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She is also intel­lec­tu­al­ly provoca­tive, mus­ing about expla­na­tions of the sotah rit­u­al for accused adul­ter­ers, the word­ing of the Kol Nidre prayer, and the name of the High Priest’s orac­u­lar breast­plate. When a few peo­ple con­gre­gate threat­en­ing­ly in front of a Jew­ish shop, it reminds her of the many cat­a­stroph­ic mas­sacres that began just that way.ĭara Horn cap­tures the sights, smells, and sounds of Jerusalem under Roman occu­pa­tion as vivid­ly as she por­trays Man­hat­tan in our present moment of blockchain spec­u­la­tion and genet­ic research. Yet she is haunt­ed by the cycles of his­to­ry. Rachel, on the oth­er hand, still lives for her chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, as painful as that can some­times be. And I watched every sin­gle one of them die.” It’s almost more than he can bear. Elazar suf­fers from mem­o­ries of his fam­i­ly over dozens of gen­er­a­tions: ​ “I saw every child grow up. They made a bar­gain for rea­sons great and small and faced the con­se­quences.

The novel’s immor­tals, Rachel and Elazar, nev­er had the illu­sion that it would be a bless­ing to live for­ev­er. Yet this is no alle­go­ry - it’s a love sto­ry, or many love sto­ries, with the same con­flicts and joys and heart­breaks that are part of any life. Their lives retrace the jour­neys of the Jew­ish peo­ple, from Jerusalem to Anti­och to Pumbe­di­ta, in Alexan­dria and Alep­po, through Spain and Poland, to Amer­i­ca and Israel.

Today, high-tech lead­ers in Sil­i­con Val­ley are pour­ing bil­lions of dol­lars into anti-aging research, hop­ing to defeat death.Įter­nal Life, a nov­el both adven­tur­ous and wise, imag­ines two immor­tals as old as the Wan­der­ing Jew who dwell among us today. The Chris­t­ian para­ble of the Wan­der­ing Jew sees immor­tal­i­ty as a curse: a Jew who mocks Jesus is pun­ished by being unable to die until the Sec­ond Com­ing.

Homer’s Odysseus spurned eter­nal life so that he could go home to his wife.

Immor­tal­i­ty has always fired the human imag­i­na­tion.