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literarymultitudes's review against another edition
5.0
This was an exceptional read and I can't even tell why exactly.
Neither the topic of second world war nor the issues about faith, belief and god interest me much. It also isn't a story of which the end was unknown or which contained a tension arc. Still I could hardly put the book down and wanted to read on and on.
Because it is a wonderful book. Ulitskaya has a wonderful way of writing, she puts things into words, that make them seem simple, yet profound. It's a joy to read any of her books, but this one is even special, it has so many distinct voices in it. All the time while reading I kept wondering what it was that made me want to read on and on, I don't even cared much for the characters (as in "liked" them), yet I think it was exactly those voices and characters which Ulitskaya can bring to live so real and true, that made me want to read on and enjoy the book so much.
I only found, like to often with great books - why is that?, the end to be a bit rushed. And while all of the book seems very open ended and non-dogmatic, the end tarnishes this impression a tiny bit.
(And the translation is very good, it manages to keep something of the original Russian even in the German text.)
So I don't have much to say to recommend this book, still I feel like I want to urge every one I meet to read this book immediately.
So: Go read this book!
Neither the topic of second world war nor the issues about faith, belief and god interest me much. It also isn't a story of which the end was unknown or which contained a tension arc. Still I could hardly put the book down and wanted to read on and on.
Because it is a wonderful book. Ulitskaya has a wonderful way of writing, she puts things into words, that make them seem simple, yet profound. It's a joy to read any of her books, but this one is even special, it has so many distinct voices in it. All the time while reading I kept wondering what it was that made me want to read on and on, I don't even cared much for the characters (as in "liked" them), yet I think it was exactly those voices and characters which Ulitskaya can bring to live so real and true, that made me want to read on and enjoy the book so much.
I only found, like to often with great books - why is that?, the end to be a bit rushed. And while all of the book seems very open ended and non-dogmatic, the end tarnishes this impression a tiny bit.
(And the translation is very good, it manages to keep something of the original Russian even in the German text.)
So I don't have much to say to recommend this book, still I feel like I want to urge every one I meet to read this book immediately.
So: Go read this book!
msaari's review against another edition
4.0
Kirjan nimihenkilö Daniel Stein on puolanjuutalainen, joka pelastuu toisen maailmansodan aikana niukasti teloitukselta. Natsit luulevat häntä etnisesti puolalaiseksi ja hänet värvätään Gestapon tulkiksi. Tulkkina hänen onnistuu suojella juutalaisia joukkotuholta. Lopulta Stein pakenee ja löytää turvan katolisesta uskosta. Sodan jälkeen hänestä tulee pappi, hän liittyy karmeliittaveljeskuntaan ja emigroituu Israeliin, jossa hänellä on edessään pitkä ura melkoisen radikaalina ja kapinallisena katolisena pappina.
Tämä on melkoisen uskomaton elämäntarina juutalaismiehelle, melkein liian uskomaton ollakseen vain fiktiota. Teos perustuukin tosielämään, Oswald Rufeisenin elämään, jonka pohjalta Ljudmila Ulitskaja on oman Daniel Steininsa rakennellut. Tarina on kiehtova ja herättää monenlaisia kysymyksiä uskonnosta ja identiteetistä. Onko juutalainen juutalainen, jos hän on myös kristitty? Täytyy myöntää, etten ollut ajatellut juutalaisten kristittyjen asemaa aikaisemmin, vaikka olinkin toki tietoinen juutalaisuuden monimuotoisesta luonteesta toisaalta uskonnollisena, toisaalta etnisenä identiteettinä, jotka kietoutuvat tietysti eritoten Israelissa vahvasti yhteen.
Ei siis ole Daniel Steinin elämä helppoa. Juutalaisena Puolassa ja Valko-Venäjällä sodan aikaan henki ei ole kovin kallis; radikaalina katolisena pappina Israelissa hengenlähtö ei ole lähellä, mutta elämässä riittää muuten vaikeuksia. Ulitskaja kertoo Steinin tarinaa pala kerrallaan erilaisten dokumenttien kautta. On päiväkirjamerkintöjä, kirjeitä, virallisia asiakirjoja, ilmiantoja, postikortteja... monenlaista ja moniäänistä tavaraa, eikä itse Daniel ole äänessä kuin pienessä osassa näitä. Isoon osaan nousee esimerkiksi saksalaisneito Hilda Engel, joka muuttaa Israeliin ja ryhtyy puoliväkisin Danielin avustajaksi ja nousee sitten vuosikymmenten myötä korvaamattomaan asemaan.
