Word: jacob
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Jacob Lawrence...
...Slave, by Isaac Bashevis Singer. The author, writing with a skill that frequently gives his tale the force of legend, recasts the Biblical story of Jacob and Rachel in war-ravaged 17th century Poland...
Tolerance & Temptation. The title figure of The Slave is a 17th century Polish Jew named Jacob. Marauding Cossacks have swept through his village, massacred most of the men, and carried the rest off to be sold as slaves. At the book's outset, Jacob has spent four years as a slave of the Gazdas, a Polish mountaineer people who practice a debased kind of paganism lightly colored by Christianity. Although a Talmudic scholar and a skilled woodcarver. Jacob has learned to tend the Gazdas' cattle, and he is tolerated because he is good at it. But he observes...
...Jacob's sore temptation is Wanda, the daughter of his master. She is intelligent and well formed. But by both Jewish and Christian custom of the times, marriage of Jew and Gentile must be punished at least by ostracism, probably by death. Jacob is ransomed and eventually wanders to Lublin, but finds no comfort among the city's Jews, who seem to have forgotten the Cossack massacres. They have grown fat. "All this flesh was dressed in velvet, silk and sables. They were so heavy they wheezed; their eyes shone greedily. They spoke an only half comprehensible language...
...account amid cow dung and human bestiality, has subtly led his tale away from the kind of reality that is composed of what is probable and what is worldly. As the novel continues, it is legend. Wanda dies in childbirth, and her screams reveal her as a Gentile. Jacob is arrested, but escapes and travels with his infant son to Palestine. In his old age, Jacob returns to the village where Wanda died. He finds that her bones, buried in unconsecrated ground, have been surrounded by spreading graves; the dead have accepted the convert...