Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Algonquin Books (2010), Edition: First Edition, 384 pages
Description
Award-winning novelist Steve Stern's exhilarating epic recounts the story of how a nineteenth-century rabbi from a small Polish town ends up in a basement freezer in a suburban Memphis home at the end of the twentieth century. What happens when an impressionable teenage boy inadvertently thaws out the ancient man and brings him back to life is nothing short of miraculous.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Gittel
Abandoned the book after about 80 pages. Started off very promising and then lost all promise with the Rabbi's first actions after being defrosted.
LibraryThing member suesbooks
This book contains magic realism, but that was not all I did not like about it. I didn't care for the tedious, unclear writing, nor for the author trying so hard to be funny and coming up short. Most of his characters were uninteresting or not well developed, and I hardly cared for most of them.
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This book was obviously a metaphor, but I was so bored I did not want to take the time to decipher the metaphors. Show Less
LibraryThing member hereandthere
The Frozen Rabbi, or as I found myself calling it several times a day, "Der Frozener Rebbe", is a great American Jewish story. We might say that the author's subject is the holy and the profane. In the course of this novel there is no doubt that every mystical and divine and folklorish reality is,
Stern draws on a full pallet of Eastern European and Lower East Side cultural references, Jewish mysticism, and Memphis, Tennessee lore to paint a picture of astonishing feeling, velocity and depth. Thugs, low lifes, cheats and whores - all there. Lies, robbery, rape and murder - all there. The gender ambiguous, and the abused, and the deluding and the deluded and the simple miscanim (the pathetic ones), all trapped in the helpless physicality of life in a body, are woven into the fabric of the tale. If there is a Jewish truth or a Jewish angle on reality that he doesn't apply to some corner of this story, I don't know what it is. Excursions to a kibbutz in the 1930s and a Tennessee State Penitentiary in the 21st century are also handled with a great sense of language and place. He paints with all the colors of Jewish... on a canvas of Elvis.
To relay plot elements of how der Frozener Rebbe (that holy man! that charlatan! that old goat!) came to be ensconced in his block of ice, and preserved from the late 19th century to the early 21st century before thawing out and creating cosmic havoc in Memphis, would be pointless. For that you should read the book. Suffice it to say that there are at least three or four generations of characters who unwind here, and in the telling we experience an intense cultural authenticity (manner of expression, details of daily life), all in service of a much bigger, funnier and weirder tale than any of the individual lives alone. For readers who don't know much about various aspects of Jewish culture, I felt that this book does a marvelous job of explaining what it is talking about without being the least bit didactic about it. For those who are Jewishly familiar, I think you will be impressed with how well the author tells this vernacular American story, this Memphis Tennessee story, with an informed Jewish voice. Stern's similarity to Eastern Europeans like Isaac Bashevis Singer or Chaim Grade is easy to see, but he inhabits an American Jewish cultural position with a persuasive indigeneous authenticity. (Persuasive indigenous authenticity? Is that even a thing? Der Frozener Rebbe would surely permit it!)
I wouldn't say that this story has a didactic point, or even any point at all. Like the Rebbe perhaps it points beyond itself. Perhaps laughter is its mystical potion. Perhaps it exists to enable us to experience the joy of being alive, even when being alive hurts.
Read, read, read this book. Transmigrate your souls. Let the heavens and earth be joined in holy fleshly union.
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and is not, utterly real, and that every profanity and lustful desire is, and is not, the ultimate truth. Steve Stern plays with our minds, making the reader believe, mocking his or her belief, making the reader lust, mocking his or her lust, and searching all the while for the point where ultimate being and ultimate earthliness meet in joyful nothingness and oblivion.Stern draws on a full pallet of Eastern European and Lower East Side cultural references, Jewish mysticism, and Memphis, Tennessee lore to paint a picture of astonishing feeling, velocity and depth. Thugs, low lifes, cheats and whores - all there. Lies, robbery, rape and murder - all there. The gender ambiguous, and the abused, and the deluding and the deluded and the simple miscanim (the pathetic ones), all trapped in the helpless physicality of life in a body, are woven into the fabric of the tale. If there is a Jewish truth or a Jewish angle on reality that he doesn't apply to some corner of this story, I don't know what it is. Excursions to a kibbutz in the 1930s and a Tennessee State Penitentiary in the 21st century are also handled with a great sense of language and place. He paints with all the colors of Jewish... on a canvas of Elvis.
To relay plot elements of how der Frozener Rebbe (that holy man! that charlatan! that old goat!) came to be ensconced in his block of ice, and preserved from the late 19th century to the early 21st century before thawing out and creating cosmic havoc in Memphis, would be pointless. For that you should read the book. Suffice it to say that there are at least three or four generations of characters who unwind here, and in the telling we experience an intense cultural authenticity (manner of expression, details of daily life), all in service of a much bigger, funnier and weirder tale than any of the individual lives alone. For readers who don't know much about various aspects of Jewish culture, I felt that this book does a marvelous job of explaining what it is talking about without being the least bit didactic about it. For those who are Jewishly familiar, I think you will be impressed with how well the author tells this vernacular American story, this Memphis Tennessee story, with an informed Jewish voice. Stern's similarity to Eastern Europeans like Isaac Bashevis Singer or Chaim Grade is easy to see, but he inhabits an American Jewish cultural position with a persuasive indigeneous authenticity. (Persuasive indigenous authenticity? Is that even a thing? Der Frozener Rebbe would surely permit it!)
I wouldn't say that this story has a didactic point, or even any point at all. Like the Rebbe perhaps it points beyond itself. Perhaps laughter is its mystical potion. Perhaps it exists to enable us to experience the joy of being alive, even when being alive hurts.
Read, read, read this book. Transmigrate your souls. Let the heavens and earth be joined in holy fleshly union.
Show Less
LibraryThing member maryhollis
An epic novel reminiscent of Michael Chabon's THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY, THE FROZEN RABBI tells how a nineteenth century rabbi from a small Polish shetl ends up in a deep freeze in twentieth century Memphis, Tenn.; and what happens to the boy who finds the rabbi, thaws him, and
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introduces him to the modern day world. Dramatic and outrageously funny, this novel is a wonder. Show Less
LibraryThing member Rdra1962
This book got off to a strong start. It jumps between present time - when Bernie finds an frozen 100 year old Rabbi in his parents freezer, and the past as the frozen Rabbi is carted through Europe and the Lower East Side. It combines an immigrant tale with a satirical send-up of the Kabballah
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movement. I did not really enjoy the modern chapters, and the story of what happens when the Rabbi is defrosted gets ridiculous and offensive. The last few chapters were painful to read. Many have compared this to a Michael Chabon. Chabon does not let his readers down like Stern did here! Show Less
LibraryThing member lschiff
A great premise and plot, interesting characters, an unusual perspective on the Jewish-American experience and the founding of Israel, but ultimately a major disappointment. The writing never took complete advantage of all of these great elements, so I always felt aware of reading as opposed to
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getting lost in the world of the book. The story was compelling enough to keep me going until the end though, which was the most disappointing of all. I felt utterly betrayed by the resolution of this book. Show Less
Awards
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year (Fiction — 2010)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2010
Physical description
384 p.; 6.25 inches
ISBN
156512619X / 9781565126190
Local notes
2011-12 Reading Circle selection