Michael Davidow

The Book of Order Michael Davidow

THE BOOK OF ORDER follows wife and mother Margaret Hoffman as she navigates Boston's suburbs in the days before Passover, arranging the affairs of her recently deceased father. He taught Jewish history at a local college, so along with her other tasks, she must also find a place for his final project: a collection of tales compiled by a group of yeshiva students in the 1930's. Their teacher was the rabbi of Woodrow Avenue, also called the Woodrover - an old chasid and a rival of Soloveitchik, the famous orthodox Rav, who once labeled his colleague "the most dangerous Jew in Boston" for his maverick views on midrash and philosophy. *** This is a deceptively simple work, filled with stories taken from both the Talmud and the old Chasidic masters, related without elaboration as they pertain to issues of faith and mourning. Margaret herself is the medium through which all these stories flow, and as she receives them, they culminate in a brand new synthesis of love and revelation. Her efforts also uncover a mystery, because a page of her father's manuscript is missing-- a page that ends up applying directly to her own experience in mourning his death. *** THE BOOK OF ORDER is a tribute to the Jewish faith, and to the Jews of Boston in particular, who have been so under-represented in the Jewish American literary canon.