Stein on humaanisuuden, suvaitsevaisuuden ja lähimmäisenrakkauden ääni ja ääni sellaiselle kristinuskolle, jonka nimissä ei vainota juutalaisia tai katsota joukkotuhoa vierestä. Kirja hakee ymmärrystä ja yhteyttä eri uskontokuntien välille – ei mikään helppo tehtävä. Ulitskaja ei ole arastellut aiheenvalinnan kanssa, vaikka muutamassa välihuomautuksessaan tuntuukin epäilevän koko projektin järkevyyttä. Ei tässä varmasti mitään järkeä ollutkaan, mutta jo vain on hieno ja onnistunut lopputulos!
Tämä on melkoisen uskomaton elämäntarina juutalaismiehelle, melkein liian uskomaton ollakseen vain fiktiota. Teos perustuukin tosielämään, Oswald Rufeisenin elämään, jonka pohjalta Ljudmila Ulitskaja on oman Daniel Steininsa rakennellut. Tarina on kiehtova ja herättää monenlaisia kysymyksiä uskonnosta ja identiteetistä. Onko juutalainen juutalainen, jos hän on myös kristitty? Täytyy myöntää, etten ollut ajatellut juutalaisten kristittyjen asemaa aikaisemmin, vaikka olinkin toki tietoinen juutalaisuuden monimuotoisesta luonteesta toisaalta uskonnollisena, toisaalta etnisenä identiteettinä, jotka kietoutuvat tietysti eritoten Israelissa vahvasti yhteen.
Ei siis ole Daniel Steinin elämä helppoa. Juutalaisena Puolassa ja Valko-Venäjällä sodan aikaan henki ei ole kovin kallis; radikaalina katolisena pappina Israelissa hengenlähtö ei ole lähellä, mutta elämässä riittää muuten vaikeuksia. Ulitskaja kertoo Steinin tarinaa pala kerrallaan erilaisten dokumenttien kautta. On päiväkirjamerkintöjä, kirjeitä, virallisia asiakirjoja, ilmiantoja, postikortteja... monenlaista ja moniäänistä tavaraa, eikä itse Daniel ole äänessä kuin pienessä osassa näitä. Isoon osaan nousee esimerkiksi saksalaisneito Hilda Engel, joka muuttaa Israeliin ja ryhtyy puoliväkisin Danielin avustajaksi ja nousee sitten vuosikymmenten myötä korvaamattomaan asemaan.
Stein on humaanisuuden, suvaitsevaisuuden ja lähimmäisenrakkauden ääni ja ääni sellaiselle kristinuskolle, jonka nimissä ei vainota juutalaisia tai katsota joukkotuhoa vierestä. Kirja hakee ymmärrystä ja yhteyttä eri uskontokuntien välille – ei mikään helppo tehtävä. Ulitskaja ei ole arastellut aiheenvalinnan kanssa, vaikka muutamassa välihuomautuksessaan tuntuukin epäilevän koko projektin järkevyyttä. Ei tässä varmasti mitään järkeä ollutkaan, mutta jo vain on hieno ja onnistunut lopputulos!
astroneatly's review
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
blackoxford's review
4.0
The Heresy That Dare Not Speak Its Name
In the 14th century Catherine of Siena rebuked Pope Gregory XI for allowing lax behaviour among the clergy, and for his own behaviour by remaining in Avignon rather than re-establishing residence in Rome. She got away with it because what she didn't question was papal authority, particularly the authority to define and enforce belief. She could only chide and appeal to conscience, and even then never assert her own conscience as in any way equal to the pope's.
Shmuel Oswald Rufeisen, also known as Brother Daniel and the model for the central fictional character of Daniel Stein in Lyudmila Ulitskaya's novel, is a Polish Jew who becomes a Carmelite friar and spends most of his adult life in Israel ministering to a small congregation of Hebrew-speaking Christians near Haifa.
