Scholar by the Warsaw Fire: A Short Story Anthology

These are the extraordinary and excruciating redemptive questions that lie right at the root of Western culture. In Scholar by the Warsaw Fire, author Akiva Israel introduces us to the men whose minds are most haunted by the unanswerable. From the tortured complexity of each of their individual generations, to the fire which will soon engulf a small parochial village in the far-flung borders of Eastern Russia, to an entire nation, moving on to claim the lives of a whole epoch. When an impoverished Russian clergyman, Nazarich Shlomowitz, is visiting the gravesite on the anniversary of his beloved's death during one dark night, the clergyman's detected by one of the patrolling soldiers, who is supposed to enforce curfew: for Nazarich, as with the rest of the village, have been thrown into a ghetto. But against all expectations, he isn't punished for his flagrant violation of the law, but warned, You'll be given six days to evacuate the ghetto. Any who fail to do this will be shot, on o Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.