Small Worlds: A Novel

Small Worlds

by Allen Hoffman

Classic in its vision and generosity, this extraordinary novel follows the lives and loves of the villagers of Krimsk, a small Hasidic settlement in Eastern Europe, in 1903. The first volume in Allen Hoffman's critically acclaimed series,  Small Worlds  takes place in 1903 and introduces the wondrous rebbe of Krimsk―a small Hasidic settlement in Eastern Europe. Secluded in his study for the past five years, the beloved rebbe suddenly emerges on the eve of Tisha B'Av, the holiday for commemorating the destruction of the holy temple in Jerusalem. His congregants are overjoyed to see him, but their joy is to be short-lived, for this holiday at the dawn of the twentieth century will be marked by strange and momentous events that will change their lives forever. Small Worlds  is the first in a series of novels concerning the people of Krimsk and their descendants in America, Poland, Russia, and Israel. In each volume Allen Hoffman draws on his deep knowledge of Jewish religion and history to evoke the "small worlds" his characters inhabit. Echoes of Jewish literary tradition can be heard in  Small Worlds , especially the mystical realism of Isaac Bashevis Singer and the poignant humor of Sholom Aleichem, on whose tales Fiddler on the Roof is based.

Genres: Fiction

280 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1996

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a novel about many many things, and a review could be taylored to each of them. This is a novel of loss and evocation, and of the tensions between faith and community on the one hand, and the need to deal honestly to the changing world, and adapt to it for survival, on the other. In this way, it is a universal novel- what group of people, what person, isn't constantly poised between already nostalgia for the what-is-now-and-is-yet-vanishing on the one side, and new, terrifying, unchartered change on the other side?

This is also a novel of specifics- a specific place (a town on the Polish/Russian border), a specific time (late 1910s), a specific group of people (Hasidic Jews), and within that specific individuals (a tinker, a group of Jewish school boys, a rebbe and his prodigy, the rebbe's wife, a small band of revolutionaries) and their struggles- ultimately- to heal their relationships, and their own strangely, tenderly, broken selves.

It is in the specifity of the details that this novel's beauty shines through, as if the God of this novel is, rather than the Hebrew God, distint and omniscient author of the universe, instead a more local kind of god, a demigod, a small humble dwarf of a God who lovingly looks after a small, humble, problematic group of people, performing minor miracles of transformation (the rebbe may, or he may not have been, at one time, a frog watching the advent of Napolean's armies in the distant past), of redemption, of protection. Mainly, futilely, of protection.

Because, while this novel deals lovingly and gently, almost mesmerizingly gently, with the egos and relationships of the characters, main and minor, the entire novel takes place within the context of the historic facts of pograms (not to mention impending future genocide) designed specifically to wipe these very people off the planet.

It's hard to know- does the historical fact of the Holocaust, or even of the Russian and Polish pograms, overshadow the immediate lives of these characters (and the concerns and doubts and desires that these lives are invariably made up of?) When privy to their prayers- for a wife, for a secure life for their children, for triumph over temptation, for a sign- are we to acknowledge the terrible futility of these prayers, knowing, as we do, the historical realities of the early 1900s? Or is it the other way around- is the author, in his skillful rendering of Jewish life in the Russian/Polish Ghettoes, of the day to day joys and sorrows, the concrete textures of old wood and pond water- is he, in his own way, challenging the supremacy of the Holocaust? Is he demanding instead we pay attention, and tribute, to the inviolate dignity of these lives *outside* of the context of the Holocaust, a tragedy which not only will destroy them, but will also render their lives in sentimental colors, maudlin and martyered, and robbed of the complex truth of being human?

There is one scene in this novel which, rendered in absolutely hysterical language of dry delivery, illuminates this struggle of perspective- early on, one of the minor characters, a Jewish peddlar, is driving his horse home for a local celebration of mourning. As he rides in his wagon, driving the horse, he watches the view in front of him- namely, his horse's buttocks- and begins to see, in the flash of setting sun against his horse's behind, a note, a message, written by the sunlight, then hidden away in the shadows. He interprets this phenomena as his message arguing with itself- a constant back and forth between the interplay of light and dark, the universe arguing about itself as to what, the Peddlar reasons, he should be doing with himself. The strange improbability for the reader (that a divine message would be "snatched from the sunlight" by the "hunches of that horse, Thunder Piffle", that this message would be taken seriously by the otherwise placcid and sensible seeming peddlar) is wonderful and joyful in its quirky reflection on what it means to be human, and what it means to exist in a world full of stange and inexiplicable data. However, as we travel with this peddlar, we learn that for him, this divine argument is one of whether or not he, the peddlar, should relocate to America. As we ride along with him, we feel his struggle- does he stay in his community, in which he knows everyone and has a place, but which has begun to feel stifling, or does he go to America, possibly to persue a Destiny, with a capitol D, we cannot help but be aware that this question is rigged- that if he choses to stay in the shetl, he will, almost beyond certainly, die a terrible, terrible death, and know that everyone he loves has been destroyed.

As this initial question (stay or go? forward or back) plays out throughout the novel, the author grounds us thoroughly in place- he offers no knowing winks, not even grim gallow humors ones- we are bound to these characters in their time and place, and are only allowed to see how the world looks from their pre-1930s perspectives. It's a terrible, wonderful kind of discipline of the novel, painful but perhaps in it's own way more honest and redemptive, or at the very least, more honoring of the characters (and the humans whose lives were the basis of these characters lives)?

A wonderful novel which will stay with you and trouble you by all that is left utterly unsaid.

[Hermien · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quirky.