Off The Beaten Track: Solving the Passover Mystery

Today’s guest is Edgar-nominated Kenneth Wishnia, who wishes us a Happy Passover with his latest historical mystery, The Fifth Servant. Set in the 16^th century in Prague’s Jewish Ghetto, the novel just came out as a paperback reprint. On the eve of Passover, a Christian girl is found with her throat cut in a Jewish shop. The shammes – a synagogue helper, in this case Benyamin Ben-Akiva – wards off the raging mob, stating that Jews are the emperor’s servants and promising severe penalties for anyone “who damages the imperial property.” The city’s sheriff gives him three days to find the murderer – a tight schedule for a young newcomer with no connections and restricted by rabbinical law. But Benyamin enlists a few unlikely helpers: the famous rabbi Judah Loew, a Christian woman Anya, and even the emperor himself! 

It took Wishnia seven years and 14 drafts to research and write this book, including taking a yearlong sabbatical from his teaching job and making a trip to Prague to “get the basic lay of the land – how high the castle is and how wide the river.” In his own words, “That pile of papers is just the drafts. It does not include the 1,200 single-spaced pages of notes, plus three handwritten notebooks.” The book comes with a mini Yiddish dictionary at the end.

My parents always told us that the story of the major Jewish holidays can be summed up as follows: They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat.

This is true of Purim, Hanukkah, and especially Pesach (Passover). At the Passover Seder, the primary ritualistic duty is to tell the story of how the Israelites rebelled against Pharaoh’s oppressive system and fled to the wilderness. Each of us must feel that we have personally experienced this exile from Egypt because, we are taught, in every generation, oppressors have risen up against us, and that we must all flee our own personal version of Pharaoh’s oppressive Egypt.

When my friend and fellow crime writer John Westermann heard that I was working on The Fifth Servant (Morrow, 2010), a Jewish-themed historical thriller set in Prague in 1592 during Pesach and Holy Week, he told me, “The only reason to write a historical novel is to comment on the present.”

I couldn’t agree more.

With so many Americans having extremely shallow historical memories – a few months at best – I believe that it is crucially important to show how, despite the changes in technology, fashion, and knowledge, societies have been dealing with the same basic problems for centuries. (Most Jews, by contrast, have very long historical memories.)

The period I chose, March 1592, attracted me for many reasons. First and foremost, the great Rabbi Judah Loew (of the Golem legends) was active in Prague at the time. What better time and place to represent the Kafkaesque position within larger society that Jews (and other ethnic minorities) often find themselves in? (And you can’t write about Jews in Prague without engaging in some way with the spirit of Kafka.)

My original intent was to set the novel earlier, say in the 14^th century, when the division between Jews and Christians was more clearly marked. The medieval attitudes towards Jews were almost completely black and white: by the 16^th century, many more complexities had set in (primarily economic ones), which provided many more possibilities and occasions for the kind of ambiguity that makes a great story so emotionally resonant.

The 1590s is also a fertile period to write about because people were on the cusp of modernity but not quite there: science was advancing, but the discoveries of Galileo still lay more than 15 years in the future. Every generation seems to believe that it is the natural culmination of all that came before, and I wanted to highlight how ephemeral so many “eternal” ideas and trends really are by choosing a moment in time (my whole story takes place in less than three days) and showing how, although the external trappings of civilization have changed, people are essentially the same.

For me, this is the main attraction of writing a historical novel. After all, how are we supposed to effect long-term change for the better without knowledge of the struggles that came before?

To read more about Ken, visit http://www.kennethwishnia.com/

As Shaky As A Fiddler On The Roof?

For me, the word tradition is synonymous with Fiddler on the Roof. It is the song the musical opens with, and it is the theme that permeates the entire story.

 

“Tradition!” sings the chorus of Anatevka’s boys, girls, mamas, and papas, as Tevye the Milkman explains the rules of the small Jewish shtetl. “Here in Anatevka, we have traditions for everything... how to eat, how to sleep, even how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our heads covered and always wear a little prayer shawl... You may ask, how did this tradition start? I'll tell you - I don't know. But it's a tradition... Because of our traditions, everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do."

