Fictions

“Rabbis were easily found to sweep away the objections of traditionalists attached to the ancestral land, with the help of Talmudic quotations. Max Brod takes on the task of convincing the Tel Aviv intellectuals gathered for the occasion in the Habima Theater. A return to Vienna, as in the days when he roamed the Graben in the company of Franz Kafka, his joyride companion, was beyond hope! Especially if the heads of the Jewish Agency agreed to make the reconstruction of the Burgtheater and the Opera a priority, in addition to the reopening of the cafés.”

“- Zionism as an idea comes from Vienna. It was an Austrian journalist, Theodor Herzl, who launched it. That’s why, with the agreement of our great comrade Stalin, I’ve come to propose that we give Austria to the Jews so that they can build their state.
—But, Churchill exclaims, what are you going to do with the Austrians?
—That hardly matters, sneers Beria… The Austrian Nazis will go to Germany like all the others… on whatever piece of territory we’re willing to leave to those German dogs. Hitler is an Austrian, you’re not going to pity his kind…”

“Longing” was first published in Yiddish in the New York online magazine ‘Yiddish branzhe’. It is the epilogue of a novel in Yiddish that Ber Kotlerman, professor of Yiddish language and literature at Bar-Ilan University, will soon publish with the Swedish publisher Olniansky Tekst. Ber Kotlerman, who was born in Irkutsk in 1971, has the distinction of having grown up in Birobidzhan. The “autonomous Jewish region” founded in 1934 as part of the USSR is the backdrop to his book.

“The discordance between them, latent since her American years, became manifest when, the previous year, she published in a “Jewish magazine” – as he had said in a reproachful tone – her story “Mamie-louche” about her grandmother and her Marrano Jewishness. Since then, a fault line has opened up, gradually separating two people who believed in the eternity of their dance together.”

“I follow him inside the synagogue. Sit down on one of the wooden benches. My legs feel heavy as lead and my arms are moving strangely as I stand up. You have to do that from time to time. Get up, sing, pray, read and sit down. The synagogue is golden and pleasant.”

Last year, I was invited to speak with a class of pupils in a Parisian high school. They had studied La plus précieuse des marchandises [The most precious of all goods] (Seuil, 2019), this magnificent text by Jean-Claude Grumberg. As for me, I came afterwards to speak to them about my generation, the one born after the war of orphaned parents, around my two books Tout le monde n’a pas la chance d’être orphelin [Not everyone is lucky enough to be an orphan] (Verticales, 2002) and C’est maintenant du passé [It’s all in the past now] (Verticales, 2009).

“Liliane and I are going to welcome Ukrainian refugees. Jews. I had left my contact information with a Jewish association that is looking for places to house families who have fled the war. This morning I received a call from a certain Esther who wanted to know more about the accommodation we were offering. I gave a brief description: an independent studio, adjoining our apartment, of about 350 square feet, fully furnished. Esther’s first question was whether it was kosher. I answered that no, it was not kosher, “But is it could be koshered?” she insisted.”

“Those goddamn Jew scientists were right.
Sol gazed into the top right drawer of his desk. There, in a neat row, they lay: pen, pen, toothbrush, highlighter, pen. For as long as he could remember — ah — Sol had always thought in full sentences, often in lengthy dialogues, had frequently been amused to the point of laughing out loud by his internal banter. This time was no exception: Sol chuckled— goddamn Jew scientists indeed — even as moisture welled up on the itchy lower rims of his eyelids. Like dewdrops on a windbent sundried wheatstalk. Sounds almost like something Sammy would write”.  

“Rothenburg’s multiple roofs and towers, encircled by a wide serrated wall, presented an architectural ensemble of harmonious perfection, attractive even from a distance.  The first rays of the rising sun, illuminating the town from the east, blazed like a giant red bonfire from which exploded, here and there, long flaming tongues of cupolas and towers. The nearer the fire, the more intensely it blazed.  Occupying more and more space, it eventually permeated heaven and earth before suddenly breaking apart into distinct architectural elements – balconies, windows, cornices, eaves ….”