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Reviewed by:
  • Gates of Bronze
  • Joel Streicker
Gates of Bronze, by Haim Hazaz, translated by S. Gershon Levi. Introduction by Robert Alter. New Milford, CT, and London: The Toby Press, 2005 (original Hebrew 1968, first English translation 1975). 518 pp. $14.95.

Nearly ninety years on, it is difficult to recapture the danger and terror of the early days of the Russian Revolution. For Jewish readers, this may be doubly hard as the tragedy of the Revolution for the Jews has been overshadowed by the Shoah. The reissue of the English translation of Haim Hazaz's classic Hebrew language novel, Gates of Bronze, affords an opportunity to reexamine those days through the life of the Jews of the fictitious Ukrainian shtetl, Mokry-Kut.

Gates of Bronze is a big, lumpy, social novel depicting the political and ideological conflicts destroying Jewish life in the shtetl after a cadre of young Jewish commissars seizes power. It is an important work because it clearly highlights two central themes in modern Jewish history: the tension between Jewish universalism and particularism, and the deep messianic impulse of secular Jewish liberation movements. Hazaz began the novel in 1923 after having left his native Ukraine a few years before, revised it in 1956, and published it in final version in Hebrew in 1968. The English translation appeared in 1975.

The Jewish commissars prove to be unequivocally cruel. They mock Judaism and ban commerce, devastating the older, pious Jews whose livelihood depends on trade. The Communists view their deeds as selfless service necessary to bringing about the new age of freedom and equality. The older Jews, for the most part, see the Jewish Communists as apostates, reincarnations of the perennial persecutors of Jewry. No amount of pleading on the basis of morality or ethnic solidarity by their elders can move the Communists to ease their harsh decrees. Indeed, the Communists are quite willing to sacrifice the Jewish [End Page 214] people to advance the Revolution. In turn, the older Jews' powerlessness reinforces their reliance on quietistic messianism to ease their plight.

Sorokeh, a young anarchist, complicates this ideological opposition. The grandson of a Talmudic scholar and the son of a yeshiva head, Sorokeh is charming, outgoing, and idealistic, yet clear-sighted about the need for Jews to flee from or defend themselves against the Revolution's gathering antisemitic storm. If Sorokeh is the secular voice of conscience, Heshel Pribisker is the traditionalists' voice of wisdom. A Hasidic melamed, Heshel denounces the Communists because their love of humanity means nothing without the love of God: "[T]he love of heaven, taken by itself, is the same thing as the love of our fellow-men" (p. 476).

The novel reads at times like a static ideological debate, with the characters reiterating unwavering stances. However, pent-up erotic desire intertwines with the big themes of the Jews' fate, imparting to the narrative a greater sense of movement—or at least of churning.

Leahtche is torn between her love for the inconstant Sorokeh, and for Polyishuk, the humorless local Communist Party chief, who is a walking cliché of sexuality sublimated in service of the Revolution. Heshel, meanwhile, is madly in love with Leahtche. Polyishuk, so self-confident in the political realm, is incapable of expressing his love for Leahtche. He fails to seize romantic opportunity, and winds up burying himself deeper in the Revolution to avoid facing up to his failure. Just like Polyishuk's, Sorokeh's actions regarding love are consistent with his temperament and political convictions. Sorokeh repeatedly states that he loves Leahtche, yet he refuses to commit himself to her. He passionately loves Nadia, a woman he has already lost, and deludes himself into thinking that he can recapture her love by assassinating Lenin and Trotsky. The day before leaving Mokry-Kut he invites Leahtche to consummate their relationship. Though tempted, Leahtche refuses the call and instead stays home. There Heshel declares his love, and Leahtche succumbs to his advances, an act she immediately regrets. Her desire for Sorokeh and Polyishuk and her zeal for the Revolution are replaced by fear of the townspeople's censure when they learn that she is pregnant and unmarried. Her personal drama reinforces...

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