L ifestyles /C ulture
Books: Exploring Grief, Remembering Potok
BO OKS
Grieving with a
Modern Twist
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
kaddish.com Nathan Englander
Alfdred A. Knopf
THE SIMPLEST RESPONSE
to being taught the story of Jacob
and Esau as a child is to wonder
which of them you are. Are you
sensitive, thoughtful Jacob, who
cleverly — perhaps sneakily —
acquires his brother’s birthright?
Or are you the virile, dull Esau,
a physical genius who neverthle-
less gives up his birthright for a
bowl of lentil soup?
The answer, as Nathan
Englander posits in his newest
novel, kaddish.com, is that you
are, in fact, both. Even at the
peak of Jacob-ness, Esau lurks,
and vice versa.

It’s 1999. Larry, who left the
Orthodox Judaism of his fam-
ily, arrives sullen, surly and
(worst of all) tattooed to his
father’s shiva, held in the house
of his sister Dina, who stayed
on the derech, in the parlance
of Larry’s former life.

Following the predictable
clashes, Larry is cornered by
Dina and their religious betters
with a request. Will Larry take
on the responsibility of saying
Kaddish for their father? He
hems and haws, screams back
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM and forth with Dina, until the
rabbi steps in to offer a solu-
tion: what if Larry found “a
kind of shaliach mitzvah — like
an emissary. A proxy to say it
in your stead.”
Though he loved his father
dearly, Larry is more than
ready to give up his birthright,
and like any good modern
man, he looks to the inter-
net for a solution, where he
stumbles upon an answer to
his bitter prayer: kaddish.com.

The site offers its customers the
chance to pay dedicated, hon-
est-to-God yeshiva boys to say
Kaddish on your behalf for the
requisite 11 months.

What’s an Esau to do? He
signs a digital kinyan, symbol-
ically giving away his right to
the Kaddish. If the book ended
right here, it would have already
been an excellent read, which
speaks to Englander’s strength
as a writer of short stories.

But there’s too much of
Larry’s story left to tell.

Twenty years later, Larry is
now Reb Shuli, a ba’al teshuva
who uses his former life as a
cautionary tale for whoever
happens to crowd his Shabbos
table that night. He’s a rabbi,
a teacher, a husband and a
father, and he couldn’t be
happier. With regards to the
story, Shuli says, “I only share
it to say, it’s never too late to
live one’s true life.”
We’ve spent too much time
at Shuli/Larry’s nadir to believe
that this is his one “true” life,
whatever that means. Soon, he’s
tasked with finding the root
of some un-yeshivish behavior
from Gavriel, a pre-Bar Mitzvah
boy in his class. He stumbles
on a terrible conclusion: though
he’s been saying Kaddish for
his father all these years now,
the kinyan he signed away,
even if it was in Flash, renders
his prayers irrelevant. Shuli,
who thought that he left the
world of obsession and impulse
behind with Larry, soon finds
himself consumed with a need
FANS OF CHAIM POTOK,
author of the bestselling The
Chosen and My Name is Asher
Lev, now have a chance to
explore another side of the late
novelist’s work.

His daughter, Rena Potok,
has compiled five of her father’s
plays in a new book, The
Collected Plays of Chaim Potok,
which came out in October.

Many of the plays, all
of which premiered in
Philadelphia, draw on Potok’s
lived experiences.

Born to a Chasidic fam-
ily in New York, Potok came
of age during World War II,
then went on to become a
Conservative rabbi.

He served in the Army as
a chaplain in South Korea,
where he faced the cultural
confrontation central to
his writing. He found that
Judaism, so fundamental to
his identity, had no place in
Korean culture.

Potok also has roots in
Philadelphia, where he attended
the University of Pennsylvania
Collection of Plays
and was a scholar-in-residence
Explores Playwright
at Har Zion Temple.

This collection includes
SELAH MAYA ZIGHELBOIM | JE STAFF
Out of the Depths, an origi-
nal work about Russian Jewish
ethnographer S. Ansky; Sins
of the Father, a combination
of the two one-act plays The
Carnival and The Gallery, the
former based on The Promise
and the latter based on My
Name is Asher Lev; The Play
of Lights, based on The Book of
Lights about two young Jewish
men serving in Korea; and The
Chosen, based on the novel of
the same name about a friend-
ship between two young men
coming of age during and after
World War II.

The collection includes
The Collected Plays of
stage notes and prefaces for the
Chaim Potok
plays. It also includes a tran-
Edited with an introduction by script of an Out of the Depths
Rena Potok; contributions by post-performance panel dis-
David Bassuk, Carol Rocamora cussion with Potok, which is
and Aaron Posner
probably the most fascinating
Adam Kadmon Books
section of the entire book. An
to re-obtain his birthright.

Englander’s sense of humor
and willingness to wallow in
Shuli/Larry’s basest moments
aren’t out of the ordinary
for him, and neither are the
extended dream sequences.

What does feel new is the ste-
reoscopic effect of breaking the
story up into 28 chapters over
just a scant 200 pages. Just as
everything starts to settle into
3-D, click! Next slide. It’s an
interesting effect.

One quibble. Though
the title seems to promise a
more thorough interrogation
of what the internet has done
to Judaism (and to everyone),
Englander, so wordy and will-
ing to take his time on other
themes, seems to want to let
the reader do the work when
it comes to the Web. This task,
in some ways, feels not unlike
the experience of furiously
Googling in search of a single
result, only to be stymied by a
simple fact: you’re gonna have
to figure it out yourself.

JEWISH EXPONENT
introduction written by Rena
Potok connects Potok’s life to
the plays’ themes and analyzes
how each explores his ideas.

These additions elevate the
book, from simply a collection
of plays to an in-depth look at
the author himself.

In both his novels and plays,
Potok’s protagonists struggle
with what was maybe the big-
gest question of postwar 20th
century American Jewish life:
How do you live in a secu-
lar world without letting go of
your Judaism?
The plays explore the idea
of what Potok called “core-to-
core culture confrontation,”
when one grows up in the heart
of a subculture and confronts
an element at the heart of the
umbrella culture. Characters
face art, politics and other
religions that challenge their
Jewish identities.

Relationships between male
friends and between fathers
and sons serve as another
theme in Potok’s writing.

Fathers play important roles
in symbolizing one side of the
cultural confrontation, while
friends serve as confidantes in
the midst of this conflict and
even sometimes as narrators.

Women are noticeably absent
from Potok’s work and, when
they do appear, they are not
given the same depth as the
male characters.

The collection’s standout
play is Out of the Depths, which
is grander and more epic than
the others. While the other
plays tend to feel like they’re
more about the ideas the char-
acters represent rather than the
characters themselves, Out of
the Depths breaks from that
trend, making for a much more
interesting read.

Overall, the collection is
intellectual and will provide
plenty of material to muse
on. If you’re looking to bet-
ter understand Chaim Potok,
this collection is a good place
to start. l
FEBRUARY 14, 2019
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