Customer Reviews

The Seventh Beggar

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have had this book on reserve at the library for almost nine months and was often tempted to buy it. I'm glad I didn't. I liked the author's first book, The Romance Reader, and hated the second,Giving Up America. So I thought I'd give her another chance. What a waste of time!

The book is in two parts. The first part relates the struggle of a young Chassidish boy, Joel. Joel is attracted to the writings of another Chassidic sect--Rav Nachman of Bratslav, a 19th century mystic whose influence is thought to be harmful. For Joel it is. His difficultues dealing with his sexual urges cause him to try and conjure up, for want of a better term, a female golem using kabbalistic meditations. While meditating inside a rain pipe, a storm breaks and Joel is drowned.

Part 2 concerns Joel's nephew, JoelJakob, who abandons Judaism all together (much like the author) to pursue science. His project at MIT involving a female robot--much like the uncle's golem. The plots never seem to go anywhere. There is a lot of storytelling by different characters, in a style similar to Rav Nachman's stories. But nothing seems to connect. The book includes a new translation of his most famous story, The Seven Beggars.

Anyone interested in Rav Nachman would do better to read Rabbi Arye Kaplan's translation of the complete stories. This book is a mishmash that never gells into anything.

As a Breslover Hasid myself, I was looking forward to reading this book. Alas, it turned out to be a rather mediocre mish-mash with a lot of misleading details to boot. (Sad sigh.) Pearl Abraham might have grown up Hasidic, but clearly she did not grow up Breslov. Her mistake was to rely on secular academic materials about Breslov and Rabbi Nachman, without, it would seem, having any real contact with people who actually follow that path. The result is a book full of bloopers, the biggest of which is that she calls the movement "Bratslav" when the Hasidim themselves always call it "Breslov." Only academic outsiders call it "Bratslav."

If she had talked to real Breslovers who have made the pilgrimage to Rebbe Nachman's grave in Uman (as I have), she would not have had her characters "prostrating" at the gravesite. On page 80 she writes that "R. Yudel flung himself on the ground, on Rabbi Nachman's headstone..." which is impossible for two reasons: First of all, the grave is not marked with a headstone, it is completely covered with a large rectangular granite monument the length and width of the grave and about four feet high -- sort of like a mausoleum, although the body itself is underground. One can lean on this monument stone to pray (as many do), but nobody "flings" themselves on the stone or the ground around it. Secondly, the tight press of people trying to touch the stone during a pilgrimage means that anyone who tried to prostrate themselves would be trampled -- if they could even find enough room to do it. Even in the middle of the might, the crowd is usually several people deep. Ironically, Ms. Abraham got it right when she wrote that "[Joel] wanted to throw himself on the ground like the others, but all he could do was stand stiffly and mouth a prayer." (p.81) Most Hasidim don't do it "stiffly" (they rock and sway) but they do stand at the grave to pray. Or they sit on the many benches set back a ways from the grave.

Then there is the sexy Ukrainian girl that young Joel sees in Uman and becomes obsessed with. OK, there are Ukrainians who stand around watching the Hasidim, and some might be soliciting sex (as in any big crowd), but the idea that encountering this girl is some kind of "test" on the quest itself is ridiculous. Joel might be confronting his own raging hormones, but this Ukrainian Lilith is not some sort of Breslov doctrine.

