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The Books of Jacob, Book 2—"The Book of Sand”

Geography and World Building: 

Background:  Whereas "The Book of Fog" focuses the reader’s attention narrowly on villages in Podolia (especially Rohatyn), “The Book of Sand” extends our vision into a much wider world, from what is now western Ukraine south to Smyrna in Turkey and Salonica in Greece—with some scenes in Craiova in what is now Romania, in Sofia in what is now Bulgaria, and on Mount Athos in Greece.  To gain some perspective on this sprawling narrative, it will be helpful to review what happens in each of these locations.

• The scenes in Rohatyn at the wedding in Elisha Shorr’s house become a hub where the reader learns the back stories of Nahman and Yente, from whom we also learn about Jacob’s childhood and youth, as well as about the coming of the first Jewish Messiah Sabbatai Tzvi a century earlier.   
• Within these back stories, we are taken to Smyrna, where Nahman first met Jacob at Isohar’s school, and to Gallipoli in Italy where Sabbatai Tzvi had been imprisoned.
• After Jacob’s wedding in Nikopol (Ukraine), which Nahman had arranged, Jacob goes to work in Craiova for a relative of his bride.  But he soon tires of trading goods “which flow through Stamboul to the north in a colorful stream of all kinds of bright and shining merchandise, much vaunted at the courts of Budapest and Vienna, Kraków and Lwów” (p. 774).  He begins to gather a following and travels to Sofia, then eventually to Salonika, where Nahman follows him and where they come in conflict with the heir of Sabbatai Tzvi.  
• During these peregrinations, both Nahman and Jacob encounter another wanderer, Count Kossakowski/Moliwda, who has traveled through all these lands, including pilgrimages to the Eastern Orthodox monastery in Mt. Athos in Greece and the Bogomil community probably in Bulgaria.  

Questions:  

1. How does “The Book of Sand” expand our understanding of the world Tokarczuk’s characters inhabit from what we learned in “The Book of Fog”?  
2. What do we learn about political, social, economic, and religious life in the towns, cities, and rural areas of these lands?  For example:  
   • What does the work that Moliwda does for the Trinitarians tell us about the relations between Christians and Muslims?  About problems of communication in these lands?
   • What do the caravans that Nahman and Mordecai join (the goods they carry and the other merchants in the party) tell us about the economic underpinnings of this world and about the place of Jewish traders in these economies?  
   • What does Yente’s story tell us about the history and social position of eastern European Jews in the seventeenth-century?  

Characters: 

The main characters in “The Book of Sand” will reappear throughout the novel.  Another way to gain perspective on this sprawling narrative is to clarify each character’s relationship to Jacob.

• Who is Nahman?  What is his relationship with the Shorr family? What is his profession and what are his religious beliefs?  Why is he attracted to Jacob?  What does he come to see as his role in the messianic mission of Jacob?
• Who is Mordechai and what is his relationship to Nahman and Jacob?
• Why doesn’t Yente die?  As her soul wanders through time and space, what do we learn about her personal past, about her grandson Jacob (Yankiele), and about the past of her family’s relationship to the seventeenth-century self-proclaimed Messiah, Sabbatai Tzvi?
• Who is Moliwda?  How does his story trespass borders of countries, languages, religions, and classes?  How does his story overlap with Jacob’s story?  
• Who is Herschel?  How would you describe his relationship to Jacob?  Why is he attracted to Jacob . . . and to Jacob’s wife Hana? 

Jacob:  Of course, Jacob is the central character of the novel, but Tokarczuk does not take us inside his thoughts.  We see him almost exclusively through the eyes of the other characters.

