A Fool’s Kabbalah by Steve Stern
A 'Fool’s Kabbalah' by Steve Stern
Gershom Scholem brought kabbalism from the shadows into the lamplight of scholarship. He is the real-life protagonist in Steve Stern’s novel, A Fool’s Kabbalah; Menke Klepfisch is the novel’s fictional protagonist, and they make an odd pairing. Scholem is traveling postwar Europe in search of looted Jewish books while, several years earlier, Klepfisch lives in a Polish shtetl, a holy fool who finds himself entertaining Nazi occupiers with his antics. A Fool’s Kabbalah contains two stories on parallel tracks whose junction is hard to foresee. Will Scholem encounter Klepfisch in the ruins?
Steeped in Jewish lore, Stern is easily comparable to Isaac Bashevis Singer. However, his humorous yet grotesque descriptions of the shtetl, especially after the Nazis arrive, also calls to mind the squalid village in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Stern writes with unostentatious finesse as his characters stumble between delusion and insight, unfounded hope and unimaginable despair.
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