By Diana Brement, JTNews Correspondent
My mother reports that during a recent conversation about religion, my brother said to her that none of their discussion mattered, since we were “all descended from converts.”
My brother referred, of course, to the Khazars, the greatly mythologized central-Asian tribe whose royal family led a communal conversion to Judaism around 700 C.E. (we’ll put his ignorance of Jewish teaching on converts aside for now.)
He also referenced Arthur Koestler’s infamous 1973 book about the Khazars, where Koestler claims that Ashkenazic Jews were descended from the Khazars and therefore had no relation to other Jews of the world — and, by reference, to the land of Israel.
Modern genetic science has not borne out Koestler’s theory, and the late author could have used some education about Judaism and conversion, too. Genetic research shows Ashkenazic Jews more closely related to Sephardic and North African Jews — and to Palestinian Arabs — than to any present-day central Asians.
The Khazars vanished mysteriously, probably wiped out by the growing medieval Russian empire. Their acceptance of Judaism certainly annoyed the spreading Christian and Muslim populations around them and their insistence on defending their kingdom an added affront to Russian ambition.
What little is known, however, is used in an artful and gripping manner by the French novelist, Marek Halter (The Book of Abraham) in The Wind of the Khazars, translated by Michael Bernard, Toby Press, $19.95.
Halter begins the book as an historical novel set in Khazak times. He then jumps to the present where we meet the fictional French-Jewish author of the historical novel, Marc Sofer, who is attending a conference. There, he has two intriguing encounters, the first with a beautiful redhead and the second with a shady Russian Mafia-type.
The latter hands him an ancient Khazak coin with a menorah on it and claims to know a cave which holds a chest of the artifacts.
The parellel plots build in suspense side by side as Sofer is drawn into two adventures, the writing of his novel, a relief from three years of writer’s block, and his escalating involvement in mysterious international and political intrigue, searching for the mysterious Khazar cave in the oil-rich region around the Black Sea.
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Prominent Jewish novelist and poet Marge Piercy is well known for the political content of her novels, which are often cast in a futuristic or historical setting. Her new book, The Third Child, (William Morrow, $24.95) is set completely in the present and concerns Melissa Dickenson, the 18-year-old third child of a politically ambitious couple. Her conservative Republican father is furthering his career in as a U.S. senator, while Melissa feels increasingly estranged from them.
At college she meets and begins to date a young man of whom her parents would certainly not approve and who, she comes to discover too late, has ulterior motives. Naïve Melissa mistakes sexual freedom for independence, and trades her family’s value’s for her boyfriend’s without formulating her own opinions.
There is a morality tale here for modern young women, but almost nothing happens outside Melissa’s thoughts, conversations and emails for the first two-thirds of the book.
Piercy then takes you from boredom to nail chewing, demonstrating her craft. But she will also ensure that you attend to her critique of conservative politics, which, even if you agree, leaves you feeling hit over the head repeatedly with a liberal standard.
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Anne Roiphe’s entertaining novel, Secrets of the City,” (Shay Areheart, $24) is also about politics, a fast-paced and funny commentary on the ills of modern city life.
This is the compilation of a serial novel that ran in The Forward newspaper beginning in 2002, so the chapters are short and the writing is snappy..
Our protagonist is Mel Rosenberg, recently elected mayor of a large metropolis that more than vaguely resembles New York City. To make sure we get the joke, Roiphe, an award-winning author of a number of novels and non-fiction works, teases us with name changes. Central Park, for example, is Middle Park, and Flatbush becomes Pointshrub — it took me a few minutes.
Rosenberg is plagued with problems: bird and people poisonings, terrorist plots and corruption in his ranks. As his frustration builds he starts to talk bluntly to the public, in a way that, unfortunately, no real-life politician ever can.
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The Song of Names (Anchor, paper, $14) builds slowly, but to a captivating and white-knuckle crescendo.
Martin Simmonds is the dispassionate and dyspeptic narrator, a proper English upper-class gentleman (albeit Jewish), emotionally removed from his family and whose major concerns seem to be the variety of ailments from which he suffers, and the multitude of homeopathic and modern medical cures he consumes. He is the proprietor of a sheet music publishing house that was started by his father.
The story, which won the Whitbread First Novel Award, unfolds leisurely over the first few chapters until we learn that at the root of Martin’s problems is the long-ago disappearance of his sole childhood friend. Dovidl was a Polish refugee boy and violin prodigy, who came to live with Martin’s family before the eruption of World War II. He disappears the night before his highly touted professional debut, shortly after learning that his family perished in the Holocaust.
At a boring regional music contest Martin hears a young contestant imitate Dovidl’s playing. He immediately springs into action, knowing now that his long-lost friend is alive, he is determined to find him. The pace of the book picks up as we are drawn into Martin’s boyhood memories and his renewed search for his old friend.
Lebrecht, a BBC commentator on music, culture and politics, brings his knowledge of music and a charming reminiscence of two boys’ experience of war-torn London to this captivating first novel, first published in England.