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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Classic Novel of Anti-Semitism WIll Resonate With All!, Jun 25 2004
Bernard Malamud's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of a poor Ukrainian Jew imprisoned for a murder he did not commit in Tsarist Russia, is one of the great Jewish interest novels ever written. But like all great works of literature, Malamud's hero, Jacob Bok, moves beyond the parochial and into the realm of the universal. In short, although the novel is about the Jewish experience in the anti-Semitic world of pre-Soviet Russia, the hero's predicament will resonate with readers of all backgrounds. Jacob Bok is a classic yiddish character who will be familiar to anyone versed in the works of Isaac Baashev Singer or Shalom Aleichem. He is a miserable young man of the shtetl, without faith in God and desperately poor his barren wife has run off with another man and left Bok with nothing. Bok is a "fixer.", a tradesman who today would be known as a handyman. Poorly educated, the fixer is an intelligent man with a bent for philosophy. He calls himself a free thinker and is inspired by the works of Spinoza. With only his tools and a pathetic horse he sets off for Kiev, hoping for a better life. Instead, a series of mistakes and bad circumstances lands him in jail, accused of the ritual murder of a Christian boy. The remainder of the book chronicle's Bok's experience in the Kafkaeque world of Tsarist justice. For a poor unknown Jew, there is no justice and Bok's suffering is harrowing. But what makes this novel great is not the narrative of unjust suffering but the inner workings of Bok's mind as he attempts to reconcile his lost Jewish faith, his notions of justice and the words of Jesus to which he is exposed with the catastrophe of his situation. Bok changes, from a man who conceals his Jewishness to work for an anti-Semite to a man who, despite his lack of faith, refuses to either confess to a crime he did not commit or to implicate other Jews in the blood libel. There is no melodramatic ending and, indeed the book is quite ambiguous. But what Malamud makes clear is that Bok's ultimate physical fate is irrelevant. By making a stand against injustice, Bok has won his humanity. And by insisting that he be brought to trial and refusing to be just another anonymous cog in the Tsar's vast machine of repression, Bok re-asserts his humanity and his individuality. Malamud is no existentialist. Bok continually asks why such bad luck should happen to him. He gets no answer because there is no answer. This is the existential dilemma. But Malamud rejects the existentialist answer, that man exists in the absence of any universal justice. As Bok realizes, freedom is not only physical but intellectual as well. At no time does Bok compromise his humanity. He struggles with insanity from the loneliness of his predicament. But ultimately he succeeds. A man can live or die with his head held high. He can remain a man until the end, whatever the cost. This is something Jews came to realize throughout their history and is a large part of the reason the Jewish faith has survived for four thousand years. But it is a lesson for all of mankind as well.
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