Award-winning novelist Steve Stern’s exhilarating epic recounts the story of how a nineteenth-century rabbi from a small Polish town ends up in a basement freezer in a suburban Memphis home at the end of the twentieth century. What happens when an impressionable teenage boy inadvertently thaws out the ancient man and brings him back to life is nothing short of miraculous.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Stern’s uproarious and trouncing romp through the anguish and ironies of the Jewish diaspora matches mysticism with mayhem, beatitude with organized crime, creativity with crassness. The madcap, at times, surreal action revolves around Rabbi Eliezer ben Zephyr, whose out-of-body journeys to the realm of the divine result in his being frozen in a block of ice in the Jewish Pale in 1889, a frigid relic that becomes one family’s problematic inheritance. In scenes of vivid drama and burlesque comedy on the same epic scale as Stern’s Angel of Forgetfulness (2005), the rabbi-on-ice is transported through a pogrom and across the Atlantic under the guardianship of a raven-haired woman protectively disguised as a man, who finds sanctuary with the sweet-natured, hunchbacked inventor Shmerl Karp in the roiling Lower East Side. Finally, in 1999, the “great thaw” brings the reanimated rabbi and misfit teen Bernie Karp together in a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee, where the holy man, enthralled by America’s TV-stoked capitalism, opens his profitable and controversial House of Enlightenment. Stern elevates his virtuoso storytelling and whirling magical satire to cosmic heights in this lovingly irreverent and revelatory novel of the timeless conflict between the sacred and the profane, and the perpetual search for home and meaning. --Donna Seaman
Review
“Among the wonders awaiting the reader of Steve Stern’s exuberant new novel . . . is one of sheer logistics: How did he get all of this in here? The book’s 370 pages are packed to bursting with epic adventure and hysterical comedy, with grim poignancy and pointed satire, as Stern repeatedly shifts time and tone to craft a wildly entertaining tale.” —The Washington Post Book World
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
35 of 37 people found the following review helpful
By shanarufus
Format:Hardcover
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.
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.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
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."
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."
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
By Bookreporter
Format:Hardcover
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.
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.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Didn't like the writing style
I didn't enjoy the writing style. A reader would have to be somewhat knowledgeable about the Jewish religion and the Yiddish language to get a full impact from the book.
Published 11 days ago by Steven I. Feiertag
4.0 out of 5 stars
It's amazing what you can defrost!
This book is an interesting mix of 19th-21st century Jewish history with sharp insight into our current celebrity culture. Read more
Published 2 months ago by cynthia Lerner
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting story but disappointing ending.
I was able to get into the book quickly, and it held my attention. I was more taken in with the flashbacks side of the story than the present day portion. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Amy Farber
2.0 out of 5 stars
Ultimately unappealing
The author's short note at the end of the book explains how it came to be written, and Stern's personal discovery of ancient Jewish roots. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Ralph Blumenau
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thawed out Jewish life
Steve Stern is a Master. History and Jewish life, satire and humor.This is Modern Jewish Literature at its best. Try all Steve's other books.
Published 2 months ago by Shalom X
2.0 out of 5 stars
Didn't care for it.
I started reading this, thought it had some humor to it, by the time I was a quarter through I was bored with it. I decided to read something else. Maybe I'll try again later.
Published 3 months ago by Susan
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating and delightful
Fast paced and thought provoking book. Flash backs added to the plot. Unusual blend of the past and present to say nothing of transcendence!
Published 3 months ago by AGA
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Frozen Rabbi
I couldn't finish this book. There were too many Yiddish (I guess) words that I had no clue what they meant, the story was slow-moving. I can't really recommend this to anyone.
Published 4 months ago by Daniel E. Edwards
1.0 out of 5 stars
Terrible book
I brought this book hoping it would provide me with entertainment as well as Yiddish folklore. It was far too metaphorical and abstract to be entertaining. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Whillo B Whippets
4.0 out of 5 stars
Extraordinary work
I bought this as a lark, but found it to be quite an extraordinary book. The scope of the story is impressive and the details of the different.
Periods is excellent. Read more
Periods is excellent. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Joel Artenstein
More About the Author
STEVE STERN's fiction, with its deep grounding in Yiddish folklore, has prompted critics such as Cynthia Ozick to hail him as the successor to Isaac Bashevis Singer. He is the author of critically acclaimed books such as Isaac and the Undertaker's Daughter, winner of the Pushcart Writers' Choice Award; The Wedding Jester, which won the National Jewish Book Award; The Angel of Forgetfulness, one of The Washington Post's Best Books of 2006; and, The North God. Stern currently lives in Balston Spa, New York, and teaches at Skidmore College.
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