Yosl Rakover Talks to God

by Zvi Kolitz

Book Overview

There are two stories here. One is the now legendary tale of a defiant Jew's refusal to abandon God, even in the face of the greatest suffering the world has known, a testament of faith that has taken... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375404511
• ISBN13: 9780375404511
• Release Date: November 1999
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 99 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.6" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Speaking for all the Jewish people

In my reading of 'Yosl Rakover talks to God' I felt that he was speaking for all of the Jewish people. I felt he had found a voice so powerful and true in addressing God that he was saying what so many of us have thought for so long and not been able to express. I know that this is a fictional story of the author Zvi Kolitz, and know too that Kolitz's life story is told in the second part of the work by Paul Badde, and that this volume contains afterwords by Emanuel Levinas and Leon Wieseltier. And all that may be of help to the reader. But what I recommend is to concentrate on the story, on the words of Yosl Rakover. "Here then are my last words to You, my angry God: None of this will avail You in the least! You have done everything to make me lose my faith in You,to make me cease believing in You. But I die exactly as I have lived, an unshakeable believer in You. Praised be forever the God of the dead, the God of vengeance, of truth and judgment, who will soon unveil His face to the world again and shake its foundation with His almighty voice. "Shema Yisroel"! Hear, Israel!The Lord our God the Lord is One. Into Yourhands, O Lord, I commend my soul."pp.25

Imperfect, misunderstood but exquisite reading

The short story "Yosl Rakover Talks to God" is a curious piece of literature that has taken on a life of its own as stated frequently by Paul Badde. This is not because of the writing - the story is not exquisitely written. It is not because of the theology - there are inconsistencies. It is not because it is the best literature of the Holocaust - it is not. It is because the story speaks directly to the heart of the reader, helping the reader both to make some sense out of the Holocaust and to accept the utter senselessness of the Holocaust.The story is packaged in this slim volume with three essays: (a)a history of the text and author by Badde, which I found useful in understanding the impact of the story, (b) an essay by Emmanuel Levinas on the notion of the hidden face of God which I found to be biased and time-bound - the one line pot-shot at Simeon Weil annoyed me, and (c) an essay by Leon Wieseltier in response to Levinas which effectively placed the notion of the hidden face of God and the Holocaust into a broader picture of the Jewish experience.None of the essays explore the theme of the story's condemnation of the Christian tradition. Especially effective in this condemnation is the contrast of the practice regarding death sentences between traditional Judaism and Christianity. Also effective is the contrast between the love of the Torah - God's written law and the love of the Word of God incarnate in Jesus Christ.This is a text I recommend all Christians, including myself, read and reread. It forces us to review how we live our faith, to review how people of our faith allowed/participated in the Holocaust and all the "little holocausts" against a variety of people for the last 2000 years.I do also recommend that the book be read as literature, as well. It is a masterful example of how literature can effectively carry a message to the heart not just to the intellect. It deliberately pulls the emotional strings without making the reader feel manipulated - something rarely successful in literature.

Rescued

On July 18, 1994, a terrorist bomb destroyed the AMIA Jewish community center at 633 Calle Pasteur in Buenos Aires, killing 87 people and injuring more than 100. It also destroyed the library from which, a year earlier, a Jesuit priest had retrieved an original copy of the 1946 publication, in Di Yiddishe Tsaytung, of Zvi Kolitz' Yosl Rakover Talks to God.This is but one of many fascinating details in Paul Badde's 1994 essay on Zvi Kolitz and the separate and mythological life that his 25-page short story took on after its 1946 appearance. One of Badde's friends had searched fruitlessly for the story after reading a 1963 essay about it by the great philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. He finally found a yellowing copy in the Munich State Library, in German, which had been translated by Anna Maria Jokl in 1954. Zvi Kolitz' story is almost as great as Yosl Rakover's monologue.Isaac Bashevis Singer, before he died, called the fictional tale about a participant in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising a "story of a Jew possessed by his faith as if by a Dybbuk." It similarly came to the attention of George Steiner and the theologian Klaus Beger. One can read the story in less than an hour. But it is so great that it was believed for years to have been the work of an actual victim of the Warsaw Ghetto. This book, though short, carries great weight. It is a gift to all serious readers. Alyssa A. Lappen

When God Hid His Face

Yosl Rakover, minutes away from perishing in the Warsaw ghetto, reaffirms his unwavering belief in God, even if this is not what God wants him to do. As Rakover personally relives the nightmare of the Holocaust, he concludes that it is his faith that has made him a man, a human being, a "mentsch", possessing the very attributes with which his tormentors were NEVER endowed; and knowing he must die, he reaffirms his own worth in the cosmos by clinging to that which has made his life so meaningful and dichotomously opposed to that of his murderers, i.e. his belief in God. Here is a terse and extremely powerful response to all those who have wondered where God was during the Holocaust.