The famous Broadway musical is based on the stories of Tevye the Milkman, written by the Yiddish author and playwright Solomon Rabinovich, known better by his pen name of Sholem Aleichem (Шолом-Алейхем). Sholem was born in Ukraine in 1859 and later immigrated to the United States as part of the Jewish exodus from the oppressive tsarist Russia. My family owned a full collection of his works, so I grew up reading his stories, novels, and plays, which I viewed as my historical heritage. Of course, I had to see Fiddler on Roof! But, like many staged productions, and especially Broadway shows, Fiddler on the Roof had interesting twists on the Jewish traditions, which were a bit different than what I'd heard from my grandparents and other elders as a young girl. For starters, I was surprised to see that the fiddler’s depiction of the shtetl was a patriarchate.

(Tevye & Papas)
Who day and night
Must scramble for a living
Feed the wife and children
Say his daily prayers
And who has the right
As master of the house
To have the final word at home?

Growing up, I don’t think I knew a single Jewish family in which the father had the final word at home. I knew some families in which fathers didn’t have any word at all – but certainly not the other way around. In my knowledge of a traditional Jewish household, moms ruled the world. Moms defined rights and wrongs, moms made decisions, and moms laid out plans. Dads were kept posted. For the most part.

The second surprise was when it came to family planning.

(Daughters)
And who does mama teach
To mend and tend and fix
Preparing me to marry
Whoever papa picks?

When it came to matchmakers, the moms I knew would never trust their inept husbands to pair up their beloved offspring! I could always tell moms were up to something when they gathered behind closed doors in the kitchen, discussing something in low, whispery voices.  It usually meant that someone had a daughter or a son old enough to tie the knot. And their parents wanted to see them wed to a Jewish spouse.

It didn’t always work, but the moms, aunties, and grandmas always tried. The modern Jewish moms and dads had one thing in common with the Anatevka mamas and papas: they both wanted their children to marry their own kind – and stay Jewish. That was one tradition they felt strongly about. Luckily, they didn’t banish their rebellious offspring from their sight like Tevye did his daughter who chose to wed outside her faith. Otherwise, quite a few young folk from my generation would end up not talking to our parents ever again. Myself included.

(Tevye)
"Tradition. Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as a fiddler on the roof!"

What would you say? Does tradition preserve the best of the past or stunts new growth? 

Mezuza's Magic

Raised by Communists, I knew little of the traditional Jewish culture, especially about its symbols and rituals. When I first saw a small, strange-looking trinket with Hebrew lettering on a doorjamb of our relatives’ house, I was curious.

“It’s a mezuzah,” my uncle explained, and added jokingly. “It’s a Jewish good luck charm. Keeps the evil energy away and brings good karma into the house.”

I liked the idea, but, raised by the same Communists, my uncle was wrong, which I found out years later. While mezuzahs are indeed placed on doorjambs symbolically, they don’t have anything to do with good luck. Nor do they bear any connection with the lamb's blood placed on the doorposts in Egypt. Rather, it is a constant reminder of god's presence and god's commandments.

In Hebrew, mezuzah (מְזוּזָה ) means doorpost . It is a piece of parchment called klaf contained in a decorative case inscribed with two sections of Jewish prayer “Shema Yisrael,” from the Torah's Book of Deuteronomy, in which God commands Jews to keep his words constantly in their minds and hearts. The prayer begins with the phrase: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God," and goes on for quite a while. When passing through a door with a mezuzah on it, one is supposed to kiss thy fingers and touch the casing, expressing love and respect for god and his will.

The mezuzah should be placed on the doorposts of every Jewish home. Mezuzot (plural of mezuzah) should also be placed in every room within the home with the exception of bathrooms because bathrooms are unclean. According to the Jewish law, the mezuzah should also be affixed to gates leading to communal places, synagogues, schools, and even on city gates, symbolizing the sovereignty of the commandments over the Jewish social and communal life. In other words, you must not forget that god is watching over you – even for a split second.