And finally, there is the question of Breslov practices being "dangerous." Ms. Abraham seems to associate this with kabbalistic golem-making. Again, she's off base. What non-Breslovers see as "dangerous" isn't magic, it's the practice of going off alone into the woods at night to pour out one's heart to God in spontaneous verbalized prayer in one's native language. (This is not the usual Jewish practice, which is chanting Hebrew prayers from a book.) Although Rebbe Nachman's great-grandfather, the Ba'al Shem Tov (founder of Hasidism) regularly went to the woods alone to pray spontaneously, this practice fell into disuse and eventually became suspect. Most Hasidim today are not outdoorsy folks. They see the forest as a menacing place where wild animals, thugs and thieves lurk behind every tree. (Which might be true in Central Park!) As one anti-Breslov rabbi told the parents of a young man attracted to this path: "Your son has become a Breslover Hasid, one who wanders in the mountains speaking to God. All the rabbis are against this way; it could cause your son to lose his mind." (Odesser, "The Letter from Heaven," p. 43)

In short, it seems that Ms. Abraham was attracted to the non-conformist personality of Rebbe Nachman, but she never really grasped what that non-conformity was about. Nor was her attempt to complete the unfinished Seventh Beggar story by Nachman very impressive. Frankly, Zalman Schachter did a much better job of it back in the 1970s, where the final beggar, the one who had no feet, was a Messiah figure who could walk all the diverse paths on earth, uniting heights and depths, land and sea, dark and light, etc., and thereby bringing peace to the world. Ms. Abraham's "Seventh Beggar" doesn't bring together much of anything. In the end, the book remains a bunch of disconnected fragments.

If you read to fall asleep, this book is not for you. I found it a challenge, but a good one. I agree with the reviewer who wrote that "the pursuit of the pure soul was a matter of asking the right questions rather than of memorizing the right answers. That, in essence, is what each of Nachman's stories illustrate; and that is also what Abraham, to her credit,
points us toward in this absolutely brilliant novel."

I've enjoyed Pearl Abraham's previous novels but this one is her best book yet. The summary above makes the story seem complicated, its not. But it is a story that defies summation. Any summary of the events in the book misses the point. So I will not summarize the book. But I will say this.

This book is about stories and story tellers. We meet a famous story teller whose final story was left incomplete. A family matriarch tells her tales at the family table. A badchan (a ritual storyteller) tell an unusual tale at a wedding feast

All stories and storytellers are connected and this book explores these connections.

Everybody has a story to tell, and this is a good one.

The first half of this book is about a young Hasid's bizarre experiments with mysticism, which eventually lead to his mysterious (though clearly accidental) death in a flood. Although Abraham's grasp of Breslov Hasidism may not be 100% accurate (at least according to another reviewer) I nevertheless found this part of the book to be highly entertaining.

The second half of the book is a confusing mess; it was entertaining enough for me to finish reading, but not much more.

Abraham's work challenges conventions of narrative and the result is a complex and rewarding piece of real literary value. I was riveted from beginning to end and can't wait to use this book in one of my classes -- its themes of creation and story-telling would make it a complement to any great piece of fiction, but the characters are accessible to everyone. As an English professor, I am consistently disappointed with the quality of works that pass as "fiction" these days. There is no such disappointment with Pearl Abraham's "7th Beggar."

By accident, I happened to be in Barnes & Noble at the same time Pearl Abraham was giving a reading from her book, The Seventh Beggar. This was fortuitous for me; I was not familiar with Ms. Abraham's work and after listening to her wonderful presentation, I bought the book and read it in two days. It is a beautifully written story about stories and storytelling. I enjoyed reading The Seventh Beggar immensely and am now reading other works by Pearl Abraham...such a talented writer.

Gloria Casey, Ct.

I have enjoyed Pearl Abraham's other books and was looking forward to this latest release, The Seventh Beggar. This is wonderful tale that weaves together characters from the past to the present - Abraham is a brilliant storyteller. There is so much food for thought in this book you won't be hungry for a long time. Congratulations Abraham!

Sorry but this book was a huge disappointment and nothing more than a confused mess. I assigned "1 star" because, at least, "The Seventh Beggar" has whet my appetite to research the Kabbalistic mystics.

Abrahams book is a fascinating look into a world of the magic and the mundane. A world where letters compose stories yet are stories to themselves. At times I felt as though each sentence
were bursting with shades of meaning beyond the story itself.
A wonderful book from a wonderful, talented writer.