The Healer

Once again we have an Appelfeld- like family with the father skeptical of religion, a hardheaded businessman, and the mother more sympathetic to Jewish tradition. Once again we have the division within the family which persists throughout. The parents and their children the athletic Karl and the emotionally disturbed Helga travel deep into the Carpathian Mountains. There they meet a 'Healer' a holy teacher who instructs Helga in the ways of prayer. As is often the case in the work of Appelfeld there is no dramatic decisive ending to all this, no ' cure'. Rather there is a situation of ongoing tension in which Jewish self- critiism and self- hatred in a largely anti-Semitic society play a large part. I did not find this particular novel to be among Appelfeld's most gripping. But it nonetheless once again reveals some of the major themes and preoccupations of a modern master.

I have now read a good portion of this Author's novels, and while not qualified to comment on them from a theological perspective, I continue to find his work some of the finest writing on individuals or on Humanity that I have read. Mr. Appelfeld's novel, "The Healer", contains elements that I feel were greatly expanded upon in his other works. His books, "Unto The Soul", "To The Land Of The Cattails", and "The Conversion", all came to mind during my reading. These elements were similar but not repetitive, the Author was at times giving an alternative perspective on an issue that he examined from a different viewpoint before. If you have read the other works I mention you will feel a familiarity with the circumstances and issues he deals with here. This is not a post Holocaust Novel rather it is more akin to, "To The Land Of The Cattails" in time. Religion plays a central role as it always does and here he again is dealing with regret and guilt with several characters. This time it is not as clearly portrayed as a conversion, or a total void where faith would normally reside. The Father in the story is constantly examining what he could have done, and how those results would have allowed him to change the present. The character ruminates on the type of Jew he was as a scholar and the effects it had upon his life. This is a man who has no use for religion, or who buries his remorse for abandoning it well. Religion splits the Family when the Wife and Daughter seek to become what they have shunned. They travel to the, "Healer", in a remote isolated locale in search of faith or perhaps what they hope faith will gain them. This spilt amongst Family members becomes much more than theological, and Mr. Appelfeld brings the complexity of his characters to the reader without making the issues clear for a simpleton, he never stoops, rather he pays tribute to his readers.The bulk of the story takes place on an isolated mountain, and inside an inn, however as the story is brought to a close the journey the Father takes progresses, and the events that journey foreshadows with little subtlety, is as powerful as any of the other works of his I have read.