Brother Daniel has learned to mistrust authority, particularly ideological authority which attempts to regulate belief. He takes his own conscience more seriously than Catherine did hers. And, unlike Catherine, he does not try to impose his views on others. He neither chides nor condemns his congregants or his ecclesiastical superiors. He simply trusts his own conscientious judgment more than the judgment of those who have power over him. And with good reason.
As a teenager he was pressed into service with the Gestapo and forced to participate in the extermination of Lithuanian and Belorussian Jews, many of whom he knew personally. Narrowly escaping from execution by the Communist partisans, Daniel received both the Stalin and Lenin medals for bravery from the Soviet Union but was under suspicion of Polish nationalism.
Daniel was also critical of the life of the church, somewhat more radically, if less outspokenly, than Catherine. Ulitskaya puts words in the mouth of the fictional Daniel which very well could have been in the mind of the real Carmelite friar: "We know that in every age it has been raw politics which has determined the direction of the life of the Church." For Daniel the politics of authority is the same in the church as it is in government or corporate life, namely an attempt to impose belief in the interests of authority itself. And he won't have it.
Doctrine, according to Daniel, is a political not a religious, and even less a spiritual, matter. Both historically and socially; doctrine is used to identify Us vs. Them and as test of social solidarity. Authority is that which defines the identity and supervises the test. What he encounters in the Church is qualitatively no different from his experience with Nazi and Communist military and civil authority.
What matters for Daniel, however, is not doctrine per se, or even its implications for behaviour towards others, but behaviour itself defined in terms of the Christ-mandated rule of charity. Ulitskaya puts the point in the mouth of his assistant: "I recognise that what you believe doesn’t matter in the slightest. All that matters is how you personally behave…Daniel has placed that right in my heart." Ethics for Daniel cannot be derived from doctrinal belief, which is merely an expression of power and submission.
This is of course heresy, and Daniel recognises his position: "Today my views on many matters have diverged from those generally accepted in the Catholic world, and I am not the only person in that situation." But he turns the apparent heresy on its head: "Great faith, simplicity and boldness are to be found in [the] reluctance to acknowledge grandeur and power." If heresy it be, it is virtuous heresy which goes beyond the tentative virtue of Catherine.
The real heresy, which Daniel comprehends, is not to recognise the central message of Christ: the "expansion of love." To subjugate this message to the needs of authority is always and everywhere destructive to this message and therefore wrong. Daniel sweeps the entire Church into a position that would have given Catherine palpitations even though he is only paraphrasing St. Paul: "[Christ] did not hand down any new dogmas, and the novelty of his teaching is that he placed Love above the Law."
It is the failure to admit this real heresy that is the root of Christianity's problems - within itself and with the world - from its inception in Daniel's view: "The Church drove out and cursed the Jews and has paid for that by all its subsequent divisions and schisms." In Daniel's defence Ulitskaya provides a plethora of Christian, Jewish and Muslim examples of the true heresy of authority, its obvious ubiquity and its consequences in prejudice, intolerance, psychosis, and terrorism over the centuries.
Of course, Daniel is ultimately no match for the persistence of authority, which merely replicates itself within the 'everlasting' corporate structure of the Church. Authority marginalises him, and waits him out. His church is closed, his congregation scattered, his annoyance to the hierarchy of the Order and the bishops is all but forgotten. So: "[Daniel’s] specific mission had failed…working as a priest, praising Yeshua in his own language, preaching christianity with a small c, a personal religion of the mercy and love of God and of one’s neighbour, and not the religion of dogmas and authority, power and totalitarianism."
Paradoxically this has always been the real criterion of success for the message of Christ. His little Church on the slopes of Mount Carmel could only ever be temporary and unprotected against the world. One can mourn but only triumphantly, as Daniel's followers do: "Poor Christianity! It can be only poor. Any victorious Church…totally rejects Christ."
Daniel Stein addresses the heresy which Catherine would not: that authority is superior to individual conscience. Individual conscience is certainly not the basis for general mores. But neither is it any less authoritative than the consciences of those with rank and privilege. Any authority - the pope, the text, or a theologically-educated interpreter - when it attempts to impose belief is wrong.
