Flight from Ein Sof

Оглавление

W. E. Gutman. Flight from Ein Sof

Отрывок из книги

FLIGHT FROM

EIN SOF

.....

They in turn presented me to my paternal great-grandfather Fabian, the one who carried bitter memories of his childhood well into adulthood, “Fretful Fabian,” who, sobbing, had told my father of the indignities he suffered at the hands of his own father, Abraham, and the sly and wanton young woman Abraham took for a wife a month after Fabian’s mother died.

Abraham, a prayer shawl wrapped around his shoulders and a skullcap cockily perched on one side of his head, smiled at me reflexively, the way strangers part their lips in token civility when first introduced. We did not shake hands. With five generations separating us, the blood that flowed through his veins and mine, the blood of Abraham, Jacob and Isaac, of David and Solomon and, who knows, maybe even that of the Jew named Jesus, seemed stripped of all dynastic relevance. Relegated to mythical status, the reviled patriarch examined me from head to toe with a mixture of languid amusement and detachment. He might as well have been gawking at a monkey in a zoo. He followed me with his eyes but said not a word.

.....