I hate writing about books long after I've read them...this seems to be my current trend, which I have pledged to stop. Today, I called out sick from work. I have been extremely sick(my entire "weekend" as it were was spent in bed either sleeping or coughing), but today I am much more on the mend. Keren, however, insisted that I take today off because I never got to do any of my errands that I needed to do this weekend, some of which was an extensive amount of writing, about past GG winners that I have not yet documented. I have not done anything like this since probably college, where I used to skip class all the time to work on homework for other classes, but in a job where I feel like the world will come crashing down if I call out sick(though when others do it, it's kind of sucky but in the long run not usually too big of a deal), it is super rare that I call out sick. However, after this past week's events, if this project is as important to me as I believe that it is, I need to make a pact with myself to keep on top of it more, or the guilt will get to me. It is not too ironic to be writing about Adele Wiseman's The Sacrifice, after having celebrated Yom Kippur less than a week ago. I spent a lot of time during the Days of Awe(the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur)thinking about my year and what I would like to do with this coming year to change things for the better, and also spent quite a bit of time thinking about my purpose, which was something Rabbi Jacob talked about a great deal on the Eve of Rosh Hashanah and continued to talk about on the day of Yom Kippur. I firmly believe that one of my purposes in life(I hope that I don't have just one, that would be very singular)is to complete this book project and share with people my findings, and also share with them the books that are rare, out of print, long forgotten on library shelves, in storage areas, that once held such esteem in both American and Canadian literature as to win a nationally recognized prize. Literature tells a story about our cultures whether we want it to or not, and what we choose to recognize or lay aside also demonstrates who we are as a national culture. If something is deemed to be of value to a society, whether as it stands or based upon the impact it will have when read, it is held above, it is awarded a prize. Why so many of these novels have fallen by the wayside even after being so nationally recognized, is a great puzzle to me, and I have been wracking my brain for the answer since this project began. Perhaps, if I am so lucky in the conclusion of this project to interview such people who are on the panels for selection, I may see what they are looking for when they select....Like I've proposed before, is one looking to complete a canon when selecting? To make sure all voices are represented? Or is it just good literature one is seeking? If you're looking to complete a canon, why then are multiple authors selected multiple times? Do they really tell such a different story each time they write? All this aside, I should really talk about Adele Wiseman's book, and why it is so ironic that I am writing about it after all of my reflections during Yom Kippur. Wiseman's book, The Sacrifice, was awarded the Governor General for Fiction in 1956. It is the story of an immigrant family from the Ukraine, who move to the prairies of Midwestern Canada(it is never super clear here where the family settles, but I kind of guess somewhere in Manitoba: Winnipeg has, to this day, one of the largest Jewish communities in Canada[Toronto is #1, Montreal #2, with Vancouver, Ottawa and Calgary being other large Jewish communities], and is also the birthplace of the author)to escape not only a terrible past of sadness and grief but also to find a better life where they are less persecuted and where their only remaining son can find a life and carry on the family name. One of the reasons why this book is so cool and unique is not only because the book writes about a Jewish family and a distinctively Jewish life, but unlike the other truly distinctive book that I've read about a Jewish experience(Philip Roth's book could be considered a book about Jewish life as well, but his, American Pastoral, remarkably reminds me of a Jew trying to assimilate, not celebrating his Jewish life as much), Bernard Malamud's The Fixer, which was remarkable in its story about survival in the face of abuse and discrimination because the main character is a Jew, this story is about a Jewish family living in a Jewish community, where it is quickly assumed that EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE that the main characters come in contact with is Jewish. I am trying to rack my brain, but I do not know of any book that I have read in my past that takes place in such a climate. This is amazing to me. At first I was confused, but it is totally different to imagine a world where this is so, and not I suppose, impossible. Keren and I saw a glimpse of this on Friday night, when we went to Rabbi Jacob and his wife Julie's house for dinner. We arrived to find another couple there, a couple we had seen before at synagogue numerous times, and had been introduced, but had never really had the chance to formally talk. In talking with both couples, and they were talking about the people at shul and all of these things Jewish that aren't part of Keren's and my life at all, I came to realize that there is a community, even in Seattle, where assumptions are made about what you know and what you don't as a Jew. And of course, when you are at synagogue it is assumed that you're a Jew, otherwise, why would you be there? What is interesting here as a side note is that Keren, who was born in arguably the most Jewish of all countries, Israel, lacks a lot of this "background" as it were, that these American Jews that we met have. Arguably they have more background because they choose to and also because we were hanging out with a rabbi and his wife, but it also most likely has to do with the fact that both of Keren's parents parents were the survivors of the Holocaust and thus, perhaps because of a loss of faith, did not practice Judaism as much their American Jewry counterparts did. Wow, I am totally digressing.
