There is a long list of novels which have been inspired or influenced by scripture, but Phoebe by Paula Gooder is, I think, the first time I have consciously read a work of fiction which is based on part of (and named after someone in) the bible! I found it a fascinating book (described here) and I wondered whether there were other, similar novels. I haven't found anything quite like Phoebe yet but the search led me to Job - The Story of a Simple Man, by Joseph Roth.
Unlike Phoebe, this version of the story doesn’t place the central character in a biblical setting - in this case the land of Uz - nor is he a particularly wealthy man. In fact the main character isn’t called Job at all, but Mendel Singer, a “pious, God-fearing and ordinary, an entirely everyday Jew.”
As the novel charts his story we move from the ghetto of the fictional town of Zuchnow in Tsarist Russia in Part 1 of the book to a room with no natural light at the back of a music shop in New York in Part 2.
The passion between Mendel and his wife Deborah has long gone by the time the novel starts but there is love between them. Their life together is one of routine, punctuated by daily prayers, housework and the arrival of Mendel’s students (he, like his father, works as a Torah teacher). But slowly (well, more slowly than the biblical narrative) they start to lose their children - none of whom wish to follow in their father’s footsteps. Jonas joins the Cossacks - much to Mendel’s chagrin - Shemariah becomes a successful businessman in America and their daughter Miriam keeps herself busy with various suitors from the nearby barracks. Only Menuchim, their youngest, crippled child (who we later learn has severe epilepsy) remains with them - until they leave him with another family when Shemariah (by then calling himself Sam) sends a friend with enough money to pay for the family to emigrate to America. Menuchim is too ill to travel (they would have been turned back at the quarantine centre on Ellis Island if they had taken him and he had been found).
Like the biblical Job, Mendel ensures suffering, although unlike the biblical narrative we never hear directly from God (or the devil) - there are no unexplained boils or sitting in ash (although the physical cruelty is replaced in part by mental cruelty). Sam is killed fighting for the US Army in World War One - the grief kills Deborah and sends Miriam into a psychiatric hospital.
Mendel appears to lose his faith - and curses God in front of his friends, all elders from the Jewish community - Menkes, Skovronnek, Rottenberg and Groschel. It is Rottenberg who likens Mendel to Job. After being inspired through a piece of music, Mendel’s mental health improves and he begins to save money (mainly from the coins given to him by passers by as he shuffles along the middle of the road) - his aim is to save enough to return to Russia where he wants to be with Menuchim (if he survived the war) and to die. Like the biblical character, Mendel’s fortunes change at the conclusion of the book when he unpacks his shawl and, we assume, begins once more to pray.
An ‘afterward’ to the book highlights the connections between Mendel and the life of Joseph Roth, who spent much of his career as a journalist, including writing extensively on Jewish migration. This might explain the short sentences and use of aphorism as shorthand throughout the novel - an economy of ink but an abundance of meaning, like one of his many newspaper columns. Roth’s wife Friederike suffered from schizophrenia and was placed in a sanitorium. She died after being experimented on by doctors working for the Nazi regime. Roth would not let his wife read Job because he did not want the character Miriam to upset her. Towards the end of his life he converted to Christianity, but fortunes in journalism and publishing novels waned, he took to excessive drinking and died in Paris in 1939. Our prayer is that the man who gave us this new parable of Job eventually found, like Mendel Singer, ultimate joy in eternal rest.
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