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שונא הנסים
Eshkhar, a young boy whose mother died in Egypt, journeys with Moses and the rest of the Israelites to the Promised Land, growing into a young man before the journey ends
62 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
34 people want to read
About the author
Shulamith Hareven
19 books6 followersShulamith Hareven (1930 – November 25, 2003) was an Israeli author and essayist.
She was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a Zionist family. She immigrated to Mandate Palestine with her parents in 1940.
At 17 she joined the Haganah, serving as a combat medic in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, in the siege of Jerusalem. She was assigned to establish Israel Defense Forces Radio, opening the station's broadcasts in 1950. She was a war correspondent in the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War.
In 1962 she published her first book, a book of poems titled Predatory Jerusalem. Since then she wrote prose books, translations of books, and plays. She published essays and articles about Israeli society and culture in literary journals Masa, Orlogin, and Keshet, and in newspapers Al Ha-Mishmar, Maariv, and Yedioth Ahronoth. Her essays are collected in four volumes. She also published a thriller under the pen name "Tal Yaeri". Her books have been translated into 21 languages.
She was the first woman inducted into the Academy of the Hebrew Language.
She was an activist for Peace Now. In 1995 the French weekly L'Express deemed her an Author of Peace and listed her among the 100 women "who move the world".
(from Wikipedia)
She was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a Zionist family. She immigrated to Mandate Palestine with her parents in 1940.
At 17 she joined the Haganah, serving as a combat medic in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, in the siege of Jerusalem. She was assigned to establish Israel Defense Forces Radio, opening the station's broadcasts in 1950. She was a war correspondent in the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War.
In 1962 she published her first book, a book of poems titled Predatory Jerusalem. Since then she wrote prose books, translations of books, and plays. She published essays and articles about Israeli society and culture in literary journals Masa, Orlogin, and Keshet, and in newspapers Al Ha-Mishmar, Maariv, and Yedioth Ahronoth. Her essays are collected in four volumes. She also published a thriller under the pen name "Tal Yaeri". Her books have been translated into 21 languages.
She was the first woman inducted into the Academy of the Hebrew Language.
She was an activist for Peace Now. In 1995 the French weekly L'Express deemed her an Author of Peace and listed her among the 100 women "who move the world".
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 18, 2015
It's difficult to describe the reasons I loved "The Miracle Hater" the way I did, so here's a story that I hope will help illustrate them. Shortly after formally declaring myself an atheist, I came to a mentor of mine for help. We had both been raised in one of the more fervent strains of Christianity familiar to many Americans, and had gradually lost our faiths once we had a chance to break away from our stifling families. This had been a dark process for me, as I knew it had been for him; I had fought with the desperation of a trapped animal during those years to hold on to my religion, even as I believed in it less and less everyday. So I asked this man why it had been so profoundly painful to let go of what amounted to a 2000-year-old fairy-tale. He sighed very deeply, and was silent for a while, then said: "because of all the bells you can't unring, this is the worst possible one." The knowledge that all the cumulative suffering in the world has been for absolutely nothing, that there is no divine presence heeding your every action with an incomprehensibly massive and personal love for you, that there is no messiah to save the weak, no heaven to reward the good, no judge to punish the wicked, is a crushing burden to bear when you have lived your life believing otherwise.
This book is a cautionary tale about ringing that terrible bell, within the framework of Israel's founding myth, the familiar biblical story of Exodus - retold from a bleakly secular perspective.
Eshkar, the book's protagonist, is born a slave in Egypt and is led out by Moses with the other enslaved Jews as a child. As he ages in the desert, he finds himself increasingly disillusioned with Moses - who is distant, inaccessible, as unknowable as god - and with Moses' lieutenants - who are cruel, cynical, opportunistic, the first enforcers of religious hierarchy and doctrine. What follows is the story of what I will call an anti-epiphany.