This is the heresy that dare not speak its name within polite religious society. It is the heresy that is at the root of the decline in Christianity. It is the essential untruth rather than the fundamental virtue of any organisation putting itself forward as promoter of the message of Christ. It is Daniel Stein not Catherine of Siena who has practiced that virtue unequivocally.
In the 14th century Catherine of Siena rebuked Pope Gregory XI for allowing lax behaviour among the clergy, and for his own behaviour by remaining in Avignon rather than re-establishing residence in Rome. She got away with it because what she didn't question was papal authority, particularly the authority to define and enforce belief. She could only chide and appeal to conscience, and even then never assert her own conscience as in any way equal to the pope's.
Shmuel Oswald Rufeisen, also known as Brother Daniel and the model for the central fictional character of Daniel Stein in Lyudmila Ulitskaya's novel, is a Polish Jew who becomes a Carmelite friar and spends most of his adult life in Israel ministering to a small congregation of Hebrew-speaking Christians near Haifa.
Brother Daniel has learned to mistrust authority, particularly ideological authority which attempts to regulate belief. He takes his own conscience more seriously than Catherine did hers. And, unlike Catherine, he does not try to impose his views on others. He neither chides nor condemns his congregants or his ecclesiastical superiors. He simply trusts his own conscientious judgment more than the judgment of those who have power over him. And with good reason.
As a teenager he was pressed into service with the Gestapo and forced to participate in the extermination of Lithuanian and Belorussian Jews, many of whom he knew personally. Narrowly escaping from execution by the Communist partisans, Daniel received both the Stalin and Lenin medals for bravery from the Soviet Union but was under suspicion of Polish nationalism.
Daniel was also critical of the life of the church, somewhat more radically, if less outspokenly, than Catherine. Ulitskaya puts words in the mouth of the fictional Daniel which very well could have been in the mind of the real Carmelite friar: "We know that in every age it has been raw politics which has determined the direction of the life of the Church." For Daniel the politics of authority is the same in the church as it is in government or corporate life, namely an attempt to impose belief in the interests of authority itself. And he won't have it.
Doctrine, according to Daniel, is a political not a religious, and even less a spiritual, matter. Both historically and socially; doctrine is used to identify Us vs. Them and as test of social solidarity. Authority is that which defines the identity and supervises the test. What he encounters in the Church is qualitatively no different from his experience with Nazi and Communist military and civil authority.
What matters for Daniel, however, is not doctrine per se, or even its implications for behaviour towards others, but behaviour itself defined in terms of the Christ-mandated rule of charity. Ulitskaya puts the point in the mouth of his assistant: "I recognise that what you believe doesn’t matter in the slightest. All that matters is how you personally behave…Daniel has placed that right in my heart." Ethics for Daniel cannot be derived from doctrinal belief, which is merely an expression of power and submission.
This is of course heresy, and Daniel recognises his position: "Today my views on many matters have diverged from those generally accepted in the Catholic world, and I am not the only person in that situation." But he turns the apparent heresy on its head: "Great faith, simplicity and boldness are to be found in [the] reluctance to acknowledge grandeur and power." If heresy it be, it is virtuous heresy which goes beyond the tentative virtue of Catherine.
The real heresy, which Daniel comprehends, is not to recognise the central message of Christ: the "expansion of love." To subjugate this message to the needs of authority is always and everywhere destructive to this message and therefore wrong. Daniel sweeps the entire Church into a position that would have given Catherine palpitations even though he is only paraphrasing St. Paul: "[Christ] did not hand down any new dogmas, and the novelty of his teaching is that he placed Love above the Law."
It is the failure to admit this real heresy that is the root of Christianity's problems - within itself and with the world - from its inception in Daniel's view: "The Church drove out and cursed the Jews and has paid for that by all its subsequent divisions and schisms." In Daniel's defence Ulitskaya provides a plethora of Christian, Jewish and Muslim examples of the true heresy of authority, its obvious ubiquity and its consequences in prejudice, intolerance, psychosis, and terrorism over the centuries.
Of course, Daniel is ultimately no match for the persistence of authority, which merely replicates itself within the 'everlasting' corporate structure of the Church. Authority marginalises him, and waits him out. His church is closed, his congregation scattered, his annoyance to the hierarchy of the Order and the bishops is all but forgotten. So: "[Daniel’s] specific mission had failed…working as a priest, praising Yeshua in his own language, preaching christianity with a small c, a personal religion of the mercy and love of God and of one’s neighbour, and not the religion of dogmas and authority, power and totalitarianism."
Paradoxically this has always been the real criterion of success for the message of Christ. His little Church on the slopes of Mount Carmel could only ever be temporary and unprotected against the world. One can mourn but only triumphantly, as Daniel's followers do: "Poor Christianity! It can be only poor. Any victorious Church…totally rejects Christ."
Daniel Stein addresses the heresy which Catherine would not: that authority is superior to individual conscience. Individual conscience is certainly not the basis for general mores. But neither is it any less authoritative than the consciences of those with rank and privilege. Any authority - the pope, the text, or a theologically-educated interpreter - when it attempts to impose belief is wrong.
This is the heresy that dare not speak its name within polite religious society. It is the heresy that is at the root of the decline in Christianity. It is the essential untruth rather than the fundamental virtue of any organisation putting itself forward as promoter of the message of Christ. It is Daniel Stein not Catherine of Siena who has practiced that virtue unequivocally.
epictetsocrate's review against another edition
5.0
În acte locul nașterii mele poartă numele Emsk. În realitate, ăsta e orașul unde am fost zămislită. Mama a fugit din ghetoul din Emsk în august 1942; era însărcinată în luna a șasea. Cu ea era fratele meu de șase ani. M-am născut la o sută de kilometri de Emsk, într-o pădure de nepătruns, într-o așezare ascunsă a evreilor fugiți din ghetou – și-au găsit acolo adăpost până la eliberarea Bielorusiei, în august 1944. Era un detașament de partizani; de fapt, nu era vorba de niciun fel de detașament, ci de trei sute de evrei care încercau să rămână în viață într-o zonă ocupată de nemți. Îmi imaginez că bărbații cu puști își apărau mai degrabă bordeiele locuite de femei, bătrâni și câțiva copii rămași în viață, decât luptau împotriva nemților.
rickmanreader's review
5.0
This was one of those novels where I could almost hear the sound of my brain and awareness being stretched and expanded as I read. It is clear from the prologue and from letters to her editor within the work itself that Lyudmila Ulitskaya was incredibly taken with the real-life hero Brother Daniel (Oswald Rufeisen) and wrote this novel as a way to understand him and make him understandable to others.
She does this through a collage of 170 fictional conversations, lectures, sermons, letters, diaries, and news articles. Daniel Stein (based on Oswald Rufeisen) is a Polish Jew who translates and interprets for the Gestapo. In this role he is able to save many Jewish lives before being discovered. He then hides with a group of Catholic nuns, converts to Catholicism, and becomes a Carmelite monk. When he applies for Israeli citizenship he is rejected on the grounds that he had converted to Christianity. He takes his case to the Supreme Court; the court upholds the government’s decision; Daniel then takes the longer route of becoming a citizen through naturalization. He spends the rest of his life trying to create a community modeled on the Church of St. James, the first Christian church in Jerusalem before the big split between Judaism and Christianity.
Those are the facts of the novel, but its heart has to do with what Lyudmila writes in the prologue about Brother Daniel: “This book is devoted to a man who tried all his life to break down the wall of misunderstanding.” All his life, in a very large sense, he worked as an interpreter, interpreting what it means to believe in God -- “I recognize that language is not that important. All that really matters is what the language is expressing” -- and translating that into a life that brought understanding and reconciliation to those around him.
There is a section towards the end where Lyudmila writes to her editor about a dream she has, a troubled dream where she is searching for something. It has to do with the end of Daniel’s life: “Daniel was a righteous man. In human terms he suffered defeat. After his death his congregation dispersed and now, just as before, there is no Church of St. James. In a sense, Jesus, too, suffered defeat. First he was not understood or accepted by his own people, then he was accepted by many other peoples but still not understood. If anyone wants to argue that he was understood, where is that new human being, that new history, those new relations between people?”
