeper understanding of myself. The depection of the Polish experience and the Jewish culture was sincere, exciting and riveting. I was able to recommend the book to several Jewish acqaintences who validated its authenticity. The development of the characters was powerful and Veltfort's insight into the human mind taught me more about how people can react to situations in fiction as well as in "real" life. I was glued to the book and read it in one sitting. I cannot say enough about Veltfort's mastery of her art.

This is a most beautiful and original book. I have never read one quite like it, but would greatly like to. The narrative line is strong, the characters very real, the places come alive in all their smells and sights, and it is a fine piece of storytelling. One has to say this up front, because this is a book about mysticism, about the experiences and ecstatic knowledge that lie beneath the forms and rules of a religion, and about how a creative spirituality can arise in individuals that leads them to break out of the boundaries of their inherited culture. In other words it is an intellectually serious book. It steers clear of sentimental spiritual claptrap. In the story, terrible things happen to people we have grown to love. But it is neither an `intellectual' book (i.e. inaccessible, hard work to read) nor a grim one. The narrative is strong because we care about these people and they are on a great quest, but also because the earthy details of their lives are as important to the author as their mystical experiences. One of the joys of the book is to look at a familiar scene - the American South and the frontier West - through unfamiliar eyes. E.g. Chana, the leading female character, only slowly understands that the black women with whom she does the chores in a rich Jew's house in St. Louis are slaves. The most terrible thing for these believers is not perhaps the pogroms or the starvation or the Indians, but the dangers inherent in the freedom and prosperity of the new land. "How am I to raise my sons here...?" asks one father. "Here there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, and all are gone to the devil in their crazy pursuit of riches." And the elder son himself says, "I ain't a Jew! ... I don't have to be nothin' I don't want to be. What else are we going West for?" If I have any criticism of the book it is that the ending, which brought tears to my eyes, nonetheless seemed to half-sidestep some of the issues raised about prosperity and keeping the faith. The beautiful spareness of the language of the book, without a wasted word, was too spare for me at the end. But perhaps, then what I really want is the sequel, about the survivors and their granmdchildren, and how they preserve the unity of body and spirit in the dangerously prosperous times in which we live.

From the first sentence, I was hooked. Without warning, Veltfort deftly drops the reader into a tiny village in 19th Century Poland. This strange landscape, as alien as Dune, is made comfortable by its warm, vibrant characters with their universally human fears, aspirations, and ideals. It was empathy for these odd people, a reluctant Rabbi, his wife, and a few followers, that made it a pleasure to learn their language and religion, and a delight to behold the world through their eyes. There's lots of excitement as this often not-so-merry but always entertaining band struggles to survive the hazardous journey from war-torn Eastern Europe to the still untamed American West. With so much action and adventure to stimulate the imagination, and so much drama to tug the heart, it's easy to forget that how well the book re-awakens your spiritual core with every page. Although this is a story about Orthodox Judaism, with overtones of Jewish mysticism, its messages are transcendent, non-denominational, and full of understanding and love for God. Extremely well written, I literally couldn't put it down while I was reading it, and can't get it out of my head now that I'm done. My only disappointment is that this is a first novel-I can't rush out and get more by the same author.

I loved this novel! The telling of the story from alternating points of view is engaging and well-done. I especially enjoyed the characters arriving in the US at New Orleans & going to St. Louis (during 1840s)-- a change from immigrant stories beginning in New York.

From the first sentence, I was hooked. Without warning, Veltfort deftly drops the reader into a tiny village in 19th Century Poland. This strange landscape, as alien as Dune, is made comfortable by its warm, vibrant characters with their universally human fears, aspirations, and ideals. It was empathy for these odd people, a reluctant Rabbi, his wife, and a few followers, that made it a pleasure to learn their language and religion, and a delight to behold the world through their eyes. There's lots of excitement as this often not-so-merry but always entertaining band struggles to survive the hazardous journey from war-torn Eastern Europe to the still untamed American West. With so much action and adventure to stimulate the imagination, and so much drama to tug the heart, it's easy to forget that how well the book re-awakens your spiritual core with every page. Although this is a story about Orthodox Judaism, with overtones of Jewish mysticism, its messages are transcendent, non-denominational, and full of understanding and love for God. Extremely well written, I literally couldn't put it down while I was reading it, and can't get it out of my head now that I'm done. My only disappointment is that this is a first novel-I can't rush out and get more by the same author.

