Now 2023 Previous Articles Road Essays Road Reviews Author Black Authors Title Source Age Genre Series Format Inclusivity LGBTA Portfolio Artwork WIP

Recent posts


Month in review

Reviews
Anger Is a Gift by Mark Oshiro
Bob by Wendy Mass
Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher
Dear Poppy by Ronni Arno
Decaffeinated Corpse by Cleo Coyle
Delicious in Dungeon, Volume 1 by Ryoko Kui
Depth by Lev A.C. Rosen
Don't Cry for Me, Hot Pastrami by Sharon Kahn
Effie Starr Zook Has One More Question by Martha Freeman
The Enchanted Egg by Kallie George
Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes by Mary E. Lambert
Finding Perfect by Elly Swartz
French Pressed by Cleo Coyle
The Frozen Rabbi by Steve Stern
Ghostbusters: Answer the Call by Kelly Thompson and Corin Howell
Hello Lighthouse by Sophie Blackall
Island of the Mad by Laurie R. King
Lemons by Melissa Savage
The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger
Night of the Animals by Bill Broun
One Good Thing about America by Ruth Freeman
The River at Night by Erica Ferencik
Runaways: Battleworld by Noƫlle Stevenson
Two Times a Traitor by Karen Bass
Wandering Son: Volume 4 by Takako Shimura
Whatshisface by Gordon Korman
The Witch's Glass by Holly Grant
The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher
You Go First by Erin Entrada Kelly
Young Frances by Hartley Lin

Miscellaneous
August 2018 Sources
August 2018 Summary
The great logic puzzle of life
A Holmesian Approach to Magnum PI
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (September 03)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (September 10)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (September 17)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (September 24)

Road Essays
FFFFCC: Orphans, Utopia and Mazes
FFCC66: Orphans traveling off road through time
FF9966: Orphans off road in the wildlands
99FFFF-990000: Scarecrows and Minotaurs

Previous month


Rating System

5 stars: Completely enjoyable or compelling
4 stars: Good but flawed
3 stars: Average
2 stars: OK
1 star: Did not finish

Reading Challenges

Canadian Book Challenge: 2023-2024

Beat the Backlist 2023

Artwork
Chicken Art



Privacy policy

This blog does not collect personal data. It doesn't set cookies. Email addresses are used to respond to comments or "contact us" messages and then deleted.


The Frozen Rabbi: 09/23/18

The Frozen Rabbi

The Frozen Rabbi by Steve Stern is a weird book. You have to be in the right mood for it. You might have to set it aside if the mood passes. I'm putting that right out there before I even get into the specifics.

Back in Russia in the pogrom days a Rabbi of some renown lies down to mediate. He does so well at it that he manages to survive being frozen. Fearing a curse or divine retribution or just enjoying the good luck that seems to come with having a frozen rabbi on hand, his body is passed down generation to generation until it ends up in the extra freezer along with the grocery store specials and leftovers of holidays past. That is until Bernie Karp accidentally unfreezes him.

The rabbi who emerges goes through an initial stage of being horrified at how un-Jewish his host family seems to be. Then he comes around to thinking maybe this is his reward for all those years of thoughtful prayer and whatnot. It may not be paradise but it's interesting and maybe he's supposed to partake in all the vices.

Reading this, I couldn't help but imagine the rabbi as performed by Mel Brooks (he hasn't but the almost twenty years ago when this book first was published, he would have been perfect). Young Bernie Karp I see as Matthew Broderick from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

It's weird. It's memorable.

Three stars

Comments (0)


Lab puppy
Name:
Email (won't be posted):
Blog URL:
Comment:

Twitter Tumblr Mastadon Flickr Facebook Facebook Contact me

1997-2023 Sarah Sammis