The Last Jew

by Yoram Kaniuk, Barbara Harshav (Translation)

Innovative novelist Yoram Kaniuk takes us from the scorched earth of mid-century Europe, to the arid plains of the Holy Land, to the urban bustle of the American Diaspora, compressing the rise and fall of the Jews into the enigmatic character of one Ebenezer Schneerson. Following the ravages of World War II, Ebenezer finds that although he has no recollection of his family or childhood, he can, at will, recite Einstein’s theory of relativity, the entire canon of Yiddish poetry, and the genealogical histories of any number of extinguished shtetls; he has somehow become the final repository for all of Jewish culture. Samuel Lipker, a fellow survivor and crass opportunist, makes money off of Ebenezer’s macabre talents, trotting him around Europe to regale spooked cabaret audiences with his uncanny memory. Appearing in English for the first time, The Last Jew is an ingenious tapestry alive with narrative acrobatics and stylistic audacity. Alternately tragic, absurd, heartbreaking, and bitter — not unlike the Bible itself — it is a profound exploration of Jewish identity and the multitude of disparate, often contradictory shapes it has taken in the last century.

Genres: Fiction, Jewish, Historical Fiction, Israel, Holocaust, Judaism, Literature

528 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 1980

About the author

Yoram Kaniuk (Hebrew: יורם קניוק) was an Israeli writer, painter, journalist, and theater critic.

Winner of the Bialik Prize for Children's Literature (1991).

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not really choose this book. One of my freinds learned that I have Jewish heritage, and he picked it out as a joke. I read the synopsis on the back, it is compared to A Hundred Years of Solitude, so I bought it. I started to read and it is very slow at first. When I say slow, the first fifty to eighty pages is like your wading through molasses up to your waste. Then it starts describing the life of one of the main characters in a concentration camp, and the molasses starts to thin. At this point, the book takes off; You are treated to a thought twisting history of a Jewish family and ultimately three or four of the multible offspring of Joshua Rayna, who traveled throughout Europe fathering hundreds of children with many woman who fall in love with his beauty. It has many interesting ideas ranging from thearies on god to how memory works.

[Ruthie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it , struggled with it and loved it. . I also fell permanently in love with Kaniuk. Finally I found a voice which I could identify with in all it's glorious and often terrible contradictions. It is the novel which made me pick up courage and turn to reading novels in Hebrew. No matter how well translated it is often just too incomprehensible to risk loss in translation. Not that the original is any easier! It is always near my bed and I continue to read it from time to time. It should really be on the current shelf.

[Doron Veeder · Rating 2 out of 5]

זה עתה קראתי את ההקדמה\ביקורת של עוזי וייל לספר הזה (מתוך ספר חדש של וייל), וכלה בי הרצון לקרוא את היהודי האחרון.
ומסתבר שכבר קראתי לפני תשע שנים ונתתי ציון גרוע.
הספר נמחק כליל מזכרוני...
לתת לו הזדמנות נוספת?

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

kind of the jewish 100 years of solitude

[Brinda Gurumoorthy · Rating 2 out of 5]

While beautifully written on a sentence level, and sometimes engaging, this was a colossal headache to get through. There's a meta component where it's a book in which some bereaved parents are writing a book, and there's a character who spends time in a concentration camp during WWII, and other than that it's the story of multiple generations of a Jewish family but it's hard to keep track of who's who because sometimes fathers marry daughters or two people actually end up being the same person or whatever. Maybe I should've read slower but life is short

[jeannette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, so I'm less than 10 pages into this, but the language and sentence structure is sooooooo gorgeously melancholy. You have to focus on each little morsel, lest you miss one of his images by reading too quickly. I believe this is a translation, as well, so kudos to the translator!!

Example: "The tree facing him was all gnarled, leaves dropped slowly like a gentle rain of dead children."

Fast forward many months -- never actually finished this one. I might try again sometime, when there are no distractions.

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure whether taking a year to read a book is good or not. I liked it, and found most of the characters endearing, even when they probably were not supposed to be, it was unnecessarily complicated to the disservice of the book. Overall, i liked it and the style, but it took two reads through the first 50 or so pages wandering through Israel immediately after the war which was rough to get through before it calmed down and was easier to get into once the form took shape.

[Marsha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult to get into--I read the first 50 pages twice, but the writing rather than the story grabbed me and held me. The text is rich with amazing metaphor, allusions, and philosophy. It wouldn't hurt to keep pencil and pen nearby to track characters--remember they sometimes lie. The book does become easier to track as you get into it. The book written by an Israeli, speaks to the quagmire that is the state of Israel through its generations of settlers.

[Diana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried with this one, primarily because of the title, but it is just too difficult. A lot of "stream-of-consciousness" from inside the head of someone very damaged by war, blurred with inside the head of a father who lost his son to the same war. Is there a link between these two characters? 70 pages in and I couldn't tell.

Since I'm reading in translation, I don't know if the problem is the translation or with the original style or that Hebrew doesn't lend itself to a good translation.

[Dragana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tough yarn, mingled storyline. Could never quite get into it.

[Maureen · Rating 1 out of 5]

surreal journey through time/place; opening pages take one into the dizzied shards of thought/obsrvations of a "young man" in Israel just out of combat tour. Hard work for reader, but rewarding

[K C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very complex and deserves a second, more careful reading

[Shell (booksbythecup)]

A.edwards recommendation