The tight construction, beautiful writing, and metaphysical nature of "The Miracle Hater" are reminiscent in a strangely mirrored way of Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist". "The Alchemist" is about a boy who comes to terms joyfully with the order of the universe by way of a solo pilgrimage, while "The Miracle Hater" is about a boy who painfully rejects the order of the universe in the context of a collective exodus. "The Alchemist" attunes the reader to the sacredness of life, to its serendipity, its hopefulness and its recursive patterns; "The Miracle Hater" attunes you to life's arbitrariness, its brief, inconsistent nature that demands compromise at every turn. If you have ever wrestled with these competing narratives, you may enjoy this book.
This book is a cautionary tale about ringing that terrible bell, within the framework of Israel's founding myth, the familiar biblical story of Exodus - retold from a bleakly secular perspective.
Eshkar, the book's protagonist, is born a slave in Egypt and is led out by Moses with the other enslaved Jews as a child. As he ages in the desert, he finds himself increasingly disillusioned with Moses - who is distant, inaccessible, as unknowable as god - and with Moses' lieutenants - who are cruel, cynical, opportunistic, the first enforcers of religious hierarchy and doctrine. What follows is the story of what I will call an anti-epiphany.
The tight construction, beautiful writing, and metaphysical nature of "The Miracle Hater" are reminiscent in a strangely mirrored way of Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist". "The Alchemist" is about a boy who comes to terms joyfully with the order of the universe by way of a solo pilgrimage, while "The Miracle Hater" is about a boy who painfully rejects the order of the universe in the context of a collective exodus. "The Alchemist" attunes the reader to the sacredness of life, to its serendipity, its hopefulness and its recursive patterns; "The Miracle Hater" attunes you to life's arbitrariness, its brief, inconsistent nature that demands compromise at every turn. If you have ever wrestled with these competing narratives, you may enjoy this book.
September 28, 2022
Hareven, in her lifetime an esteemed Israeli author/activist, in this novella reimagines the Exodus story from the point of view of a jaded outsider among the wandering Hebrews. From this vantage point we get a different version of the Exodus, an entirely human one, and a view of Moses as a remote, aloof, inscrutable leader, rarely seen and little understood but yet with an unshakeable authority as the man capable of miracles.
In this version of the story the prosperous Egyptians are glad to be rid of the ever-increasing numbers of poor Hebrews, many of whom have been gradually streaming off to scratch out a bare existence in the nearby desert for quite some time before Moses leads them all away, including those well integrated into Egyptian society. Moses is presented as less concerned with where they go than just that they go, to become one people on their own, apart from the Egyptians.
Like many a leader with a grand vision, what happens individually to the little people seems beneath Moses’ concern. He spends most of his time in his tent, shielded by the arrogant Joshua. Hareven presents a harrowing scene when Moses strikes the rock to create water for his people dying of thirst, showing a man who seems to resent being bothered, and who with his entourage stalks past two women holding their dead babies in their arms without taking any notice of them.
Eshkhar is the titular “miracle hater”, beginning as a young man who keeps to himself just outside the camps during the years of wandering, who cynically regards all of his compatriots, yet can’t break from them. He alone (besides Moses presumably) seems to know the constrained boundaries of the desert they wander and can’t understand the purpose of all this wandering. Of course, the reader may well know that in the Bible story the wandering is God’s punishment for the Hebrews being afraid to enter the “Ancestral Land” when they first arrive at its boundary, but this explanation is absent from Hareven’s version. It seems to be down to the harsh will of one human ruler.
Although this is a telling of Exodus that strips out all accounts of God’s direct intervention, it is not the case I think that God is entirely absent. Rather, the ancient conception of God(s) actively intervening in human affairs is replaced with the modern conception of an ineffable God whose presence can at times be felt, who may offer comfort in an unembodied way. Who watches. When Eshkhar views the Ancestral Land near the end of the story, before the crossing of the Jordan,
Eshkhar feels a deep peace, and “he knew that with peace, compassion would come back too”, a line which I wonder if it is Hareven’s comment on the contemporary political situation in Israel as well as a comment on a character in a story from thousands of years ago. This is after all a very contemporary retelling of an ancient story, not just in its understanding of God but in its presentation of a cynical loner as the hero of the story.
In this version of the story the prosperous Egyptians are glad to be rid of the ever-increasing numbers of poor Hebrews, many of whom have been gradually streaming off to scratch out a bare existence in the nearby desert for quite some time before Moses leads them all away, including those well integrated into Egyptian society. Moses is presented as less concerned with where they go than just that they go, to become one people on their own, apart from the Egyptians.
