Join us for a discussion of the novel, "The Book of Israela," by CBE Rabbinic Team member, Rabbi Rena Blumenthal.

In person, if possible!

Zoom only by registration.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Jerusalem, 2002: the height of the sec­ond intifa­da. Kobi Bena­mi is a mid­dle-aged psy­chol­o­gist whose life is in sham­bles. His wife has thrown him out for casu­al phi­lan­der­ing; his daugh­ter won’t speak to him; and he may lose his job due to indif­fer­ent work habits. At this des­per­ate junc­ture, Kobi gets a new patient, Israela, whose sto­ry is full of uncan­ny Bib­li­cal ref­er­ences, and whose pow­er­ful enig­mat­ic hus­band Y may or may not exist. Israela hasn’t seen Y in months, but she is being stalked by his prophet-like emis­saries, span­ning the spec­trum of Israeli soci­ety — Ortho­dox to sec­u­lar, right-wing set­tlers to left-wing urban elites — unit­ed only in their harsh con­dem­na­tion of Israel, a fierce devo­tion to Y, and con­nec­tion to The Out­stretched Arm, a sin­is­ter orga­ni­za­tion pur­port­ed to be run by Y.

As Kobi becomes ensnared in a sur­re­al encounter with anthro­po­mor­phized ancient Israel, and pre­oc­cu­pied with ques­tions about the nature and exis­tence of Y, he is forced to con­front his dys­func­tion­al life pat­terns, his family’s trag­ic past, and the end­less war that rages around him.