Jewish Literature

I was just reading over my blogs and I realized that I forgot to write about Jewish literature. This makes me sad because I love reading books about Judaism. Specifically, I love reading fiction novels about Judaism.

Two years ago I took a class at IU about Jewish American Literature. It was a great class (H303 in the Honors college for those of you who haven't yet registered for next semester). We read several books about Jews living in America. One of the books was called The Far Euphrates by Aryeh Lev Stollman. This book is now in my top five favorite books of all time. After we read the book, Mr. Stollman came to IU to give a lecture and came to my class to talk to us. It was a really interesting experience to hear the story behind the writing and to hear him explain how he came up with the storyline. Needless to say, when I saw we were reading one of his short stories for class I knew it would be good. :)

Mr. Mitochondria reminded me of The Far Euphrates in that it uses Judaism as the background for the story, but it is never really mentioned as the main focal point. Yet both are described as "Jewish Literature." Perhaps this could be because Stollman uses Biblical allegories in his stories such as, "Outside the kitchen lay heavy rolls of transparent plastic between the purple pinnacles of Sarah's Handmaiden and the waxy crimson blossoms of Job's Wife."

The most interesting part of the story to me, was the way that Stollman uses mitochondrion to describe Judaism. At least that's what I thought was happening. Adar, the main character, does a report on mitochondria and explains that it is actually a parasite that lives in the cell. It has evolved from a type of bacteria which has evolved and now is accepted by the cell and works to aid the cell by providing it power. Mitochondrion are passed down through a mother's genes.

The way I interpreted this science report was that Judaism is like a mitochondria. Jews went in to exile 2000 years ago and have eventually "evolved" or assimilated in to different cultures. Slowly but surely Jews have been accepted (in the West anyways) and now are able to work hand in hand with the rest of the surrounding communities to contribute to common goals of the community. A Jew is also historically defined as someone whose mother is Jewish; once again matrilineal descent is a commonality between mitochondria and Jews.

Two observations:

1. Jews are not bacteria. (this is me being sarcastic by the way)
2. I wonder what others think of Stollman's comparison and definition of a mother's genetic makeup being passed down to her children.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story. I've added The Dialogues of Time and Entropy to next summers reading list.