The Angel Of Losses
Stephanie Feldman
Ecco/HarperCollins, Jul 29 2014, $25.99
ISBN: 9780062228918
The Burke sisters were best friends growing up off the Jersey
Turnpike and listening to their Russian grandfather Eli telling tales of the
White Magician. As adults Marjorie and
Holly went their separate ways and rarely see each other; especially since
Nathan entered their lives and destroyed Eli’s sacred study and who knows what
inside the den. Marjorie attends Barnard
working on her Ph.D. dissertation re The Wandering Jew while Holly marries
Nathan and converts from a gentile to the Orthodox Jewish Berukhim Penitents.
After Eli recently died, Holly gives birth to a child named after
her late grandfather; while Marjorie found one of his notebooks that focused on
the carrier of the Sabbath Light, the White Rebbe. She peruses Eli’s scrawl and seeks the other tomes
on the legendary White Rebbe and the Angel of Losses. Her study leads her to another scholar Simon
and a strange older man who gives her an amulet. When Nathan vanishes and his son becomes very
sick, Marjorie learns the legend of her grandfather.
The Angel of Losses is a strong Judaic spiritual family drama that
at times is difficult to follow due to the profound but extremely complicated
mysticism especially that of the Kabballah’s unknown 23rd Hebrew alphabet letter to complete God’s true
holy name when the Messiah arrives. Not
for everyone, Stephanie Feldman provides a powerful reflective Jewish mysticism
saga as seen through the respective filters of the Jersey girls.
Harriet Klausner
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