She concludes: “None of my questions have been answered. I have had finally to abandon the cozy clichés I found useful in my life … What does the Lord want? Obedience? Cooperation? Mutual destruction of the peoples? I have completely repudiated value judgments. I’m not up to them. In my heart I feel I lived an important lesson with Daniel, but when I try to define it, I recognize that what you believe doesn’t matter in the slightest. All that matters is how you personally behave.”
I’m sure there are many strands I did not grasp on this first reading. The experience felt much like holding a rubics cube-like puzzle of religious/theological/what-it-means-to-be-moral questions and twisting it this way and that as one read through the collage of voices coloring in the life of Daniel. The lives of certain people are like windows through which we get a glimpse of the transcendent. The life of Brother Daniel is one of those, and I am so glad that I read this magnificent novel.
She does this through a collage of 170 fictional conversations, lectures, sermons, letters, diaries, and news articles. Daniel Stein (based on Oswald Rufeisen) is a Polish Jew who translates and interprets for the Gestapo. In this role he is able to save many Jewish lives before being discovered. He then hides with a group of Catholic nuns, converts to Catholicism, and becomes a Carmelite monk. When he applies for Israeli citizenship he is rejected on the grounds that he had converted to Christianity. He takes his case to the Supreme Court; the court upholds the government’s decision; Daniel then takes the longer route of becoming a citizen through naturalization. He spends the rest of his life trying to create a community modeled on the Church of St. James, the first Christian church in Jerusalem before the big split between Judaism and Christianity.
Those are the facts of the novel, but its heart has to do with what Lyudmila writes in the prologue about Brother Daniel: “This book is devoted to a man who tried all his life to break down the wall of misunderstanding.” All his life, in a very large sense, he worked as an interpreter, interpreting what it means to believe in God -- “I recognize that language is not that important. All that really matters is what the language is expressing” -- and translating that into a life that brought understanding and reconciliation to those around him.
There is a section towards the end where Lyudmila writes to her editor about a dream she has, a troubled dream where she is searching for something. It has to do with the end of Daniel’s life: “Daniel was a righteous man. In human terms he suffered defeat. After his death his congregation dispersed and now, just as before, there is no Church of St. James. In a sense, Jesus, too, suffered defeat. First he was not understood or accepted by his own people, then he was accepted by many other peoples but still not understood. If anyone wants to argue that he was understood, where is that new human being, that new history, those new relations between people?”
She concludes: “None of my questions have been answered. I have had finally to abandon the cozy clichés I found useful in my life … What does the Lord want? Obedience? Cooperation? Mutual destruction of the peoples? I have completely repudiated value judgments. I’m not up to them. In my heart I feel I lived an important lesson with Daniel, but when I try to define it, I recognize that what you believe doesn’t matter in the slightest. All that matters is how you personally behave.”
I’m sure there are many strands I did not grasp on this first reading. The experience felt much like holding a rubics cube-like puzzle of religious/theological/what-it-means-to-be-moral questions and twisting it this way and that as one read through the collage of voices coloring in the life of Daniel. The lives of certain people are like windows through which we get a glimpse of the transcendent. The life of Brother Daniel is one of those, and I am so glad that I read this magnificent novel.
bronwen's review
5.0
One of the best books I've read in a while, it's still haunting me weeks after finishing it.
This is a multi-leveled novel written from the perspective of multiple narrators. It centers on the paradoxical life of Daniel Stein, a Polish Jew who becomes a translator in World War II, first for the Gestapo, then for the Russians, and who manages to save hundreds of lives because of his position. He converts to Catholicism while hiding in a monastery and, after the war, becomes a priest in Israel.
The optimistic tone, the humour and the gratitude that transpire from the testimony of the different survivors are elements that make this novel stand out from the others on the WW2.
This is a multi-leveled novel written from the perspective of multiple narrators. It centers on the paradoxical life of Daniel Stein, a Polish Jew who becomes a translator in World War II, first for the Gestapo, then for the Russians, and who manages to save hundreds of lives because of his position. He converts to Catholicism while hiding in a monastery and, after the war, becomes a priest in Israel.
The optimistic tone, the humour and the gratitude that transpire from the testimony of the different survivors are elements that make this novel stand out from the others on the WW2.
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