Laish

A new novel from the award-winning, internationally acclaimed Israeli writer that both resonates with a universality of experience--the will to survive, the struggle to hold on to hope--and hints at the author’s own harrowing experiences in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

A caravan of Jews wanders through pre-World War II Eastern Europe on a heartbreaking quest. Rabbis and mystics, widows and orphans, the sick and the dying, adventurers and con artists, victims of pogroms who have no place else to go--they are on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but they are having a hard time raising the money they need to get them to the port city from which their ship will depart. Among them is Laish, a fifteen-year-old orphan, through whose eyes we see the others on this against-all-odds journey. With the death of the rabbi who brought the group together, they are now lead by men whom Laish refers to as “the dealers”--black-market traders whose motives are questionable but who periodically infuse the group with the money they need to get them to the next town.

Years pass, tempers start to fray, and the pilgrims have begun to reach the limits of their stamina, their kindness, and their hope. A brutal winter and typhoid have decimated their ranks. But the dream of Jerusalem keeps the remnant going, and when they arrive, penniless and exhausted both physically and emotionally, at the port city of Galicia, they must decide on a last, desperate act if they are to get on the ship. . . .