Slouching and Upright

Jonathan Safran Foer’s debut novel, Everything is Illuminated, is one of those Marmite-esque books – love it or hate it. I was discussing it with a colleague again the other day (he’d just lent me JSF’s new one which I’m now reading). But the conversation prompted me to go back to some parts of Everything Is Illuminated…

A book about a young novelist, also named Jonathan Safran Foer (huh?), who sets out to find out more about his Ukrainian family past, accompanied by an old ‘blind’ chauffeur, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Jr, Jr, and the unforgettable Alex. Alex is Jonathan’s translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English. Just one too-good example: Alex calls the Sammy Davis, Jr, Jr the “all-seeing eye officious bitch” (the female guide dog)… It’s too hard to explain here how funny, fancy and inappropriately verbose all of Alex’s translations are.

But the bit that’s really caught in my mind is related to Jonathan’s novel within a novel – about the 1790s Ukraine that his great-great-great-great-great grandmother was born into (keeping up with this?).

Back then, there was a moveable Synagogue on wheels to be pushed and pulled between the Jewish Quarter and the Human Three Quarters of the shetl (village). The congregants split into two groups over a difference of opinion about whether to hold on to the ropes that kept them up near the ceiling, suspended by pulleys, or let go of the Great Book (having only two hands and being buzzed around by a particularly annoying fly one day). [Look I know it’s odd but stick with me.] The resulting split created the Slouching and Upright Synagogues.

The Uprights, having chosen to let go of their ropes rather than drop the Great Book, walked thereafter with an affected limp – a reminder that the Holy Word prevailed. They are at the high end of worship, and remain observant of the Holy Word (none of them know which exact word it is though). The Slouchers let go of their ropes and have since worn tasseled shirts – a reminder that the spirit of the Holy Word prevailed. The Slouchers also swapped the pulleys for pillows, became prone to eating and drinking after or sometimes during services, but were willing to sacrifice religious law for the sake of what they called 'the great and necessary reconciliation of religion with life'.

Ringing any bells with anyone?

One of my other loves about the characters of this weird world is that the Well-Regarded Rabbi always starts his sentences with the word “and” and only ever speaks in CAPITALS… Evocative, no?

As one of the review notes “if all this sounds a little daunting don't be put off; Safran Foer is an extremely funny as well as intelligent writer. [This is] a book that combines some of the best Jewish folk yarns… with a quite heartbreaking meditation on love, friendship and loss.”


(ref: p.17-19 if you want to look it up on Amazon Search Inside)