Page 26 - Jewish News_January 2020

26A January 2020 JEWISH INTEREST

It’s a little bit Brooklyn, a little bit Lower East Side

Book review by Philip K. Jason, Special to The Jewish News

L’Chaim and Lamentations: “Sadie’s Prayer” offers two aged that even in the afterlife, learned and somewhat
Stories by Craig Darch. roommates, Sadie and Esther. They Esther will need a friend cantankerous. The sex-
NewSouth Books. 160 pages. are a kind of odd couple. Esther’s tem- like Sadie. ton, Eisenberg, “could
Hardcover $24.95. perament demands neatness and con- In “Kaddish for kvetch fluently in seven
vention. She can’t understand why the Two” we enter the lives languages.” Nachman,
ot long ago, I had the plea- good lord has given her such an annoy- of Zev Abramovitch and the cantor, who had lost
sure of writing about Richard ing partner and how the Jewish housing his 33-year old unmar- his once-glorious voice,
NSlotkin’s short story collec- agency brought them together. Esther ried son Aharon. For magically gets it back.
tion titled Greenhorns. I take the same cannot adjust to Sadie’s smoking, to her Zev, it’s very important Rabbi Fiddleman holds
pleasure in sharing Craig Darch’s Communist leanings, to her messiness. that his son continues the group together. They
somewhat similar Esther looks backward. Her memories the family line and ex- have nothing to do except
collection. Darch, of life with her deceased husband are periences its joys in appraise the dishwasher
a professor at a kind of anchor. She seems to talk to the traditional manner. and overhear a (beautifully
Auburn Univer- him, and Sadie is crass enough to point Readers will suspect rendered) mother-daughter
sity, has crafted a out that “Max is reading the newspaper the reason for Aha- confrontation.
compact, resonant and having his bagels someplace else ron’s resistance to such conversations An incident in the Nosh
memorial to the this morning.” long before Aharon ends the useless leads the three men, each in his own
Jewish ethos as Esther voices her wish that she had fencing back and forth by announc- way, to contemplate death. The rabbi
it existed in New perished with her husband, and Sadie ing that he is gay. Darch’s credible explains that “the Torah makes no de-
York City for chides her for her silliness. and powerful handling of this situa- finitive statement about an afterlife.”
Phil Jason many decades. Knowing that they are each guilty tion, the horrors of moral blindness A year passes, and they are still talk-
Though there are few time mark- of making each oth- and disappointment that ing about the old crone and muttering
ers, the ambiance seems to suggest the er’s lives much more overwhelm both men, is about how after coming to Schwartz-
1920s through the 1950s. These de- miserable than they stunning. The premise, man’s for 10 years, there is “never a
cades have faded away, with their vari- need to be, they agree that a Jewish man needs waitress when you need one.”
ous tones of hope and disappointment. – at Sadie’s sugges- a son to guarantee that These tales, and their four com-
They are almost forgotten, but the au- tion – that they each there is someone to say panions, are sometimes heartbreaking,
thor brings them back through the sen- treat the other with Kaddish for him, reso- sometimes consoling, always lumi-
sibilities of people who themselves are civility. Fat chance nates both in comfort- nously true.
on a point of balance between forget- of that happening – able and uncomfortable Philip K. Jason is Professor Emeritus
ting and remembering – as well as be- at least not yet. They ways. of English from the United States Na-
ing forgotten. are wired differently “Who’s the Old val Academy. He reviews regularly for
Many live lonely lives, many have and, most likely, it is Crone” raises the issue Florida Weekly, Washington Indepen-
fallen upon – or always had – hard too late for them to of Jewish continuity in dent Review of Books, Southern Lit-
times. Many have a special kind of change. Craig Darch a different way. Three erary Review, other publications and
dignity and even courage. Darch’s nos- The women’s bickering dialogue is old friends are chatting and noshing the Jewish Book Council. Please visit
talgic heart has made their ordinariness quite humorous, and perhaps will seem at a restaurant, Schwartzman’s Nosh, Phil’s website at www.philjason.word
extraordinary. familiar to many readers. We all know run by Sybil. They see a woman they press.com.
These are people surviving inside people like this. They are our relatives, haven’t seen there before who looks
their loneliness. The world they once if not necessarily our friends. down and out. She seems at once piti- Need to reach the editor
fully inhabited has changed around They compete about who suffers ful and imposing. But who are they to
them. The corner delicatessens run by the most, who prays the most, and judge? They are the remnants of the of The Jewish News?
hardworking neighbor-owners have whose taste is superior. Romanian synagogue “bankrupt and Send an email to
vanished or been transformed. In a sense, one can’t live without boarded up years ago.”
Darch’s seven stories are seven the other, and the conclusion makes Indeed, they are its last rabbi, jewishnews18@gmail.com.
gems. clear that Sadie knows it and knows last sexton and last cantor. They are

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