The Rabbi's Suitcase
by Robert Kehlmann
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date 6 May 2025 | Archive Date 4 May 2025
Talking about this book? Use #TheRabbisSuitcase #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!
Description
Inspired by history and a trove of love letters, The Rabbi’s Suitcase recounts how, in the early 1880s, a battered steamship, overcrowded with Orthodox Jewish travelers, makes a treacherous journey from Lithuania to Jerusalem, the home of their patriarchs. On board, Yosef Siev, a twelve-year-old mystic, is entranced with wild-haired Chana. Their story is told against a backdrop of Ottoman rule, the privations of WWI, and British Mandatory uprisings.
In 1926 Yosef and Chana’s seventeen-year-old granddaughter, Zipora, enters into a forbidden relationship with Reuven, a young Lithuanian immigrant destined, as a close ally of David Ben Gurion, to become a founder of the State of Israel. The liaison extracts a heavy toll. With dreams of self-discovery and a better future for herself and her family, Zipora travels to America determined to contribute to Reuven’s studies at the Sorbonne. Conflicts arise over issues of politics, gender inequality, and fidelity, forcing heart-wrenching decisions.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9798888246979 |
| PRICE | |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Reviewer 1499710
Beautifully Written Family Saga
Robert Kehlmann's debut novel The Rabbi's Suitcase might not exactly fit its title, as said suitcase plays a marginal role, but the ancestors he writes about come vividly alive in this tender, honest and gripping story spanning 50 years, 3 generations and several continents.
The Siev family decides to make aaliyah to Ottoman-controlled Palestine in 1879. Following their young son Yosef, the atmosphere of departure is convincingly told and the perils, hopes and promises of the journey feel so real in Kehlmann's writing that it is easy to imagine these people living history. While initially, things happen that seem to teeter between dream and reality, Kehlmann grounds the narrative by injecting foreshadowing summaries and parallel occurrences into the narrative without disrupting the flow of his prose.
The second part of the book centers around Yosef's granddaughter Zipora and her early years in Jerusalem, as well as her journey to the United States. There are vivid insights into life in Ottoman Jerusalem during World War I and later under British control. Zipora crosses paths with leaders of the Zionist and Socialist movements while acutely aware of her own position as a woman from an Orthodox family.
The journeys and relationships of Robert Kehlmann's ancestors are accompanied by extracts from their letters and photographs, making abundantly clear that this is not just a work of fiction, but a family history with the gaps lovingly filled in by the author. The story is pieced together really nicely and Kehlmann's prose is gripping, fully immersing the reader. I think as a reader we owe him never-ending gratitude for sharing their story with us.
I can thoroughly recommend this book to all people interested in the history of Israel and Palestine, as well as in migration history between Eastern Europe, the Levant and America. It contains a glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish terms for those less savvy in these topics and strives to be inclusive of readers without lived experience in Jewish matters.
