{"product_id":"the-time-of-the-uprooted-isbn-9780805211771","title":"The Time of the Uprooted","description":"Gamaliel Friedman is only a child when his family flees Czechoslovakia in 1939 for the relative safety of Hungary. For him, it will be the beginning of a life of rootlessness, disguise, and longing. Five years later, in desperation, Gamaliel’s parents entrust him to a young Christian cabaret singer named Ilonka. With his Jewish identity hidden, Gamaliel survives the war. But in 1956, to escape the stranglehold of communism, he leaves Budapest after painfully parting from Ilonka.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGamaliel tries, unsuccessfully, to find a place for himself in Europe. After a failed marriage, he moves to New York, where he works as a ghostwriter, living through the lives of others. Eventually he falls in with a group of exiles, including a rabbi––a mystic whose belief in the potential for grace in everyday life powerfully counters Gamaliel’s feelings of loss and dispossession. When Gamaliel is asked to help draw out an elderly, disfigured Hungarian woman who may be his beloved Ilonka, he begins to understand that a real life in the present is possible only if he will reconcile with his past.“\u003ci\u003eThe Time of the Uprooted\u003c\/i\u003e is perhaps Wiesel’s most satisfying and successful work of fiction in years . . . with his finest talents on full display.”\u003cbr\u003e–Los Angeles Times\u003cb\u003eELIE WIESEL\u003c\/b\u003e was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The author of more than fifty internationally acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, he was Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and University Professor at Boston University for forty years. Wiesel died in 2016.The Time  of the  Uprooted\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I’m four years old, or maybe five. It’s a Sabbath afternoon. Mother is  lying down in the next room. I’d asked her to read to me from the book she  had by her side, but she has one of her frequent headaches. So I ask my  father to tell me a story, but just then there’s a knock at the door. “Go  see who it is,” says my father, reluctantly glancing up from the journal  he’s keeping. A stranger is at the door.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “May I come in?” he asks. A big bearded man, broad across the shoulders,  with sad eyes—there’s something disturbing about him. His gaze seems heavy  with secrets, and glows with a pale and holy fire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Who’s there?” my father asks, and I reply, “I don’t know.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Call me a wanderer,” the stranger says, “a wandering man who’s worn-out  and hungry.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Who do you want to see?” I ask, and he says to me, “You.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Who is it, a beggar?” my father asks. “Tell him to come in.” No matter  what the hour, my father would never deny his home to a stranger seeking a  meal or a night’s shelter, and certainly not on the Sabbath.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The stranger comes in at a slow but unhesitating pace. Father stands to  greet him and leads him to the kitchen. He shows the stranger where to  wash his hands before reciting the usual prayer, offers him a seat, and  sets before him a plate of cholent and hallah. But the stranger doesn’t  touch it. “You’re not hungry?” my father says.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Oh yes, I’m hungry, and I’m thirsty, but not for food.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Then what is it you want?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I want words and I want faces,” says the stranger. “I travel the world  looking for people’s stories.” I’m enchanted by the stranger’s voice. It  is the voice of a storyteller: It envelops my soul. He continues: “I came  here today to put you to the test, to measure your hospitality. And I can  tell you that what I’ve seen pleases me.” With that, he gets to his feet  and strides to the door.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Don’t tell me you are the prophet Elijah,” says my father.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “No, I’m no prophet.” The stranger smiles down at me. “I told you, I’m  just a wanderer. A crazy wanderer.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ever since that encounter, I’ve loved vagabonds with their sacks full of  tales of princes who became what they are for love of freedom and  solitude. I delight in madmen. I love to see their crazed, melancholy  faces and to hear their bewitching voices, which arouse in me forbidden  images and desires. Or rather, it’s not the madness itself I love, but  those it possesses, those whose souls it claims, as if to show them the  limits of their possibilities—and then makes them determined to go  further, to push themselves beyond those limits. It’s second nature with  me. Some collect paintings; others love horses. Me, I’m attracted to  madmen. Some fear them, and so put them away where no one can hear them  cry out.   I find some madmen entertaining, but others do indeed frighten me, as if  they know that a man is just the restless and mysterious shadow of a  dream, and that dream may be God’s. I have to confess that I enjoy their  company, I want to see through their eyes the world die each night, only  to be reborn with dawn, to pursue their thoughts as if they were wild  horses, to hear them laugh and make others laugh, to intoxicate myself  without wine, and to dream with my eyes open.