Ruhama Veltfort's debut novel The Promised Land traverses a wide terrain. Moving from the Jewish streets of Polish Przemysl in 1824, across the Atlantic ocean to New Orleans, and then across the US in unchartered Indian country to California during the pioneer era, the novel explores big concepts like exile, love, faith, and the notion of what it means to create a home. The book breaks a few first novel rules and does it well. Our two guides each have their own voice, and each voice differs signficantly. Chana is in the first person - the thin and impoverished daughter of a woman known as the village witch. Yitzhak is in the 3rd person, the intense lanky Rebbe who marries Chana and leads a small band of family and disciples across his country, continent, ocean and across the USA. The book is part historical and religious epic adventure, and part pioneering family saga.

Veltfort has published two books of poetry, and her poetic training shows in the way she carefully builds her characters, focusing on their inner worlds and perceptions, and tesing out a number of tensions. The reader feels the strain that both Yitzhak and Chana feel as they try to create a wholly new life while maintaining their religious traditions. Veltfort's scholarship is faultless, and she provides significant and realistic detail on the spoken languages, the religious and social customs, from the setting and clothing to the types of traditions, foods, rituals, and prayers which are used in this now lost world of the Orthodox Polish shtetl.

Switching voice throughout the book could have been jarring and tricky in a lesser writer's hands, but Veltfort manages the transitions smoothly. The chapters alternate between Yitzhak and Chana, and follow each other closely in time and place, although sometimes there are time based overlaps. These overlapping chapters add depth to the story as we view scenes from two separate angles, and work because they move in sync. Although the story follows this Jewish family, and focuses very minutely on their customs, prayers, and beliefs, there is never any confirmation that Yitzhak is anything other than an intense young man. While the novel slouches slightly towards magic realism, the double voice enables the reader to maintain enough of a distance to create a tension. It is quite possible that Yitzhak is a visionary. It is equally possible that he is either deluded, or just masking his natural spirituality and adventurousness with a kind of overarching religiousness. This tension helps drive the novel forward.

Other characters like the Yitzhak's odd rhyming twin Feigl, her intense husband Asher, the fiddler Chaim Loeb, the unlikely disciple Mo, the robber baron type Cohn, or the sharp Madame Estella also add colour. Estella's callousness towards her slaves, and the issues of emancipation, the war for Mexico, and the pioneer expansion westward are also plot points which help add interest to the story. The book is the story of a particular passage, and a particular people during a particular time and place, but it is also an internal journal, as Yitzhak and Chana become exiles, leaving a country which is rapidly changing and try to find a new home and sense of place. The book is true to the Orthodox Jewish customs, taking the reader through many Sabbath celebrations, and quoting whole prayers, its strength is in the mystical, spirituality of the main character's vision, rather than their religious rituals.

Later too, Yitzhak achieves a similar sense if ecstasy during a fundamentalist Christian revival meeting, and is shocked when he finally notices that the "brethren" are singing about Jesus. There are other touches of mysticism, such as Yitzhak's occasional power to heal the dying, and his uncontrollable desire to speak the forbidden name of his god: "this song was new, he had never heard it until it burst from him, until he pronounced the unpronounceable name YaHuVeh God is one!"(230)

Chana too dabbles on the edge of a mystical ecstasy, albeit a more earthy female one which works as a kind of mirror to Yitzhak's.

After such close concentration and small motions in the early part of the story, the ending tends to move forward in too much of a rush, and Chana's last chapter (20) covers so much ground that it functions more as an epilogue than a natural part of the story. One wonders whether this could have made a good sequel, leaving the ending more open, although I suppose readers tend to like resolution. A sequel from Chaya's daughter's perspective perhaps is a natural follow up. In any case, this is an engrossing and very well written book. At one point in the book Yitzhak tells his small band of disciples and his wife a story: "The tzaddik knew the secret of bringing together the inner and outer worlds." The same could be said of Veltfort.