Back to the book. Wiseman's novel, as previously mentioned, focuses on a uniquely Jewish experience; escape from a pogrom in the Ukraine to living in a distinctly Jewish community most likely somewhere around Winnipeg, Manitoba. It is a basic story, yet a complicated one, based around a father's relationship with his sons. It is the story of Abraham and Isaac, whose names are probably not coincidentally taken from another complicated story from the Old Testament of the relationship between that father and son. Abraham is a butcher who has come to the New World with his wife and son, speaking virtually no English, because they are fleeing persecution in their homeland of the Ukraine. We find out eventually that both of Abraham and Sarah's older sons, Moishe(Moses) and Jacob, were hung by Russian soldiers and left to die after the soldiers had torn through their town, set to exterminate all Jews. Abraham, Sarah and Isaac survive, but only because they are hidden by neighbors which seem good to them, but steal from them while they are hiding...Sarah never seems to recover from the loss of her two sons, and as she ages, her mind only seems to become more feeble. Isaac, therefore, has a lot of expectation resting upon his shoulders, he has everything that was expected of both sons plus his own. He is meant to be a great scholar, religious and otherwise. But, he also has to help his family, since his father's butcher income isn't enough for everything that they need to survive. He is a complicated man, just like his father. Abraham is a man struggling with his memories, his loss, his feelings of guilt for not being a better protector of his sons; he has a wife whom he loves dearly, who is a ghost of what she once was, he has a son whom he wants to give the world, since he is all he has left, but he cannot afford to do what he wants. He is also a man struggling with his God, and how he feels about Him, as he progresses through his life, he is consumed by his relationship with God and his religion and an overpowering amount of guilt. All of this makes for an incredible story, complete with a wealth of secondary characters, including Laiah, the loose woman(for lack of a better term) who will eventually tempt Abraham for the worst; Ruth, Isaac's widow, who in her own anger and frustration drives Abraham to look within himself for his own faults, driving him to madness; Chaim, the wonderful shoichet, who has his own troubles at home, with a wife who constantly finds fault with him and children for whom he has done so much that they have left him behind in their search for wealth, he is a most loyal friend to Abraham even unto the end; there is Polsky, the butcher who gives Abraham a job when he first gets to Canada and is Jewish but with his own strange interpretation of faith. Old Testament stories fill this book, and there are some that are told outright and some of course that are most likely hinted at, but I cannot always know, since my Bible knowledge is not always as strong as I would like. I do know, though, that Isaac is a son who lives in the shadows of the memories of his brothers, and this burden is too much for most people to bear, he is never enough for his father, and when he saves the Torah from the community's burning synagogue, he is a hero, but at his own life's expense; he becomes finally a son that Abraham can be proud of(though arguably Abraham was proud of him all along, he just didn't show it as appropriately), the ultimate preservor of faith, but in living up to this expectation of his father's, it is too much physically for his body to bear. It is this realization, the burden that Abraham placed on his son, via his son's widow Ruth, that eventually drives Abraham to madness and murder, confusing the local strumpet, Laiah, who has become his friend and possible lover, with a sacrificial ram, like in the Abraham and Isaac story in the Bible. Whew. There is a time in the novel, when Abraham is telling his young grandson Moses about the Abraham and Isaac story, and it falls right at the center of the book.

"He named the child Ishmael, and he thought that his son would go in his steps. But he was disappointed again. For Ishmael grew up to be a hunter, and the words of his father went in one of his ears and out the other. He was interested only in roaming through the fields.
