The Sacred and the Profane
Chaim GradeThree novellas by an internationally celebrated writer Chaim Grade, provide a luminous view of a Jewish village in Lithuania between the two world wars and some of its residents (alternatively titled "Rabbis and Wives").
Combining the richness of character and the moral concern that have consistently marked Grade's work, these stories offer a luminous picture of Jewish life in Lithuania between the two world wars, with its everyday problems and its spiritual yearnings. The characters portrayed will strike responsive chords in today's readers. "The Rebbetzin" is the account of an ambitious woman who constantly pushes forward her scholarly husband, with the image always before her of the more eminent rabbi to whom she was once betrothed. In "Laybe-Layzar's Courtyard" Grade gives us the people of a crowded Jewish neighbourhood in Vilna, among them a fanatical pietist, a restless playboy and his vindictive wife, and a rabbi who finds that he cannot escape the yoke of the rabbinate or involvement in the destinies of others. In "The Oath" a dying merchant extracts a series of pledges from his wife and children that will profoundly alter the course of their lives.
"Irascibility and quarrel, the normal condition of Grade's prose, may not be the most pleasant manifestations of life, but they are among the most convincing...."Rabbis and Wives,'' the fifth of Grade's books to be published in English, will posthumously confirm his steadily growing reputation. The three novellas it contains are firm and vivid stories. As Anthony Trollope was fascinated with the personal intrigue behind the politics of the Church of England in the 19th century, Grade was attracted by the inner world of the Lithuanian rabbinate where religious imperatives inevitably clashed with mortal desires." - Ruth R. Wisse, The New York Times Archives