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Pag* 11 — THE NEWS — Nov«mb«r, 1M1 Welcome Aboard New Members Mr. and Mrs. Tony Ausmus Mr. Gary Kushner Mr. Joel Rubenstein Mr. and Mrs. Ron Posner Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Rosner Mr. Howard Lewis If you would like to join the JCC or have any ques tions pertaining to member ship in the please con tact; Membership Chair man: Miles Levine: 542-0173; Center Director, Harold Cohen: 366-0357. Book Review Chaim Potok THE BOOK OF LIGHTS by Chaim Potok Knopf; 370pages; $13.50 Hebrew Academy In memory of Millie Fueratman: Hugo & Helga Rosen- berger Stephen & Beryl Fish man In honor of Bar Mitzvah of Jay Aahendorf: M/M Jerry Hannes In memory of mother of Sally Schrader: M/M Hugo Rosenberger In appreciation of Dr. Ger- son Asrael for performing bris: M/M R. Zelickson to the Academy: M/M Jerry Hannes^ * Albert Einstein ponders the young rabbi’s last name: “Loran. That is, I believe, also the name of a navigational instrument, is it not?” As usual, the physicist is correct: the acronym for long-range navigation also describes the hero of Chaim Potok’s fifth and most ambitious novel. Although the author has retained a strong nar rative drive, he has aban doned the matzo-barrel homilies that marked such early works as The Chosen and The Promise. Once again his themes are ethnic, but his concerns are univer sal. Orphaned in the late 30’s, when his parents were kill ed in a now forgotten Arab- Israeli battle, Gershon Loran is raised by an uncle in a Brooklyn ghetto. Sur rounded by squalor, the teen-ager refuses to suc cumb to despair. One sum mer night, he watches a mongrel bitch give birth to a litter of puppies. In a sud den rush of insight, resting on the roof of a tenement he is seized by the miraculous: *‘He felt all caught up in the life of heaven and earth, in the mystery of creation, in the pain and inexhaustible glory of this single mo ment.” The Book Lights charts Loran’s search to re create that epiphany. In college and later the seminary, Loran retreats from humanity, abandon- ing the generous philosophy of the Talmud for the magical pro nouncements of the Kab balah. A fellow student wonders: ‘‘Do you transform yourself in the night? Do you become a Rabbi Hyde?” No; Loran remains Rabbi Jekyll, a self-described Zwi- schenmensch, a between- man, traversing the border between reality and self- delusion. His girlfriend acutely observes, “Your eyes go somewhere else.” Certainly they are not focused on her, or on his roommate Arthur Leiden, one of Potok’s most com plex and compelling char acters. Leiden’s father was a parent of the atomic bomb. The son’s heritage is a lifelong nightmare of in cinerated birds in his Los Alamos backyard. But if Leiden Jr. is damned at night, he distributes bless ings by day; he induces his family to aid Gershon with a scholarship; later Leiden prevails upon “Uncle Albert” Einstein to make Watch For Our New Store's GRAND OPENING PARK ROAD SHOPPING CENTER "Now TWO locations to serve you" LET THE DELI CATER TO YOU... ^HOLIDAY PARTIES ♦OFFICE PARTIES ♦BUSINESS LUNCHEONS ♦WEDDINGS ♦BAR MITZVAHS ♦BANQUETS DcSTown the journey from Princeton to the graduation. The favors are not returned; Loran is too busy probing his own psyche. He has plenty of company. In ’50s America, the Holocaust is not yet an obsession. In- ste ad, Topic A in synagogues and cafeterias is the sins committed by Jews. The elder Leiden reflects, “We tinker with light and atomic bombs...No one is on more familiar terms with the heart of the insanity in the universe than is the Jew, and no one is more frenetic and untidy in the search for an answer...We offer apocalypses in a pushcart.” And in starch khaki. Still searching for transcedence, Loran enlists in the Army to become the only rabbi in post-truce Korea. As the young chaplain ministers to occupation troops, he wrestles less with the Kab balah than with morale reports and charts of the VD rate for enlisted men. On leave, he wanders around Japan, ill at ease in the crowded cities and out of place in the temples of Kyoto. In Hiroshima, where “all the darkness and light of the species” lurks in the ruins, he is joined by Leiden, now a fellow chaplain. The novelist’s prose may be excessively plain, but neither his text nor his cast is simple, Potok knows that personal illuminations like those of physics, are tran sitory: the glow of a Brooklyn coal furnace, the sunshine on Mount Fuji, the ambiguous light of the atom and the consolations of philosophy do not stay. They must be discovered again and again, generation after generation. Ironical ly, it is a sense of imper manence that grants the novel its sense of durability and makes it, literally, a book of lights. —By J.D. Reed CLASSIFIED ADS Oat th« Job DoimIII 3 IlHM • «2.n • 80/ M. add. Him. Approximatlay 6 words por lin*. Bond to: P.O. Box2201« Chariotto, N.C. 28222 SERVICES Narvas Janglad? Tanaa? Tirad? Ralax and hava a Swadiah Maaaaga in your own homal Woman only.' Maaauaaa: Libby Qinaburg (372-3B0t). CATERING EPPES ESSEN A new itosher catering ser vice. Muriel Levitt Debbie Hirtch 364-0683 366-1194 The Fast And Inexpensive Way Classified Ads 366-0357 Metro temps Temporaiy Industrial Help 378-8795 AfQUatedwith Creative TBmporaries a£G«tvlCE Only the finesf in 14 oncll8 (oaf gold crxi \M3lchea dC3KC Cfvsid and figurines sporidngdtamonda IheCftmateh eMdusis/e gpftvMQpe That^ ejegonoei ■Hxift Dowds Dd 2 NCNB Razd/3756543 s Id JCC MEMBERS ONLY Discount tickets ($2.50) available at **J** office for theaters at EASTLAND, SOUTHPARK, and CHARLOTETOWN.
The Charlotte Jewish News (Charlotte, N.C.)
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Nov. 1, 1981, edition 1
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