"So finally Abraham prayed to God and asked Him what he should do.
"And God said to him, 'Do not worry, for Sarah will yet have a child, and you will name him Itzhok, and he will go in your steps.'
"And it was so. At ninety and nine years Sarah bore a child, and they named him Itzhok."
"I knew," said Moses.
Abraham smiled. "And his father loved him very much, for he grew just as Abraham had wished him to grow."
There was a momentary silence, and Ruth seized the opportunity to empty her basin and splash fresh rinsing water into it.
"But that's not the end," said Moses.
"No," Isaac stirred slightly.
Abraham waited until the tap was turned off again.
"For a while they were happy together. But God had decided that He would test Abraham, to see if he was really as faithful as he should be. So He said to him, 'Go up into the hills; I wish you to make a sacrifice.'
"And Abraham asked Him, 'What shall I sacrifice?'
"And He replied, 'Take with you your son Isaac.'
"When Abraham heard this he said, 'Very well.'"
His grandfather's voice had slowed to a pause again, and Moses leaned forward, his mouth rounded as though to catch the words from his grandfather's lips.
"So he took the boy and went with him to the top of the hills. When they reached the top of the highest hill Isaac said to him, 'What will be your sacrifice, Father?'
"And Abraham said, 'You will, my son.'
"So Isaac looked about him at the blue sky and at the hills and the fields, and at the sun which shone down on him, and he said to Abraham, 'Then bind me tightly lest I struggle and spoil your sacrifice.'
"Then Abraham bound him and laid him down and prepared to do as he had been commanded. And just as he had raised his hand to strike, God called out to him, 'Abraham, look behind you.'
"He looked behind him, and there was a young ram with his horns caught in the bushes.
"'Sacrifice the ram,' God commanded.
"So he sacrificed the ram, and Isaac was saved."
Moses let out his breath slowly. His grandfather was frowning, nodding his head over the words that he had just finished speaking.
"And so," said Isaac, "as a proof of his faith his one God asks him to do the one thing that all his life had seemed most dreadful to him. What had turned him from idol worship? What had he fought against all his life? He finds himself near the end of the circle of his days with his own God asking him if he is willing to make even this surrender. And was he aware of the irony when he said, 'Very well'?"
"What was he not aware of?" said Abraham. "Can you imagine what he felt, with his hand raised to strike? What they all felt? In that moment lay the future of our people, and even more than that. In that moment lay the secrets of life and death, in that closed circle with just the three of them, with Abraham offering the whole of the past and the future, and Isaac lying very still, so as not to spoil the sacrifice, and the glint of the knife and the glare of the sun and the terror of the moment burning into his eyes so that when the time comes many years later when he must in turn bless his sons he is too blind to see that Jacob has again stolen the march on Esau. And God himself is bound at that moment, for it is the point of mutual surrender, the one thing He cannot resist, a faith so absolute. You are right when you say that it is like a circle--the completed circle, when the maker of the sacrifice and the sacrifice himself and the Demander who is the Receiver of the sacrifice are poised together, and life flows into eternity, and for a moment all three are as one.
"That was the moment that even God could not resist, and so He gave us the future."
Isaac shook his head.
"Well, isn't that right?" Abraham laughed, excited, aggressive, as when he was satisfied with the sound and the feel of his words. "He said, 'Kill the ram and let your son live. In him is your future!'"
"Yes," Isaac smiled. "I suppose it's as right as anything else I know." (176-178)

It is the hope and irony all blanketed up in this story that becomes its basis, for I think in part, Abraham does eventually, perhaps subconsciously, sacrifice his own son, making for the title that Adele Wiseman chose. This is another one of those books that ultimately surprises, especially in the end, plot-wise of course, but what really gets me, is the fact that this book is not well read or well known...It's fucking awesome! Instead, I found a used, slightly beat up copy for about a dollar in Jean's church booksale. Now I'm not someone who associates with a ton of big readers, though I have a few friends who are such, NO ONE has heard of this book. Is it because of the religion of the characters? I hope not, the story of a father trying to please his son is universal...and the immigrant experience is also one that is not uncommon, especially to the Canadian/American experience. PPs-46, GGs-38.