The Thirty-third Hour
A Novel
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Thirty-third Hour opens at midnight Saturday, in the study of Rabbi Arthur Greenberg, the leader of the largest synagogue in Miami. The Rabbi has until 9 a.m. Monday morning, thirty-three hours, to investigate a sex ethics charge brought against one of his colleagues by a member of the congregation, Brenda, an attractive widow and the mother of an autistic son.
That colleague, Moshe Katan, an associate from Arthur's seminary days, has been leading an experimental family education program at the synagogue, bringing together parents and children to explore the stories of the Bible in new and challenging ways. Now, piled on Arthur's desk are the video and audio recordings of these sessions and Brenda's journal, which he has to review in a desperate attempt to avoid a disastrous scandal. The reader becomes judge and jury as Arthur seeks to find out what happened and, in the process, undergoes a spiritual transformation himself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brenda, a troubled, attractive congregant in Rabbi Arthur Greenberg's sprawling Miami synagogue, has made some extremely serious allegations against the iconoclastic teacher Moshe Katan, the rabbi's colleague and ex-classmate. Having invited Katan to set up a special program on family education at his temple, Greenberg has no choice but to review the pile of evidence: hours of videotaped teaching sessions, featuring Katan's highly nontraditional approach to Jewish learning. Chefitz's second installment in the Moshe Katan series (after The Seventh Telling: The Kabba'ah of Moshe Katan) is chiefly concerned with lengthy swaths of Katan's innovative instruction and interactions. For the remote, scholarly rabbi, the contrast between him and the earthy, freewheeling Katan becomes painfully obvious. (Purim, the most boisterous and joyous of Jewish commemorations, is the rabbi's "least favorite of the holidays," the synagogue "filled with unruly children.") Katan's teaching approach also cuts uncomfortably close to home, and the rabbi is forced into a series of painful ruminations that touch on his own spirituality, his marriage, the rocky relationship with his daughter and a family background both unsavory and tangled. The teachings of Moshe Katan could be helpful for those interested in an anecdotal approach to Jewish tradition. Instructive as a teaching tool but parochial as a work of fiction, the novel's tone is didactic, and the characterizations rarely rise above the level of clich . A less lecture-like format would have made for a more engaging text.
