The Angel of Losses (24 page)

Acknowledgments

This story draws heavily on Jewish folklore and mysticism, and is especially indebted to the scholarship of Nathan Ausubel, Raphael Patai, and Yosef Yerushalmi. I returned to Ausubel’s depictions of Joseph della Reina and the Sabbath River again and again, and “The Berukhim Rebbe and the Angel of Death” is inspired by della Reina’s retelling of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi’s attempt to abolish death. Hillel Halkin’s
Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe
and Eli Wiesel’s
Sages and Dreamers
were also invaluable resources.

I found Yode’a, the Angel of Losses, in Howard Schwartz’s
Tree of Souls.
Schwartz says Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav may have invented him. In
Jewish Poland: Legends of Origin,
Hayah Bar-Yitshak recounts the story of a White Rebbe who followed a goat through an underground passage to the Holy Land and never returned. Jewish legend anticipates a letter of the Hebrew alphabet that will return with the Messiah, and describes the Sabbath Light that illuminates the land beyond the Sabbath River. The Angel of Losses, the White Rebbe, and the Sabbath Light, as they appear in this book, are otherwise invented by me. Abraham Berukhim is a historical figure, but Nathan’s Berukhim Fellowship is fictional.

I relied on Herman Kruk’s diaries of the Vilna Ghetto, as collected in
The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania,
translated by Barbara Harshav, while writing Eli’s story. The poem recited by the ghetto actor is “In the City of Slaughter,” Hayyim Nahman Bialik’s response to the Kishniev Pogrom of 1903. I also referred to
The Ghetto of Venice: A History
by Riccardo Calimani, translated by Katherine Silberblatt Wolfhal. Any divergences from history are either poetic license or error on my part.

Wieland
by Charles Brockden Brown is quoted on page 73. I found the
Deseret News
article on page 188 in
Wandering Jew: Essays in the Interpretation of a Christian Legend
edited by Galit Hasan-Rokem and Alan Dundes. The Israel Cohen and Manassah ben Israel quotes on page 162 are excerpted from the texts cited.

I’m grateful every day to have Seth Fishman on my side. Thank you for rescuing me from the slush pile, and for your good judgment and good humor along the way. Libby Edelson’s insight and skill enabled me to tell the story I wanted to tell. Every writer should be so fortunate to find such a committed and talented editor. I’m grateful to Suet Chong, Janet M. Evans, Rachel Meyers, and Michael Siebert for designing and creating this book, and to Hope Breeman and Margaret Wimberger for their careful attention to the text. Thank you to Ryan Willard for carrying me through to publication, and to Amanda Ainsworth, Heather Drucker, Michael McKenzie, Ben Tomek, Craig Young, and all of Ecco and HarperCollins for your enthusiasm and support.

The Barnard College English Department and Mary Gordon gave me the education in literature and fiction writing that prepared me to write this book. Donna Heiland introduced me to the gothic novels that inspired this one—including Matthew Lewis’s
The Monk,
Marjorie’s original research subject, which is quoted on page 264—and taught me how to understand them. I might never have attempted to write a novel if Sheri Holman hadn’t told me to do it. She has been an endless source of counsel and encouragement in the years since. Linda Lee McDonald was my first teacher, and I revisit her lessons constantly as I write. Many thanks to my friends Adia Wright and Regan Sommer McCoy for the advice and moral support, and to Caitlin Campbell for reading an early draft.

I’m thrilled to finally thank my family in print. My parents, Paula Weiss and Chuck Feldman, and my grandmother Harriet Feldman have always believed that writing is a worthy goal and have done everything they could to help me pursue it. Thank you for being just as excited as I am about this book. Thank you to my sister, Michelle, for reading my work over the years and to my brother, Ben, for listening; to Sherill and Stuart Treitel for giving me time to write; and to Ramona for allowing me to understand Holly, and for occasionally napping.

Finally, to my husband, Jonathan Treitel: Thank you for reading thousands of pages; for always knowing when to refine and when to expand; for helping me dedicate my time to this project; and for never wavering in his confidence in me.

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE ANGEL OF LOSSES.
Copyright © 2014 by Stephanie Feldman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-0-06-222891-8

EPUB Edition JULY 2014 ISBN 9780062228932

14 15 16 17 18
OV/RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1