Beautifully Written Family Saga

Robert Kehlmann's debut novel The Rabbi's Suitcase might not exactly fit its title, as said suitcase plays a marginal role, but the ancestors he writes about come vividly alive in this tender, honest and gripping story spanning 50 years, 3 generations and several continents.

The Siev family decides to make aaliyah to Ottoman-controlled Palestine in 1879. Following their young son Yosef, the atmosphere of departure is convincingly told and the perils, hopes and promises of the journey feel so real in Kehlmann's writing that it is easy to imagine these people living history. While initially, things happen that seem to teeter between dream and reality, Kehlmann grounds the narrative by injecting foreshadowing summaries and parallel occurrences into the narrative without disrupting the flow of his prose.
The second part of the book centers around Yosef's granddaughter Zipora and her early years in Jerusalem, as well as her journey to the United States. There are vivid insights into life in Ottoman Jerusalem during World War I and later under British control. Zipora crosses paths with leaders of the Zionist and Socialist movements while acutely aware of her own position as a woman from an Orthodox family.

The journeys and relationships of Robert Kehlmann's ancestors are accompanied by extracts from their letters and photographs, making abundantly clear that this is not just a work of fiction, but a family history with the gaps lovingly filled in by the author. The story is pieced together really nicely and Kehlmann's prose is gripping, fully immersing the reader. I think as a reader we owe him never-ending gratitude for sharing their story with us.

I can thoroughly recommend this book to all people interested in the history of Israel and Palestine, as well as in migration history between Eastern Europe, the Levant and America. It contains a glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish terms for those less savvy in these topics and strives to be inclusive of readers without lived experience in Jewish matters.

This is a beautifully written and well researched historical novel. I could not put this book down when I read it. This book is about an Orthodox Jewish boy who has ups and downs with his community and trying to understand life in a new land. I