Yosl Rakover Talks to God - Hardcover

Kolitz, Zvi; Janeway, Carol Brown

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375404511 ISBN 13: 9780375404511

Publisher: Pantheon Books, 1999

Synopsis

A dying Jew's last words to God -- a text that is regarded as the greatest piece of writing to have emerged from the Holocaust -- the story of how it came to be written, and the afterlife of both the author and his creation.
As the German tanks destroy the Warsaw Ghetto, one of the few remaining fighters, Yosl Rakover, writes out his last words to God, seals the text in a glass bottle, and thrusts it into the rubble before preparing to die. The text surfaces in Europe in the 1950s, is passed from hand to hand, is broadcast on Radio Berlin -- where it is acclaimed by Thomas Mann as a religious masterpiece -- is anthologized and translated into many languages.
But what is hailed as the most important testament of the Holocaust is in fact a short story, written in 1946 for a Yiddish newspaper by a remarkable young Jew, Zvi Kolitz, in Buenos Aires, where he had gone to raise money for the Jewish underground in the struggle to establish the State of Israel. The Borgesian story of what happened to the text and to Kolitz in the fifty years since, and the detective work of German journalist Paul Badde that resulted in their eventual rejoining, form the second part of this fascinating book. And in an afterword, the great French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas's meditation on the text is answered in a commentary by Leon Wieseltier.
Already an acclaimed bestseller in Europe, Yosl Rakover Talks to God restores a blazing artifact of twentieth-century writing to its true setting.

About this title

Review

Yosl Rakover Talks to God, a short story that was thought for years to be a nonfiction testimonial, is one of the most highly regarded works of literature to emerge from the Holocaust. It presents itself as the last words of a dying Jew to God. Yosl Rakover, a resistance fighter against the German assault on the Warsaw Ghetto, and the last surviving member of his family, takes pen to paper on April 28, 1943, and writes a searing confession of strength and humility. ("The sun probably has no idea how little I regret that I shall never see it again.") He then seals the story in a glass bottle and hides it in the rubble before returning to the battle in which he will die. This edition of the story includes a long essay about its composition and reception by journalist Paul Badde, an essay from the 1950s by the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, and a response to that essay by Leon Wieseltier (the author of Kaddish). This is a strange and beautiful book, with great power to persuade its readers that we must take time to state for ourselves the nature of our belief or unbelief. Yosl Rakover cherishes the story of a Jew who escaped the Spanish Inquisition and prayed: "I will always believe in You. I will love You always and forever--even despite you." Many readers will cherish Yosl Rakover Talks to God in a similar way. --Michael Joseph Gross

From the Back Cover

"A singular literary creation, worth pondering for generations to come." --The Jerusalem Report

" The text is a quarrel as much as a prayer, an assertion of faith and a simultaneous refusal to accept the traditional notion that God hides his face in response to human sin." --The New York Times

"Yosl Rakover is one of those runaway masterpieces whose energy makes them explode off the page." --Le Nouvel Observateur (France)

"Remarkable . . . a grim but beautiful story." --Los Angeles Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0375404511
• ISBN 13: 9780375404511
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 99