Rabbi in the Attic: And Other Stories

by Eileen Pollack

In an age of minimalists, Eileen Pollack is a writer of rare generosity. The women and men in "The Rabbi in the Attic" are complex, vivid people to whom something "happens." Their stories take place in small towns in the Catskills, a laboratory of mutant mice in nowhere Tennessee, the backwoods of New Hampshire, the "City of Five Smells" in America's heartland--worlds rendered with such love and intensity that the simplest objects seem magical. Many of the narrators look back on their pasts. But don't expect to be lulled by nostalgia. Expect to laugh. To be jolted. And to be moved. Like most of us, these characters are struggling to understand what they have gained and lost by abandoning the passions and moral certainties of youth. As the narrator of the first story discovers when "barbarian" rock fans invade her town, it can be terrifying to be knocked from the "tiny fixed orbit" of conventional life. But if a person can stretch her imagination far enough, she might also be able to glimpse an "elsewhere" beyond the boundaries of ordinary human limitations. This battle between the real and ideal is taken to mythic heights in the title novella, in which a novice rabbi must try to evict her Orthodox predecessor from the house provided by her prickly congregation. Only when she tempers her enthusiasm for the new ways with compassion for those who follow the old ways can Rabbi Bloomgarten begin to care for their souls. Eileen Pollack writes from a Jewish point of view, but her subject is the search for principles that we must all undertake in a world in which religious truths are no longer handed down from parent to child. Just as one of her characters decides to become a "value assessor," the author herself helps us to sort through the jumble of objects, ideas, and memories in our own attics. In doing so, she appeals to our minds and our hearts. Her characters teach us that imagination and empathy are our best hope if we are to understand--and perhaps transcend--the pain in our world. Her language is lyrical, rhythmic, and lush. The images in her stories--a chef's severed hand, a plummeting air conditioner, a village sunk beneath a reservoir--will stay in your mind long after you have finished her book.

Genres: Short Stories

Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Eileen Pollack grew up in Liberty, New York. She has received fellowships from the Michener Foundation and the MacDowell Colony, and her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, the Literary Review, the AGNI Review, Playgirl, and the New Generation. She lives in Belmont, Massachusetts, and teaches at Tufts University. She won the Pushcart Prize for her story “Past, Future, Elsewhere.”

Reviews

[Annette Thomson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Rabbi In The Attic, Eileen Pollack has brought together a collection of short stories which although written from a Jewish woman’s viewpoint, are so filled with humanity and universal truths that there is something in there for everyone.
There are stories examining the relationships between parents and child, between the old and new traditions and in the titular story between orthodoxy and progressive rabbis.
There are two stories which look at the beginning of the working life of a young girl and the relationship she forms with a school teacher and then how the relationship changes when she is a grown woman, two snapshots of the same life showing how no matter how much things change, there are some values and people which never change.
My favourite story is the Rabbi In The Attic and I felt deep sympathy with the young female rabbi and for the old, orthodox man whose entire identity was wrapped up in the old, traditional ways.
If you are looking for a short story collection to dip into, you could do a lot worse than choose this fine collection by Eileen Pollack.