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e      Is today Monday? Maybe it’s Tuesday, but   no, it’s Thursday. As if it matters. The wanderer can’t seem to wake up,  which is unlike him, and so it was with Isaac and Job when they were full  of years, as Scripture tells us. In his dream, he has just seen his  father. He stands solemnly for a long moment, and then father and son  embrace. He awakes with a start, then falls back into heavy, oppressive  slumber. No more father. Talk to him, he doesn’t answer. Stretch out a  hand, he turns away. With an effort, he opens his eyes. He knows he’s  alone, that he should get up, that he has a long and trying day ahead, but  he can’t seem to place the day in his exile’s life: Does it belong to his  future, to his past? His soul is lost in the fog and is taking him to some  terrifying place of the damned. Somewhere an old woman ravaged in body and  memory is watching for him, perhaps to punish him for misdeeds long  forgotten, for promises carelessly tossed aside. Who is she? A beauty he  dreamed of as a boy but could not hold on to? One of his daughters,  stricken in her mind and lost in the depths of time? He searches his  memory; their dark faces circle around him and seem about to close in and  suffocate him. He knows that he is destined for a fateful encounter with a  mysterious woman. A turning point? The end of a stage of his life? If so,  isn’t it time for some kind of heshbon hanefesh—an accounting of his  soul—in which he would review the fires he’s been through and the many  lives he’s led?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He shakes himself awake, gets up, goes to the washbasin, and examines his  reflection in the mirror. He sees his yellowish gray pallor, his sagging  features, his dull gaze. He doesn’t recognize the man staring back at him.  All he’s done is to change nightmares.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e    My name is Gamaliel. Yes, Gamaliel, and I’ll thank you not to ask me why.  It’s just another name, right? You’re given a name, you carry it around,  and if it’s too much of a burden, you get rid of it. As for you, dear  reader, do I ask you how come you’re named William, or Maurice, or  Sigmund, or Serge, or Sergei? Yes, Gamaliel isn’t an everyday name, and  let me tell you, it has its own story, and it’s not one you hear every  day, either. That’s true of everybody, you’ll say—and so what? If they  want, they can tell me the story of their lives; I’ll hear them out. Let  me add that I’m also named Péter. Péter was my childhood. For you,  childhood means playing with a ball, rolling a hoop, pony rides in the  park, birthdays and holidays, vacations at the shore or in the mountains.  My childhood was in a nightclub. It has a story, too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I’ll get around to that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Just bear with me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    ...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    For now, let’s stick to Gamaliel. Odd kind of name, I know. You don’t see  it very often. Sounds Sephardic. So how did I get it? You really want to  know? I inherited it. Yes, some people inherit houses, or businesses,  stamp collections, bank accounts. I inherited my name. My paternal  grandfather left it to me. Did I know him? Of course not; he died before I  was born, or else I’d have been given another name. But then how did his  parents happen to choose so unusual a name, one that seems better suited  to a tired old man than to a newborn baby? Did they find it in the  traditions of their Sephardic ancestors, those who were expelled from  Spain, or perhaps those who stayed on, the Marranos, who pretended to  convert but secretly retained their Jewish identity? You can find the  first Gamaliel in the Bible: Gamaliel, son of Phadassur, chief of the  tribe of Manasseh; and in the Larousse Encyclopedia, where he is described as “a Jew  and a great luminary.” And of course in the Talmud, where he’s frequently  quoted. His grandfather was Hillel the Elder. He lived and taught  somewhere in Palestine during the first century, well before the  destruction of the Second Temple. Yes, I bear the name of a great leader,  known for his wisdom and moderation, universally respected in Israel. He  was president of the Sanhedrin and of a well-known academy. Nothing was  decided without his consent. I would have liked to have known him.  Actually, that can be done. All I have to do is look in the records of  discussions in which he took part. I’ve been doing that every chance I’ve  gotten since I came to America, which by now is quite a while ago. I like  to study, and I love to read. I never tire of reading. I have a lot to  catch up on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Besides, you could say it’s what I do for a living.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I write so I can learn to read and read and read.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    From the Book of Secrets\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The air-raid alarm is silent, making it a quiet night, but even so, the  Archbishop of Székesváros has a nightmare. The Archbishop, Monsignor János  Báranyi, dreams he is in the Vatican, waiting for an audience with the  Pope. Feverishly, he is searching for the first word he’ll speak, the one  crucial word that will convince the Pope of his humility and his  obedience. He cannot find that word. All he can think of are garbled  phrases that might as well be false prayers dictated to him by some evil  spirit. What shall I do? Lord in heaven, what shall I do? Without that  first word, nothing else he says will matter; the Lord’s Creation will be  damned. The Archbishop is in a panic. Time is running out: In a few  minutes, the door will open and he will be kneeling before the successor  to Saint Peter. The Pope will tell him to rise and speak about his  mission, but he, a poor sinner from a distant province, will still be  seeking that first word. Help me, Lord, help me! Suddenly, his mother is  there holding him by the shoulders. She is long dead. The Archbishop knows  that even in his dream—but then what is she doing here, in the Pope’s  waiting room? How has she come into his dream? He is about to ask her,  when the door opens, opens so softly that it does not disturb a fly  perched on its golden doorknob. Now the Archbishop cries out in horror. .  . . It’s the Angel of Death, who tells him to come forward. . . .","brand":"Schocken","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300258959589,"sku":"NP9780805211771","price":14.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780805211771.jpg?v=1767741860","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-time-of-the-uprooted-isbn-9780805211771","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}