What do you think?
Rate this book
Jericho Sleep Alone
Part Bildungsroman, part hymn to the city of Glasgow, Jericho Sleep Alone is without a doubt the finest book written about the Scots-Jewish experience.
From Bar Mitzvah to an unfulfilling teaching career, Jericho Eli Broock finds himself a perennial outsider and unlucky in love, neither his on-off affair with the flighty Ninna or his financially prudent dalliance with the homely Camilla coming to fruition. Will the sometimes oppressive aid of the Jewish community make all well in his world?
From Bar Mitzvah to an unfulfilling teaching career, Jericho Eli Broock finds himself a perennial outsider and unlucky in love, neither his on-off affair with the flighty Ninna or his financially prudent dalliance with the homely Camilla coming to fruition. Will the sometimes oppressive aid of the Jewish community make all well in his world?
252 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1964
1 person is currently reading
15 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 29, 2018
One of the 100 best Scottish Books.
This is the tale of the childhood, adolescence and early adult life of Jericho Broch and a depiction of the experience of being a middle class Jew in Glasgow in the mid-twentieth century. Not that the narrative confines itself to Scotland. There are forays to London, to Lincolnshire for training in kibbutz life, and an excursion to Israel, all of which provide opportunities to show us how much the world bewilders Jericho, but it is always Glasgow to which he and we return.
Keen not to follow the expectations of his family but at the same time not to disappoint them, Jericho is something of a klutz. He makes a hugely embarrassing error at his barmitzvah - such mishaps befall him with recurring ease - his understanding of women is sketchy, and, achieving a second-class University degree aside, he more or less muddles through life. This is summed up quite early in the book when he is told by a friend, “‘You, poor bastard, are one of nature’s own gentlemen, and you might as well get used to being let down because, if you ask me, you’re never going to be let up.’” Even the one potentially abiding attachment he has, to Ninna, a beguiling medical student, is never on a solid footing, always slipping off to one side.
He is given several offers of employment by uncles and the like. One even questions the desirability of him going to University as its consequence for a parent is that it takes your children away. Better to take a post in the family firm.
That Scottish sense of unspecified sin so inculcated by Calvinism even has its impact on Jews. The condition of living in the city (and all of Scotland) at the time is conveyed by the remark made to Jericho on a proposed anniversary do, “‘Celebrations? Glasgow? People don’t live in Glasgow. They are here to expiate a previous existence.’”
One of the 100 best Scottish books? Well, for an aspect of life not normally covered by the description, yes.
This is the tale of the childhood, adolescence and early adult life of Jericho Broch and a depiction of the experience of being a middle class Jew in Glasgow in the mid-twentieth century. Not that the narrative confines itself to Scotland. There are forays to London, to Lincolnshire for training in kibbutz life, and an excursion to Israel, all of which provide opportunities to show us how much the world bewilders Jericho, but it is always Glasgow to which he and we return.
Keen not to follow the expectations of his family but at the same time not to disappoint them, Jericho is something of a klutz. He makes a hugely embarrassing error at his barmitzvah - such mishaps befall him with recurring ease - his understanding of women is sketchy, and, achieving a second-class University degree aside, he more or less muddles through life. This is summed up quite early in the book when he is told by a friend, “‘You, poor bastard, are one of nature’s own gentlemen, and you might as well get used to being let down because, if you ask me, you’re never going to be let up.’” Even the one potentially abiding attachment he has, to Ninna, a beguiling medical student, is never on a solid footing, always slipping off to one side.
He is given several offers of employment by uncles and the like. One even questions the desirability of him going to University as its consequence for a parent is that it takes your children away. Better to take a post in the family firm.
That Scottish sense of unspecified sin so inculcated by Calvinism even has its impact on Jews. The condition of living in the city (and all of Scotland) at the time is conveyed by the remark made to Jericho on a proposed anniversary do, “‘Celebrations? Glasgow? People don’t live in Glasgow. They are here to expiate a previous existence.’”
