A Day of Small Beginnings

by Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum

Poland, 1906: on a cold spring night, in the small Jewish cemetery of Zokof, Friedl Alterman is wakened from death. On the ground above her crouches Itzik Leiber, a reclusive, unbelieving fourteen-year-old whose fatal mistake has spurred the town's angry residents to violence. The childless Friedl rises to guide him to safety -- only to find she cannot go back to her grave. Now Friedl is trapped in that thin world between life and death, her brash decision binding her forever to Itzik and his she is fated to be forever restless, and he, forever haunted by the ghosts of his past. Years later, after Itzik himself has gone to his grave, his son, Nathan, knows nothing of his bitter father's childhood. When he begrudgingly goes to Poland on business, Nathan decides on a whim to visit his ancestral town. There, in Zokof, he meets the mysterious Rafael, the town's last remaining Jew, who promises to pass on all the things Itzik had failed to teach his son - about Zokof, about his faith, and about himself.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Poland, Religion, Historical, Novels

368 pages, Hardcover

First published November 3, 2006

About the author

My debut novel, A Day of Small Beginnings, asks the question, who are we if we don’t know where our families came from? What are the consequences for the loss of our histories? It is a peculiarly American question. I was inspired in part by my Polish-born grandfather, who having turned his back on his history and his religion, would mysteriously weep every year at our very unorthodox Passover Seders.
A few years after my older daughter was born, after having left the practice of law for good, I began to write a story about a man who returns to his father’s hometown in Poland. But in the mid-1990’s, when I travelled to Poland with my in-laws, who are Holocaust survivors, I realized there was a bigger story to tell. In the process, I found that my sensibilities about writing fiction felt much like the dance choreography I had done years before - choreography with words. The result was A Day of Small Beginnings, which became a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.

I am now writing a novel, King of Cahokia, that is, in part, about what it was like to live inside the 1950's McCarthy Era Blacklist, which touched my own life.

A few years ago, I attended a performance of Jewish Women's Theatre in Los Angeles, where I live, and was so blown away by the unique salon-style performances by professional actors - reading original contemporary work without sets or costumes, that I submitted a piece. Before I knew it, I became the dramaturg and an enthusiastic supporter of this exceptional group. Feel free to check it out at jewishwomenstheatre.org and on FB.

Reviews

[Georgia Bleiweis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully-written book from an intelligent author. I decided to read this book to learn more about the Jewish culture and roots, and this novel fit the bill. Rosenbaum combined themes of Jewish history and traditional Jewish values in such a way that people of all religions and spirituality can relate. Interwoven into the story were elements of multi-generational character development, cultural aspects of dance, music and education and the crossing of ethnic and spiritual boundaries...all woven into a story that I think anyone with an ounce of passion will be able to relate.

[Marvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yet another Holocaust story, which takes place over 3 generations. The first-generation male flees Poland after he's responsible for the death of a bigoted, anti-Semitic villager. He moves to America & never talks about his past. His son, at age 59 & a Harvard political scientist, travels to Poland to share his expertise. While there he visits his father's village & learns his story. Some years later that man's daughter retraces his steps while she's there on invitation to choreograph a ballet. All 3 are non-believing, non-practicing Jews who are called to task by the last surviving Jew in the village & a ghost that he feels responsible for putting to rest. There's lots of heavy-handed stuff about the importance of owning their Jewish past & its traditions, including its religious beliefs & practices. If a novel approached someone's, say, evangelical Protestant beliefs & practices in a similar way, the novel would be dismissed as "Christian fiction," & rightly so.

[Lynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story begins in 1906 in a small town outside Krakow, Poland. A young Jewish boy is caught up in the death of a peasant who falls from his wagon and is killed. The young boy Itzik Lieber is a witness who flees from the scene taking shelter behind the gravestone of Freidl Alterman in the Jewish cemetery. Itzik inadvertently raises her spirit from the grave to come to his aid. Some of the story is told in Freidl's voice. The townspeople suspect the boy of murdering the man, and Itzik is forced to flee for his life, afraid of the pogrom the incident will give rise to. He eventually is forced to leave his home to come to the United States.

The story then follows Itzik, his son Nathan and granddaughter Ellen into the early 1990's. Each has a part to play in unraveling Itzik's past and Freidl's role in their lives. Nathan is a professor and Ellen is a dance choreographer, each bringng a new perspective to the role Itzik played that night so long ago in Poland. Can they put things to right and make a difference like Freidl has asked of them?

I particularly liked the imagery of the cathartic and healing powers of music and dance. While Nathan returns to Krakow as an advisor and expert in constitutional democracies, his effort to influence the politicians or bureaucrats in Poland, after the end of communism, is met with stony skepticism. His daughter Ellen is drawn to Krakow with the offer to be a guest choreographer for a well known modern dance troupe. Her dilemma of coming from a nonreligious jewish family and discovering a connection to the past and to Judaism echoes the experiences of so many 2nd and 3rd generation American Jews. And Freidl's voice adds that genuine soul that we remember from speaking to our grandparents who spoke Yiddish and came from the old country. Ultimately it is the image of the Biblical Miriam that Ellen invokes in her dance and music to draw that connection. There are many wise adages in this book on how to find relevance in spirituality. Women are powerful. I say, well done.

[Amy Lenzo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow

I am so sorry this book has ended ... I’ve been bound up in it to the point of its being part of my ongoing everyday thought, stretched out for weeks on purpose. I will miss the world it evokes. Total immersion in Pearlman’s lush tapestry of history and art and redemption has been a painful but important and ultimately transformative experience.

[Anna Reimink · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written around a unique plot that I could never really get that into. I did still like the ending that brought everything together as well as the writing style. Just was not a super interesting topic to me personally.

[Diane Blattner · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine

Got really bogged down in the end and I ended up skimming the last 10% of the book. I didn’t buy into the spiritual change of the main character.

[Mary Jo Wilkins]

A fictional (historical ?) of Poland Catholics and Jews surviving the world wars and beginning to heal as a nation.

[Susan Weinberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books from my 2012 reading.

The story is told through three generations with the connecting thread being Freidl, the spirit of a woman who once lived in a small shtetl in Poland. Each generation brings a greater understanding of their heritage and the reader shares their journey. The first segment begins with a young boy in the early 1900s who is forced to flee his shtetl and comes to America. In the second segment we find his son, a college professor, in Poland for a lecture. While there he decides to visit the town from which his father came. His father had shared little of his past and had rejected religion in his life. The third segment of the book focuses on the granddaughter, a dance choreographer who goes to Poland to create a performance with a Polish dance company. There she falls in love with a Polish Catholic musician and struggles with the latent anti-Semitism she encounters in Polish culture even as the former Jewish culture is romanticized in other parts of Polish society.

Her journey actually takes her in transit through my ancestral town of Radom and she writes of Krakow and Kazimierz Dolny, both places I got to know well in my travels. As a result, I could easily picture the locations and it gave an added resonance to her story. I also could appreciate her struggle to bridge the two cultures and find the common humanity despite historical differences in perspective. I especially liked the mystical flavor and wisdom as expressed through Freidl juxtaposed with modern day Poland.

In its own way it is a very spiritual book and I found myself touched by its wisdom. It gave me pause, often connecting with my understanding of the world and eloquently giving it voice.

[Marian Turk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a book about the Holocaust. I'm not sure why so many reviewers on Goodreads have categorized this as a Holocaust book. Not every book that mentions the Holocaust is *about* the Holocaust. A Day of Small Beginnings is a beautiful book about family history, identity, and finding one's Jewish roots. It's quite an insightful look at what happens when one becomes distanced from one's Jewish identity, and what it means to be Jewish in the first place. It also questions how well we can ever really know our own family members. Since it traces a family's history from Poland in 1906 to the northeast United States in 1992, the Holocaust is mentioned, because you cannot write a book about Jews in Poland in the 20th century and not mention the Holocaust. The first section of this book absolutely blew me away. It is a masterful and unusual set-up of the origins of the family we're going to read about, and it's beautifully written in a way that really brings a 1905 Polish shtetl to life. The book's ending was not as satisfying to me as the beginning, but it is still, as a whole, an excellent and evocative book about family history and Jewish identity.

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Day of Small Beginnings is a story about three generations of Polish Jews, and their interaction with the spirit of a woman named Freidl who protects them and attempts to draw them back to the faith of their families. There is plenty of Jewish mysticism here mixed in with orthodoxy. I found the premise fascinating and the book equally so. Rosenbaum, in her debut novel, shows promise in her ability to capture both internal and external circumstances surrounding her characters. The one issue I had with this book was the sex scene found about ten pages from the end: I felt it was overly and unnecessarily explicit, so much so that it seemed out of place with the rest of the book. I almost thought it was an editor’s idea to spike sales or something - it truly didn’t belong.