A lot of work goes into making a simple mezuzah. It may seem that the most complex piece of it is the case (which can be a work of art in itself), but the real effort lays is the creation of the parchment. The scroll is prepared by a qualified scribe, sofer stam who has undergone many years of meticulous training. The verses are written in black indelible ink with a special quill pen. The parchment is then rolled up and placed inside the case.

And now, a trick question: why is that most mezuzahs are attached at a 45 degree angle instead of vertically or horizontally? The answer lays in the Jewish culture – notorious for their debating talents, surpassed perhaps only by Italians, Jews can argue forever. So did the two medieval Rabbis Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam; they could not agree whether the precious symbol should be placed horizontally or vertically. Finally, they compromised, settling on the golden middle. Ever since, Ashkenazi Jews tilt the case so that the top slants toward the room the door opens into.

Alas, my mezuzah is not affixed at any angle on my front door. I keep none. Once I learned it wasn’t an enticing good-luck charm that kept me safe from evil spirits, but a religious symbol designed to remind me of god every time I set foot outside the door or returned home, it lost its magic.

Menora, Matryoshka, and Me

It seemed I was destined to live in diasporas. In Russia, it was a Jewish diaspora. In New York, it became more of a Russian one. I thought it funny that Americans perceived me as a Russian – perhaps because of my blondish hair. However, in Russia, I looked anything but. Ethnically, I didn’t blend. Amongst Slavonic faces, I stuck out like a sore thumb.

Growing up in my hometown of Kazan, a bicultural mêlée of Russian and Tatar, I looked very different from the Slavic girls in my class. I had a straight nose while theirs were roundish and upturned. My eyes were too big, and my hair back then was black, while their braids were of various shades of blond. If anything, I passed for a Tatar because of my dark mane, even though my eyes weren’t almond-shaped. On the streets, the old grandmas with Asian facial features addressed me by the Tatar’s endearing “kizim” – daughter. My two best childhood friends were Tatars too, so I knew enough vocabulary to be able to answer back. The Jewish community in Kazan was tiny: about 6,000 Ashkenazi in a city with a population over a million. It was barely acknowledged, if at all. In school, we learned about Russian history and traditions, broached some Tatar topics, and never touched upon Judaic subjects. Back then, I felt a very strong connection to my Semitic roots. I feared my nation was becoming extinct, so I wanted to be Jewish with all the good and bad that came with it in a country where my people were not a particularly welcomed ethnic minority. Coming to New York, I looked forward to embracing Judaica.

It didn’t happen. In America, being Jewish meant being of Jewish faith, and raised in a Communist country, I remained a devout atheist. Going through the available Judaic sects – Hasidic, conservative, reformed – I realized I didn’t belong anywhere. And they didn’t recognize me as one of their own either. Being tagged as a Russian, I felt offended. I tried to argue that I was still Jewish even if I didn’t speak a word of Hebrew and didn’t pray, even on high holidays. Eventually, I accepted the fact that I sort of fell somewhere in between the two diasporas – a curious place where a menorah and a Matryoshka met. The Soviet emigration of the end of the last century created a new branch of diaspora and a new nationality: the Russian Jew.

About 10 years ago, I took a train from Manhattan to Brighton Beach, home to New York’s largest Russian community. On the way, I became aware of strange phenomena: my fellow Russian Jews no longer accosted me in their native language! The elderly émigré ladies laboriously pulled their accented English sentences together to ask me for directions instead of stating their questions in the easy Russian chatter. When I answered in their native tongue, they were surprised. I walked into a store – which by the way, sold both the painted wooden dolls and the Chanukah candelabras – and looked at myself in the mirror, wondering what part of me had changed so drastically. I couldn’t tell, but it seemed that I no longer belonged to any diaspora. Yet, I wouldn’t quite call myself an American either.

Luckily, I can always pass for a New Yorker. And I no longer care that I couldn’t find the right ethnic niche, because I found my home. I love and blend into this humongous diverse metropolis, in which any liberal-minded person can easily belong. There are about a half a dozen menorahs and a bunch of Matryoshkas in my mother’s house. There’s one of each in mine. I don’t think I’ve given any of my American friends a menorah for their birthdays, but I’ve certainly given many Matryoshkas, which is why I am now down to only one.