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5.0 out of 5 stars
Trickster Tumbles, Taps into Truth, Jun 12 2004
But can we know what God wants us to do ? Isn't it a case of Man sewing throughout his lifetime the clothes that fit him ? We ask a million questions, however the answers lie only within. You have to do as you see fit. Some say the discipline of orthodox religion points out the road; every bird, every snowflake, every acorn lying on the grass is proof of God's existence. Others deny the whole thing and swear God never existed. Singer's tale of a religiously-lapsed Jewish magician/acrobat is not so much about tricks or a series of interlocking events as about a man torn between Good and Evil. Though Yasha lives on the edge of Polish society and associates with the most dubious of characters, he has a conscience, he loves women and is kind to animals, but always manipulates them to his own ends. He is more and more plagued by self-doubt and indecision as he grows older, until he can no longer act. His life of flimflam grifting, adultery, and hocus-pocus unravels when he ventures to break the 8th commandment---Thou Shalt Not Steal. He himself knows that he has at last gone too far. His four women, his course of dubious activity, his pride in his ability---all then fall away. In the end, Yasha takes a drastic and unexpected measure in order to control his desires and his straying from the path of the righteous. He achieves the fame which eluded him for so many years as a magician. The struggle within him continues unabated. Yasha remains a thinker, a questioner, a wonderer, not a blind accepter of given wisdom. THE MAGICIAN OF LUBLIN epitomizes, in the form of a novel, the basic elements of Jewish thinking. Or at least, it asks and tries to answer the most basic questions of that tradition. It is certainly an interesting novel, but it is also a masterpiece of Jewish philosophy. Man is born to question. If you don't question, you are not even alive. But don't expect to get "THE" answer because it doesn't exist. Nobel Prize winner, Isaac Bashevis Singer, as always, presents a vivid picture of the lost world of the East European Jews in all its gritty piety and desperate poverty., the world swallowed up by Evil, no matter how many prayers were said. For as it is written, (at least to paraphrase a certain well-known spaghetti western), "when a man with a prayer meets a man with a gun, the man with a prayer is a dead man". Singer was lucky enough to escape, but not unmarked, no, not at all. As I started, so I will finish. In view of the meaningless destruction of a whole world wrought by the Holocaust, how can we know what God wants us to do ? This book contains a particular answer, but the quest continues.
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