The Cubs and the Kabbalist: How a Kabbalah-Master Helped the Chicago Cubs Win Their First World Series Since 1908

by Byron L. Sherwin

Determined to bring his wife out of her own slump, Rabbi Jay Loeb practices a bit of magic based in the ancient Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah to help the perennial underdogs, the Chicago Cubs, win the World Series. In this modern-day tale, the rabbi suspects that his wife, Tamara, is having an affair. However, he feels no relief upon learning that her true obsession, and the cause of her erratic behavior, happens to be the hapless Chicago Cubs, whose prospects for the pennant are no better that year than they had been since they last appeared in the World Series in 1945. With his wife's law practice, family life, and health in jeopardy, Rabbi Loeb takes matters into his own hands and secretly performs a kabbalistic ritual in Wrigley Field that removes the park's legendary Billy Goat Curse. While the Cubs become invincible at home, they continue to struggle on the road, and upon discovering the cause of their new-found success, Cubs management commissions Rabbi Loeb to apply his kabbalistic knowledge to help the team go all the way. Ever mindful of his desire to restore his wife's well-being, Rabbi Loeb takes measures to neutralize other curses that have plagued the team—and help the players develop the spiritual strength they need to prevail.

254 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2006

Reviews

[Ari · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some premises are just so wild that you absolutely cannot ignore them. YOU try reading the premise and not thinking it's not too bonkers that you want to read it. (Especially when you are in the middle between semesters and you need something crazy and silly to counterbalance all the academia you have been and will be consuming again).

This book was indeed wild - unfortunately for all the wrong reasons.

The book's first crime is that it, somehow, often forgets its own premise throughout the entirety of the novel. Jay Loeb decides he needs to help the Cubs play better because his wife's fandom is out of control, and his logical Point A to Point B journey is that a winning team will make his wife's fandom normal, or something. WHICH mind you, the depiction of his wife Tamara's fandom is something else. She misses work to see games, and she's very moody when the Cubs lose. Which, okay, but then we get her partners at the firm trying to push her out because she likes the Cubs too much (???) and there's all these claims about how her health is in danger too (???). But anyhow, after Loeb's initial ritual at Wrigley (in which he somehow manages to smuggle two chickens past security, which I would LOVE to know how that worked), the Cubs start playing better, and then the Cubs hire Loeb to continue practicing Kabbalah to help them win, even though the mythicism basically takes a back seat in the story until a Golem is summoned. And then the book basically becomes about the Golem playing baseball, trying to obtain a soul, and you forget that this all started with trying to help out Tamara in the first place. (Btw, spoiler: there is no indication that Tamara is "better" at the end, save for the fact that the Cubs won so she's happy. But I don't think that solves the other issues. Like it did nothing to correct her missing work or watching TV on the Sabbath. Like her crazy obsession doesn't just die because the Cubs win the World Series ONCE. If anything, that usually encourages fans???)

The second crime is that there's a lot of baseball talk in this book - the story actually takes a backseat for two chapters in order to retell the story of the 1907-1908 Cubs - but there's also a weird amount of stuff that's just wrong. Like the Cubs having a corporate GM because they were owned by the Tribune (Jim Hendry didn't suffer years in Chicago for this), games in Arizona getting rained out or being too hot to play properly in (Chase Field has a retractable roof), a pitcher throwing a "passed ball" (that's on the catcher, guys, otherwise it's a wild pitch), the White Sox playing in a pitcher's ballpark (at MY US Cellular Field?), or that a game with a 15-14 score ended in three hours (literally HOW). I am aware that, as a baseball fan, I might be too hard on some of these things and are being overly picky. However, a fair amount of baseball research clearly went into this so the fact that a lot of basic knowledge was incorrect was blatantly off-putting.

I saved the worst crime for last, however. The main reason why I hated this book was that the descriptions of the women are terrible and pretty offensive. They don't seem to serve much purpose other than to remind you about how fuckable they are, and there is an unholy focus on what the women's breasts look like. One character - a journalist - is actually described as having "adequate breasts," which...WHAT. I actually don't think the journalist served a purpose other than appearing as weird masturbatory material. It was beyond disturbing and weirdly upsetting. Beyond.

[Richard]

A Jewish Chicago boy’s fantasy, circa 2006