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Zetel, a soul in Heaven, has lost his patience in waiting to have a mortal body assigned to him. He escapes Heaven and inhabits the body of a premature baby. The infant is the son of a Jewish couple escaping Nazi Germany in 1945.
Unlike other souls, and to the alarm of his family members and teachers, Zetel has detailed memories of his celestial origins. When the Almighty's angels try to recover him, he forms an alliance with the Devil. Zetel grows up, marries and has children, and develops a successful career. Tensions mount as the angels try to outwit him and return him to the bonds of Heaven. |
At 27, Ephraim returns to Toronto from rabbinical school in New York, prepared to launching his career and find a rebbetzin. But his Uncle Avram has a different idea and schemes to introduce him to gorgeous Rebecca, a fiery anti-secularist and founder of a traditional Jewish school. She disapproves of Ephraim’s less rigid religious practices, but she is romantically interested and invites him to join her faculty.
Things go according to Uncle Avram’s plan until Ephraim meets Laura, a beautiful gentile. Falling face-first in love with her, Ephraim is torn between the call of his heart, the expectations of his family and the demands of a rabbinical career. At night, he finds himself in ghostly debate with a thundering prophet Elijah, who lays out the Biblical arguments against Ephraim’s love for Laura. Complications mount until a sudden, shocking event catapults Ephraim into a mystical time and place. He is forced to come to a final decision. Steeped in beautifully rendered Jewish history and populated with vivid and appealing characters, Ephraim takes readers into a fascinating reality of past and present, where a young man must choose between love and the demands of his faith. |
Shabtai Zvi is a name to reckon with in the 17th century. A man of strong passions and mesmerizing personality, he convinces many that he is the Jewish Messiah. But his thirst for power is his downfall. In 1666, rattled by Shabtai's extreme statements and the unrest of the Jewish population, the Ottoman authorities arrest him and force him to convert to Islam. In 1673, they banish him.
Shabtai’s legacy lives on in contemporary Toronto. Disgraced professor Donald May becomes enamoured of Shabtai’s Kabbalistic philosophy. Like Shabtai, May has a thirst for admiration and a shifty moral compass. But unlike his hero, he may have a chance for redemption. The interweaving lives of these two men paint a vivid picture of the Ottoman Empire in the 1600s, contemporary life, and the struggle between desires of the flesh and the life of the mind. |