One of the 100 best Scottish books? Well, for an aspect of life not normally covered by the description, yes.
December 28, 2016
Chaim Bermant exemplifies Scots-Jewish humour (which may get us all into Heaven, for being capable of laughing at ourselves).
Sadly, he went off to London to write clever things for the Jewish Chronicle and even "humanist" = materialist, anti-religious newspapers.
It is recounted, even in respectable US detective novels of the last century. like Harry Kemelman's series of Rabbi David Small, that Judaism is not a matter of morality, ethics, or indeed belief. Being Jewish is like being a Campbell, Navajo merely tribal, like the right to wear the tartan of your father's (never your mother's) name, even though Scots women return to their own name on dying.
Chaim Bermant's people are utterly Scottish, and utterly Jewish. They are sniffy about most Anglo- social climbers, but their mothers just like ours (completely Scots/Ulster/Irish) ridiculously competitive with neighbours while berating us at home for being "too religious, too little concerned with money, status, not marrying for money(!), not having a big fancy car when we visited.
I think this is a grand book, and Bermant was a wise writer. All his writing should be made available again, but only digital publishing makes this possible.
Sadly, he went off to London to write clever things for the Jewish Chronicle and even "humanist" = materialist, anti-religious newspapers.
It is recounted, even in respectable US detective novels of the last century. like Harry Kemelman's series of Rabbi David Small, that Judaism is not a matter of morality, ethics, or indeed belief. Being Jewish is like being a Campbell, Navajo merely tribal, like the right to wear the tartan of your father's (never your mother's) name, even though Scots women return to their own name on dying.
Chaim Bermant's people are utterly Scottish, and utterly Jewish. They are sniffy about most Anglo- social climbers, but their mothers just like ours (completely Scots/Ulster/Irish) ridiculously competitive with neighbours while berating us at home for being "too religious, too little concerned with money, status, not marrying for money(!), not having a big fancy car when we visited.
I think this is a grand book, and Bermant was a wise writer. All his writing should be made available again, but only digital publishing makes this possible.
December 28, 2016
Scots-Jewish wit is unsurpassable. Such joy in language and ability for self-mockery, resilience and traditional thirst for education, both formal and personal informs Chaim Bermant's oeuvre, fortunately now resuscitated (like Lazarus, without the stink) in the form of Audible readings and e-books.
This is no "misery memoir": Jericho is not starved, abused, persecuted as a migrant, he just has an ordinary life as a Jew in Glasgow, makes some bad choices, some good, flirts with the glamour of London, kibbutz training in Essex, teaching in a dodgy private school for children of limited intellectual capacity but infinite parental financial support, his sexual life is restricted in a similar way as any of his generation, or mine, which immediately followed (though I was Kirk, almost free Kirk, which is v OT)
Unlike me, he gets to go home, re-set his criteria, remind us that Glasgow has much to recommend it. (But if you're an Edinburgh graduate like me, it takes eloquent prose to convince.) academic rivalries from 16th century in a wee country are strong, and most likely rivalry between Jewish communities in our wee country aren't too different- that's just being Scottish...
This is no "misery memoir": Jericho is not starved, abused, persecuted as a migrant, he just has an ordinary life as a Jew in Glasgow, makes some bad choices, some good, flirts with the glamour of London, kibbutz training in Essex, teaching in a dodgy private school for children of limited intellectual capacity but infinite parental financial support, his sexual life is restricted in a similar way as any of his generation, or mine, which immediately followed (though I was Kirk, almost free Kirk, which is v OT)
Unlike me, he gets to go home, re-set his criteria, remind us that Glasgow has much to recommend it. (But if you're an Edinburgh graduate like me, it takes eloquent prose to convince.) academic rivalries from 16th century in a wee country are strong, and most likely rivalry between Jewish communities in our wee country aren't too different- that's just being Scottish...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews