A Spiritual Comedy
Foster, Lucia
A Spiritual Comedy Master of the Return by Tova Reich Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988 256 pp. $19 95 Reviewed by Lucia Foster Tova Reich's delightful new novel, Master of the Return, describes...
...The ridiculous becomes inseparable from the sublime...
...Although the high comedy provided by the spiritual obsessions of the male penitents dominates the novel, it is the emotional themes, evoked through the lives of the female characters, that are the main source of its power...
...The climax occurs as Shmuel's son Akiva is kidnapped by a fellow penitent, and is subject to an Isaac-like sacrifice...
...In tying the contemporary characters to biblical figures, Reich infuses both realms with a greater significance...
...When the novel shifts to the emotional, however, the tone becomes more serious and contemplative...
...The members of the sect are contemporary Israelis who venerate the Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, an eighteenth-century Chasid...
...19 95 Reviewed by Lucia Foster Tova Reich's delightful new novel, Master of the Return, describes the spiritual quest of a band of eccentric penitent Jews...
...Lucia Foster is an assistant economist at the Federal Reserve Board...
...Her reviews have appeared in numerous Jewish publications...
...Reich suggests parallels between the spiritual quests of the Umanites and those of biblical figures...
...Their combined past experiences as hippies, a lighting expert for rock bands, an electric guitarist, a mathematician from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Southern Baptist, and a legendary bandit, create an unusual Orthodox sect...
...She concludes: "For the sake of this milk and this honey, you must speak no ill of the land, and of its inhabitants say no unkind word...
...Even though it is a spiritual event, the novelist focuses solely on its emotional repercussions...
...In a land where biblical history permeates even the most mundane aspects of contemporary society, Tova Reich's masterful new book convincingly demonstrates that one should refrain from discounting the spiritual longings of others...
...Ultimately, this tone dominates the last part of the novel...
...Given that the penitents are forever, back-sliding into their old ways, the humor inherent in the clash between past hedonism and present Orthodoxy makes for memorable characters...
Vol. 13 • November 1988 • No. 8