• What effect does this distancing have on your understanding of Jacob’s character?  Is the reader given a coherent view of this enigmatic figure?
• What do you think of his “gifts”?  What sets him apart, in the eyes of so many, as a messianic figure?  How do you evaluate his sexual deviance from accepted norms?  Why does he adopt the name “Frank,” signifying “foreigner”?
• Anthropologists have identified the trickster as an important figure in many cultures and their myths—e.g. Odysseus and Hermes in Greek mythology, Loki in Norse mythology, Coyote in Native American lore, Anansi the spider in African cultures, and Brer Rabbit in the American South:

“In mythology and the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a character in a story who exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and defy conventional behavior. Such a character may be a god, goddess, spirit, human or anthropomorphisation . . . Tricksters, as archetypal characters, appear in the myths of many different cultures . . . as a ‘boundary-crosser’.  The trickster crosses and often breaks both physical and societal rules: Tricksters ‘violate principles of social and natural order, playfully disrupting normal life and then re-establishing it on a new basis.’ . . .  Often, this bending and breaking of rules takes the form of tricks and thievery. Tricksters can be cunning or foolish or both. The trickster openly questions, disrupts and mocks authority.” (Wikipedia)

Is Jacob a bit of a trickster?  If so, why would a “wise fool,” whose actions are often outrageous, be appropriate as a Messiah to upend Rabbinical Judaism? 

Theology: 

Background:  As her characters travel through eastern Europe and the middle east, Tokarczuk introduces the reader to a panorama of religious belief.

• Rabbinical Jews, who follow both the Written Torah (the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible) and the Oral Torah (passed down through generations of sages and later written down)
• Kabbalists, who study the Zohar.  Relevant theological tenets, as understood by Nahman: (1) that God created the universe by withdrawing from infinity, (2) that this withdrawal leaves a space for human freedom, failure, and even evil in the world, (3) that the divine light was shattered at creation and humans should repair this splintering by gathering up the sparks of the divine light, (4) that the Shekinah is the compassionate, nurturing, feminine presence of God in the world
• Hassidic Jews, a spiritual revival movement in eighteenth-century Judaism founded by the Besht, Baal Shem Tov.  Nahman studies with the Besht as a young man. 
• “True believers” like Elisha Shorr’s family, who reject Rabbinical Judaism and follow the first Messiah Sabbatai Tzvi
• Roman Catholic priests, like the encyclopedist Father Chmielowski and the persecuting Bishop Sołtyk.  Relevant theological tenets:   (1) the godhead is composed of a Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; (2) the son of God, Jesus, is the Messiah; (3) Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary into a humble family of oppressed Jews
• Eastern Orthodox Christian monks, who forbid the presence of women and female animals.  But as Moldiwa travels south toward the monastery on Mt. Athos, he feels the presence of the Greek gods of the past replacing the burden of Christian guilt for original sin.
• The Bektashi, a mystical Sufi order of Islam, and the Bogomils, a sect of gnostic Christians who live ascetic, communal lives—both of which Moldiwa visits in his quest for God

Questions:

1. Why might the key tenets of the Zohar lead to heresy and potentially threaten Rabbinical Judaism?
2. How do these differing theological beliefs and traditions begin to blur and merge in the minds of Tokarczuk’s most studious characters?  What is the significance of the religious conversions (or perhaps religious tourism) that the novel describes?
3. How do different characters understand the coming of the Messiah?  What kind of savior does each expect?     
4. How does Tokarczuk use this ferment of religious belief to create the world her characters inhabit?  What motivations move which characters?   Sincere religious belief and questioning?  Economic survival and profit?   Superstition and even magic?  The struggle for power over religious followers?
5. What is suggested by this explosion of religious ferment in eastern Europe and the middle east at the same time that Enlightenment thought is coming to dominate western Europe?

Structure:

Why do you think Tokarczuk structures her novel in fragments that leap from character to character, across barriers of time and space?  In “The Book of Fog,” when Dr. Asher Rubin leaves the Shorrs’ house, unable to satisfy Elisha’s desire to prolong Yente’s life until after the wedding, he muses:

“Most people are truly idiots . . . human stupidity . . . is ultimately responsible for introducing sadness into the world.  It isn’t a sin or a trait with which human beings are born, but a false view of the world, a mistaken evaluation of what is seen by our eyes. Which is why people perceive everything in isolation, each object separate from the rest. Real wisdom lies in linking everything together—that’s when the true shape of all of it emerges” (p. 921). 

What might this secular world view have to do with the structure Tokarczuk has constructed for her novel?

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