Steve Stern (1) (1947–)

The Frozen Rabbi is the third book on my 2024 reading list to earn a poor rating. The other two were on the All-TIME 100 list I was finishing and I can question the taste of the people who chose them as worthy. This one was chosen for one of the more difficult categories on my themed list: A Book That Takes Place In Your Hometown (in my case, Memphis), so I have only myself to blame.

The novel is a rambling family history that alternates between the past generations responsible for show more transporting the title character (who is indeed frozen in water) and the present generation (particularly the teenage son, Bernie) guilty of releasing him from his hypothermic encasement onto a gullible world. Initially these complimentary narratives are interesting, filled as the past is with colorful characters surviving in a world bent on eradicating Jews (it wasn't just Hitler). Despite handed-down claims of the rabbi's talismanic properties, the family suffers impoverished, persecuted lives as they transport the rabbi from Eastern Europe to New York and eventually Memphis. Successive generations suffer worse than the previous. The men die or—worse—are killed by their rebellious progeny, women are kidnapped and tortured, relatives disappear, then reappear as terrorists.

The novel progresses as if Stein was inspired by the idea of a character in whom he subsequently loses interest. Focus shifts to the next character as if the current has served their purpose; its only subsequent requirement is to die in an ignoble state of existence. As past and present converge, the narrative becomes a regurgitation of Bernie's grandfather Ruby's diary, which Bernie is reading to his girlfriend. From this point to its conclusion, the novel feels rushed, its style changing to mostly summary. Perhaps this is an attempt on Stein's part to simulate the experience of Bernie reading (as opposed to having his third-person narrator tell this part of the story). It also marks the point my interest waned, and I too rushed towards the novel's absurd conclusion.

I tend not to trust authors who feel compelled to use big words (e.g. "peregrination" instead of "walk"). They are showing off their vocabulary rather than telling a story, and the other elements of the tale will reflect this same desire to impress rather than to entertain. The Frozen Rabbi is replete with such loquaciousness. Perverse rather than offensive, it reads like an accumulation of the author's arcane and esoteric knowledge of Jewish history and culture in search of an interesting plot (much like its eponymous protagonist's journey toward enlightenment after he awakens). This effort culminates in a sex scene performed between the living cadaver inhabited by the spirit of the dead Bernie and his erstwhile girlfriend, appropriately concluding a nonsensical book that left me asking, "what was that all about?" show less

The Frozen Rabbi, or as I found myself calling it several times a day, "Der Frozener Rebbe", is a great American Jewish story. We might say that the author's subject is the holy and the profane. In the course of this novel there is no doubt that every mystical and divine and folklorish reality is, and is not, utterly real, and that every profanity and lustful desire is, and is not, the ultimate truth. Steve Stern plays with our minds, making the reader believe, mocking his or her belief, show more making the reader lust, mocking his or her lust, and searching all the while for the point where ultimate being and ultimate earthliness meet in joyful nothingness and oblivion.

Stern draws on a full pallet of Eastern European and Lower East Side cultural references, Jewish mysticism, and Memphis, Tennessee lore to paint a picture of astonishing feeling, velocity and depth. Thugs, low lifes, cheats and whores - all there. Lies, robbery, rape and murder - all there. The gender ambiguous, and the abused, and the deluding and the deluded and the simple miscanim (the pathetic ones), all trapped in the helpless physicality of life in a body, are woven into the fabric of the tale. If there is a Jewish truth or a Jewish angle on reality that he doesn't apply to some corner of this story, I don't know what it is. Excursions to a kibbutz in the 1930s and a Tennessee State Penitentiary in the 21st century are also handled with a great sense of language and place. He paints with all the colors of Jewish... on a canvas of Elvis.

To relay plot elements of how der Frozener Rebbe (that holy man! that charlatan! that old goat!) came to be ensconced in his block of ice, and preserved from the late 19th century to the early 21st century before thawing out and creating cosmic havoc in Memphis, would be pointless. For that you should read the book. Suffice it to say that there are at least three or four generations of characters who unwind here, and in the telling we experience an intense cultural authenticity (manner of expression, details of daily life), all in service of a much bigger, funnier and weirder tale than any of the individual lives alone. For readers who don't know much about various aspects of Jewish culture, I felt that this book does a marvelous job of explaining what it is talking about without being the least bit didactic about it. For those who are Jewishly familiar, I think you will be impressed with how well the author tells this vernacular American story, this Memphis Tennessee story, with an informed Jewish voice. Stern's similarity to Eastern Europeans like Isaac Bashevis Singer or Chaim Grade is easy to see, but he inhabits an American Jewish cultural position with a persuasive indigeneous authenticity. (Persuasive indigenous authenticity? Is that even a thing? Der Frozener Rebbe would surely permit it!)

I wouldn't say that this story has a didactic point, or even any point at all. Like the Rebbe perhaps it points beyond itself. Perhaps laughter is its mystical potion. Perhaps it exists to enable us to experience the joy of being alive, even when being alive hurts.

Read, read, read this book. Transmigrate your souls. Let the heavens and earth be joined in holy fleshly union. show less

When the Great Flood of the 1930's transforms Memphis into a water bazaar of earthly delights, Harry Kaplan forsakes his book-fed fantasy world and joins a pair of street-wise black twins who introduce him to the legendary Beale Street. Brilliant Bildungsroman, a great frolic.

This book got off to a strong start. It jumps between present time - when Bernie finds an frozen 100 year old Rabbi in his parents freezer, and the past as the frozen Rabbi is carted through Europe and the Lower East Side. It combines an immigrant tale with a satirical send-up of the Kabballah movement. I did not really enjoy the modern chapters, and the story of what happens when the Rabbi is defrosted gets ridiculous and offensive. The last few chapters were painful to read. Many have show more compared this to a Michael Chabon. Chabon does not let his readers down like Stern did here! show less