Otherwise, A Day of Small Beginnings is a good story about people trying to find who they are in the context of who their family is and has been.

[Gloria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this book even though I had to renew it twice before I could finish it. There is only a little plot and a lot of thought in it. Itzak, Ellen's grandfather, fled from his small Polish village under threat of death and emigrated to America where he revealed little of his past life. His son and granddaughter were not raised in the Jewish faith and knew nothing of their heritage until each of them had to go to Poland for business and were confronted with their family past. This was a good read about a journey of discovery and how heritage can fit with modern life.

[Joey Gremillion · Rating 5 out of 5]

The soul of Friedl Alterman, one year in the grave, has been released after Itzik Leiber, a young Jewish teenager, accidentally causes the death of a drunken Polish lout and is on the run and finds solace in her grave. Friedl soul cannot be returned to her grave and she haunts young Itzik, and then, upon his death, his son Nathan and granddaughter Ellen, who have not been taught Torah and Yiddishkeit. It is up to Ellen, who returns to Poland, to help Freidl find rest. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR READING DURING THE MOTH OF ELUL!

[Jeanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

my journey into jewish european history continues with no plan on my part. this book has been on my list for a number of years and i just ordered from library and loved it. a very different approach to learning about a family history. the book is filled with beautiful biblical poetry and songs *(in my imagination of course as the book didn't sing!) . excellent story and left me wanting to know more. now i have to see if there is a sequel

[Marcia G. Yerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I reconnected with my high school friend, Lisa Rosenbaum, she mentioned that she had written a book. It took me awhile to get to it (Thank you pandemic for my uptick in reading), but am very happy that I did.

I found it to be both lyrical and engaging. I knew Lisa when she was very involved in dance, so that piece really resonated.

It gave me a strong flavor of a country where my grandfather's family came from, and I appreciated those insights.

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a long time ago. I do not think I can put together a coherent review. The book description makes it sound weirder than it really was. You leave the book with a better understanding of the Jewish situation in Poland's past.

[Amy]

If you're interested in Jewish History, this gives you some information that was left out of our public and/or private education. It has an existential play on things which makes it entertaining. I really enjoyed it.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt that this book was not written very well. The ghost story line is really contrived. However, I gave it 3 stars instead of 2 because it touches on some interesting issues, such as Jewish assimilation, Jewish-Polish relations, Polish culture, and genealogical research.

[Barbara Gottesman · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far loving this; I love the fantasy aspect of a ghost watching over this character, and then his son. Can't wait to get back to it later! I finished this last week. I loved the story, I felt it was a little anti-climactic at the end, but overall really enjoyed it.

[Jamie Oaks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I liked the way it spanned over 3 generations and how the lives of the characters intertwined. The author does a nice writing style that is descriptive, yet not overpowering.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a superb novel spanning several generations of the Lieber family and their Polish ancestry. It is a beautifully written discovery of family ties and lost faith. This is a story that I didn't want to end.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed it. I come from a Polish background from that part of the country and it was fun to read the history and opinions from characters set in a historical time period. I enjoyed the the mix of the past and present.

[Agatha Donkar Lund]

Another I didn't finish reading -- simply wasn't up my alley, especially for the summer. Dense, and probably engaging if you could get past the set-up, but I failed to. My problem, not Rosenbaum's.

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing story that will get you thinking. This is the kind of book that sticks with you long after you have finished reading it.

[Rozzinner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic book ---- extremely well written

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book captivated me at the beginning, a 20th century story told like a Hasidic folk tale, but the quality of the writing did not hold all the way to the end. Could tell it was a first novel.

[Bridget · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book.

[Marcia Fine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! Best examination of why some Polish Jews chose political freedom over religion. I respect my grandparents' lifestyle, but I couldn't live it! Rosenbaum writes beautifully!

[Bebe · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my Jewish friends and those that want to learn about Judaism.

[Rob Hood · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! It was difficult to cease reading when sleep overcame me! I wanted to stay with it! It's a beautiful well written story!

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ending was disappointing, but still an amazing novel.