White Fire: Angels Flying from Holy Letters

by Mitchell Chefitz

When Allison, an aspiring writer of short stories, finds herself blocked, she flies from New York to Miami to meet with her old mentor, Reuben. Reuben takes her to his synagogue, a new experience for Allison. He takes a Torah scroll from the Holy Ark, opens it on a table, and begins to read, not from the black letters of the Holy Script, but from the surrounding white space. "The Torah is written in letters of black fire on a background of white fire," he says. "It's in the white fire you will find your stories." The stories are of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Joseph, Joshua and Moses, but not at all like the stories Allison remembers from her church Bible school. These are stories meant just for her.Each produces an incremental change until the block is removed, and Allison can return to New York to write her stories. Mitchell Chefitz is the author of the best-selling novel, "The Seventh The Kabbalah of Moshe Katan," and of "The Curse of Blessings," a story collection that has been translated into German, Korean, and Mandarin.Harold Kushner, author of "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," "Chefitz audaciously claims that he can tell us stories that will burrow into our souls and remain there. And then he proves it."

124 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 18, 2009

Reviews

[Rabbit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Straight up midrash, doing what midrash is there to do: deepening one's understanding of both life and god. Well done.