Like many a leader with a grand vision, what happens individually to the little people seems beneath Moses’ concern. He spends most of his time in his tent, shielded by the arrogant Joshua. Hareven presents a harrowing scene when Moses strikes the rock to create water for his people dying of thirst, showing a man who seems to resent being bothered, and who with his entourage stalks past two women holding their dead babies in their arms without taking any notice of them.
Eshkhar is the titular “miracle hater”, beginning as a young man who keeps to himself just outside the camps during the years of wandering, who cynically regards all of his compatriots, yet can’t break from them. He alone (besides Moses presumably) seems to know the constrained boundaries of the desert they wander and can’t understand the purpose of all this wandering. Of course, the reader may well know that in the Bible story the wandering is God’s punishment for the Hebrews being afraid to enter the “Ancestral Land” when they first arrive at its boundary, but this explanation is absent from Hareven’s version. It seems to be down to the harsh will of one human ruler.
[Eshkhar] knew things that they did not: that the desert was inhabited, that it had limits, that it could be crossed from end to end in a matter of weeks. The deception of miracles was keeping them purblind and lost… None of this was known in the camp. They wandered on. No one asked anymore why they lingered so long in the desert. No one knew why they camped in one place for two weeks and in another for two or five years. If no rains fell, they sowed in dry ground and pounded the meager yield into a coarse flour. It was hard to imagine that there once had been a world apart from this desert, their only home, their only love, their birthplace and burial ground. Most of those who had left Egypt were no longer alive. The others, like doorless and windowless houses, had no other memories. Life in the desert consumed them utterly and left nothing over. Was there really any place else?
Although this is a telling of Exodus that strips out all accounts of God’s direct intervention, it is not the case I think that God is entirely absent. Rather, the ancient conception of God(s) actively intervening in human affairs is replaced with the modern conception of an ineffable God whose presence can at times be felt, who may offer comfort in an unembodied way. Who watches. When Eshkhar views the Ancestral Land near the end of the story, before the crossing of the Jordan,
He sensed a strange presence behind him, unfamiliar yet perfectly clear… Something, someone, was calling laughingly to him from the wind, from the mountains, perhaps from the long-remembered years of wandering, someone smiling and forebearing who expected something of him without his knowing what it was… you are close now, Eshkhar, very close; just one more little effort and you will understand… He shook his head, as if trying to rid himself of a bothersome thought; then, all at once, like a man who has not done so for years, he began to laugh.
Eshkhar feels a deep peace, and “he knew that with peace, compassion would come back too”, a line which I wonder if it is Hareven’s comment on the contemporary political situation in Israel as well as a comment on a character in a story from thousands of years ago. This is after all a very contemporary retelling of an ancient story, not just in its understanding of God but in its presentation of a cynical loner as the hero of the story.
September 29, 2025
I wish I could give this book to high school me to read. It's a great enticing story about what exodus would he like through the perspective of somebody there
June 19, 2013
Read this in grad school; it was a first person novel about a Bible character that did not make too much of an impression on me but I did enjoy it and the title sticks with me, anyway.
Apparently it is the first of three novels in her "Desert trilogy" -- the following two being "Prophet" and "After childhood". I'm not sure if these actually continue the story or what ties them into a trilogy though.
Apparently it is the first of three novels in her "Desert trilogy" -- the following two being "Prophet" and "After childhood". I'm not sure if these actually continue the story or what ties them into a trilogy though.
April 14, 2011
Read while at UCLA. Hasn't stuck with me.
Read
May 29, 2011A wonderful story, neither too long nor too short, evoking a way of life 3 thousand years ago; I did find the theological underpinnings of it incomprehensible, though.
January 16, 2016
Recommended by Revellee.
A worthwhile read about the Exodus. The Jewish laws and relationships. Sad but realistic.
I would recommend.
A worthwhile read about the Exodus. The Jewish laws and relationships. Sad but realistic.
I would recommend.
Read
January 2, 2018An interesting take on the Exodus and the narrative associated with it.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews