conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a description for a book titled The Frozen Rabbi about Jewish, Karp, Starred with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: *Starred Review* the authors 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 familys problematic inheritance. In scenes of vivid drama and burlesque comedy on the same epic scale as the authors 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 Americas TV-stoked capitalism, opens his profitable and controversial House of Enlightenment. the author 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
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: 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 familys problematic inheritance. In scenes of vivid drama and burlesque comedy on the same epic scale as the authors 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 Americas TV-stoked capitalism, opens his profitable and controversial House of Enlightenment. the author 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
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Frozen Rabbi
  The casket was rolled upright on a handcart into the building's deepest sanctum, a pine-floored locker where wheels of cheese large as millstones, beer barrels with ivory spigots, and various imported delicacies were stored. There the proprietors, Gebirtig Junior and Senior, welcomed their guests to the Castle's keep. Well-fed burghers both, wearing identically striped galluses and with fat cigars plugged into complacent grins, they seemed happy to defer to the brisk direction of the financier's agent. At his command the mammoth green lozenge of ice with its dormant occupant was hoisted by workers from its box by means of a winch suspended from an overhead gantry. Max held his breath as the dripping block dangled in the frigid air from a hawser-thick noose, dipping left and right like the arms of precarious scales. Then the flannel-wrapped pillows of fish roe upon which the ice had rested, smelling surprisingly fresh, were removed from the casket and placed on a butcher's slab, after which the block was thankfully lowered back into its crib. But what made Max even more ill at ease than had the thing's visible exposure was the way the two Gebirtigs had scrutinized the ice-entombed rebbe almost as covetously as they had eyed the caviar.
  The agent plucked from the lapel of his cutaway a tiny silver spoon with which he proceeded to sample the goods, chewing with methodical concentration before declaring the morsel satisfactory; then removing an envelope from his pocket, he tossed it to Max, who snatched it out of the air like falling manna. He supposed he was expected to count the money, which he had just enough presence of mind left to do, feeling the eyes of the proprietors upon him all the while. Stammering that all was in order, he stuffed the money back into the envelope, tucked the envelope into his inside coat pocket, and bowed to the agent with a slight spillage of raven curls. The fish eggs were then loaded into the wagon and buried in straw, on top of which were nestled, as a further decoy, sacks of groceries and bottles of vintage Sauterne. Then the agent departed without ceremony, leaving Max to the good offices of the Gebirtigs, who insisted he call them Asher and Tsoyl.
  Obviously well compensated for their part in the relay of merchandise, they seemed also well informed concerning Max's commission on behalf of the glaciated old man. "Be assured," they told him in a homey Ashkenaz idiom, "will be looked after respectfully, your zayde, till you return from making his funeral arrangements."
  They gave him explicit directions as to how to reach the telegraph office on Delancey Street and described the procedure for wiring the money back to Poland. Feeling as if the cash in his pocket were a hot potato he must promptly dispose of, Max set off with a purpose into the jostling unknown. He had been told his destination was only a few blocks away, but the welter of the Lower East Side streets was immediately disorienting, and alone he remembered that, notwithstanding his pocketful of ill-gotten gains, he was without a sou to his name. Of course, once he was rid of the money, his empty pockets would at least preserve him from the risk of robbery, but despite his apprehensiveness he couldn't help entertaining other possibilities. Given all Max had endured during his journey, would old Pisgat begrudge his skimming a scant few bills from such a thick bankroll, just enough to tide him over till he managed to secure a foothold in America? It was safe to say he would never be in possession of such a fortune again, and how, when it was gone, would he support himself, never mind see to the perpetual care of the ice-girt oddity? Thinking of which: Temporarily liberated from that weighty encumbrance, Max had the sense that his task was done. So what was to prevent him, other than Pisgat's threats (and Pisgat was very far away), from taking the money and disappearing into the country's interior, where he might perhaps purchase a kingdom and rule over a tribe of grateful savages? What, in any case, was the alternative? He supposed he would have to appeal to some benevolent society for a few dollars with which to rent a hole in the wall, then take a job in the rag trade — the industry in which he'd been told all greenhorns were employed — thus insuring his indenture to pisher wages for the rest of his days. On the other hand, already a smuggler, why not a thief? But still in the process of inventing himself, he decided somewhat grudgingly (nudged by Jocheved) that Max Feinshmeker was a man of his word, and anyway he just wanted to put this nerve-racking chapter behind him.
  He paused on the corner of an avenue congested with market stalls, carts sporting garlands of tinware, trussed and flapping geese, bins piled with alps of eyeglasses, felt slippers, and celluloid buttons, wing collars like a nest of albino butterflies. Garbage choked the gutters, creating swamps into which women in brogans chased shoplifting urchins who ducked under the bellies of draft horses dead on their feet. From every fire escape hung the doubled-over carcass of an airing mattress, from every storefront an illustrated placard boasting a giant scissors or molar, its legend inscribed in holy and unholy tongues. Max paused to look left and right, realizing that in weighing his options he had forgotten the Gebirtigs' directions, if indeed their directions were accurate; he'd lost all track of his whereabouts. Everyone around him was in motion as if desperately searching for something they'd lost, or leastwise bent on their next purchase or sale — everyone, that is, but the lanky golf-capped character in his patched plus-fours lounging in the doorway of a nearby bakery. Hadn't Max seen the very same character lounging in another doorway a few blocks back? Or was it half a world away? Because, while any comparison to the Balut was invidious, the faces among this coarse congregation might have been the same ones he remembered from Jocheved's native slum. It was as if, minus the mired motorcar or the manhole cover rattling above a subway like a gyrating coin, he'd traveled this far only to wind up where he'd begun.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: five more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: She smiled with her tight mouth only, apparently used to wiseguys. "You look like a nice boy," dropping the charade. "Better get outta here if you know what's good for you."
  Removing my cap which I used to wipe the sweat from my brow, I decided to try a different tack. "Is Mister, um...," I began, but "Mr. the Sport" somehow didn't seem right. "Is Mr. Kupferman in?"
  She said with her kohl-ringed eyes that I had to be kidding. At that point the door to the inner office opened a crack, the radio blared, and one of the characters I'd tailed from the ice plant, the spokesman, in fact, poked his eagle beak into the anteroom. The height of his head suggested that he was seated, his chairback probably propped against the wall as he twisted his neck to peek beyond the door. "Hey, Birdie," he said in a voice like an emery board, "how bout a shtikl your sweet pierogie later on?" Then he noticed me. "What's this?"
  She raised her plucked brows. "This," she announced with a sigh, "is Kid Karp. Kid, meet Shtrudel Louie Shein."
  That's when the righteous anger came over me again. "My papa don't need your protection," I practically spat at him, thrilled by my own impertinence.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last five paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Sometimes in my gloomier moments I think that all my generation has left is the story of having forgotten the story—but that is simply not enough. So Bernie must try to save the rabbi from himself, and I keep chasing mysteries, pursuing them as far as the lost continent of the past at the peril of never finding my way back again.
  An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-61620-018-3
  An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Memoir • ISBN 978-1-56512-513-1
  This is the story of unlikely heroes, the lively, beautiful Flora and her husband, the brooding, studious Simon, two immigrants who were each sent to America by their families to find better lives. They found each other and built a life—and a fortune—together. Now they are the last chance for their loved ones' escape from Hitler's Germany.
  An Algonquin Readers Round Table Edition with Reading Group Guide and Other Special Features • Fiction • ISBN 978-1-61620-016-9