The Last of the Just

In this classic of 1959 André Schwarz-Bart reworks the Jewish legend of the Lamed Vavs, the handful (36 in most versions of the story) of Just or Righteous Men who live among the Jews in every generation and who provide the merit on which the world depends. The tradition dates back to the 5th century Babylonian Talmud. It was elaborated by kabbalistic Jews in the 16th and 17th century and by hasidic Jews in the 18th century: the Lamed Vavs are humble men and unnoticed as special by their fellow Jews. At times of great peril, so this version has it, "a Lamed Vavnik makes a dramatic appearance, using his hidden powers to defeat the enemies of Israel" (Encyclopedia Judaica). Schwarz-Bart was born in France and lost most of the members of his family in the Holocaust. His will not have been the first persecuted Jew in history to question whether any Lamed Vav has ever arisen to defeat the enemies of Israel. He retains the idea that he will be humble and unknown, but he totally subverts the idea that he can be a saviour. Instead his role is to offer to God his own martyrdom for his faith and for his people. Schwarz-Bart imagines the story of the Levys, one family in which the role of the Just Man was hereditary. They have suffered death down the ages, beginning with the massacre of the Jews of York in 1185. In later generations this wandering Jewish family suffers at the hands of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions; they are expelled from one area after another; the Cossacks add their contribution; and when we come to the late 19th century, the family leaves its home in Zemyock in Russian Poland and settles in Germany. At this stage there are three generations: at the head of it is Mordecai, the venerable patriarch, who accepts that all suffering is part of God's will and who tells his family that there is no point in putting up any resistance. His son Benjamin thinks there is an escape in trying to merge into German society; but the Patriarch tells the story of the Just Men to his frail and scholarly little grandson, Ernie. Ernie lives in his own intensely active and romantic imagination, and, with the arrival of the Nazis in 1933, he is convinced that he is to be the next Just Man. The remaining two thirds of the book deal with Ernie's life from that time onwards. There are terrible scenes of brutality - gangs of Nazis attacking Jews as they go to the synagogue, atrocious bullying of the Jewish children by a teacher and by their fellow-students. Ernie's life is full of suffering and strengthens his conviction that the calling of being Just Man has indeed fallen upon him. The scenes of cruelty are interspersed with the vivid poetical and mystical nature of Ernie's imagination. With one terrible exception when he is in utter despair - a touch of human nature which rescues the portrait of him from being just too accepting - he identifies with suffering everywhere, not just among the Jews; he is open to the beauties of the e

The legend of the Thirty- Six Just Men , the Lamed Vov whose righteousness sustains the world is at the heart of this work. It traces a family of such Just Men through generations of suffering, and climaxes with Ernie Levy, the Last of the Just whose sufferings in the Shoah( Holocaust) bring the story to a climax and an end. The powerful and painfully poetic conclusion of this story is one of the most moving in Literature. In one sense it might be said that the work presents a one- sided view of Jewish history. But it does tell the story of Jewish suffering through the generations and in the Shoah with incredible compassion and feeling. And it arouses in the reader too a deep identification and sympathy with that history, and with the story and ongoing life of the Jewish people.

OK, you've read many holocaust books, probably seen several movies, been there, done that.This one is different, and different in so many ways that you'll never believe you've read one before.Of course there are not many that start the story in 1105, that's different. There are not many that try to fix the story in a context that is greater than the ending. This one does that, and makes it so strong that you can not put it down.First the context, the myth if you will. There are in the world 36 `just men' that take on the suffering of the world, that are the reasons God allows the world to continue. There are among these men, some number of `unknown just' who see the world differently from most of us. That when one of these `unknown just' dies his soul is so cold that God must hold him in his fingers for a thousand years so that he can open to paradise. Ernie Levy is one of those men. A thousand years of history, two thousand years of suffering are all concentrated in the story of one boy, the movement of a family from Poland, to Germany, to France, to extermination. It's all so simple. It's all so wonderfully told. The story of a people, the story of a family, the story of a man, the story of the twentieth century, all in so few pages.I hope you'll take the time to read it.

My Dad told me to read this book, and when I finally did, it was well worth it. It tells the story of a legend of a dynasty, so to speak, of just men. They are people who cannot abide by injustice, and often sacrifice their lives for the sake of justice. Young Ernie Levy is recognized as the just man of his generation at a very young age. He grapples with the mixed blessing and curse of being a just man, and feeling others pain, for the Nazi's have just come to power and have begun persecuting the Jews. The story tells how Ernie tries to come to terms with his lagacy at the same time as the Nazis release their unimaginable horror over Europe. The end, where the words of kaddish, the prayer for the dead, are interpsersed with the names of the death camps, the author shows us how great, and how terrible it is to be one of the 36 rightious people of the world.

Difficult to describe and impossible to forget, this book takes us out of whatever 'normal' world we inhabit and casts us into the horror of the Nazi's 'final solution'. The story of a young Jewish boy - the 'last of the Just' - is so powerful, so full of pain and confusion, so beautifully written, so honestly realized, that the reader will never be able to forget it. The last section alone, where the names of all the death camps are listed, in the midst of a kind of elegy, is among the most moving pieces of prose I have ever read. Read this book. It will change you and stay with you when everything else you have read about the holocaust is forgotten.