Table of Contents

Foreword     ix
Preface     x
Acknowledgments     xiii
Introduction     1
Orientation/Shattering     23
Sighet: A Small European Jerusalem     25
A Refuge: Grandfather and His Stories     44
Bar Mitzvah and Approaching Tyranny     56
The Curse and the Crisis     68
Wrestling Like Jacob     82
Disorientation/Evoking     97
Writing Like Jeremiah: The Poetics of Memory and Justice     99
Further into Darkness: A Very Troubled Man     119
Writing Like Jeremiah II: Evoking a New Universe     131
The Poetics of Grief: Choosing Between Life and Death     147
A Town Beyond the Walls: Creating an Alternative Community Beyond Suffering and Pain     158
Reorientation/Enacting     169
The Return: Re-envisioning God and Faith     171
Man and Event: Becoming a Great Man in Israel     181
Re-envisioning Faith and Tradition     192
A Poet/Prophet for the Nations: The Quest for a Universalizing Faith     211
Conclusion     238
Notes     247
Index     279