We are all pioneers, says Ruhama Veltfort, local author of “The Promised Land,” a historical novel about an offbeat Chassidic rebbe and his followers.
The book’s main characters are a pioneering Chassid couple, Yitzhak and Chana. They travel with Yitzhak’s sister’s family and a motley crew of followers, from Poland to America in 1845, and Yitzhak leads them across the desert, not to Israel, but to California. There, they encounter Jews who ride coaches on Shabbat, and attend a seder served by African slaves.
“If you look at it a certain way, life is a pioneering experience in a spiritual sense,” says the San Francisco writer in an interview from her Noe Valley home. She’ll be reading from “The Promised Land” at Black Oak Books in Berkeley on Tuesday, Jan. 26.
In “The Promised Land,” the rebbe, Yitzhak, expresses the pioneer theme this way: “Were we not all, Jews or goyim, in some way aliens on the earth?”
Says Veltfort, 54, “We begin with a feeling of separation and isolation and we’re trying to get home. Some people find that home by returning to their roots in a more traditional sense. Some people do that by carving out new territory.”
She has long been interested in various mystical traditions. Though not raised in an observant family, she had a strong Jewish identification.
“Even though I didn’t have a Jewish upbringing, I always knew I was Jewish and felt that connection.” Veltfort’s book — her first published novel — is partly an expression of that connection.
Almost 30 years ago, when she had young children, Veltfort felt a stronger connection to Judaism, observing holidays with her family.
She grew up in Palo Alto and has been a San Francisco resident for over 30 years.
Yitzhak, the rebbe in “The Promised Land,” is on a constant journey, first leaving his father’s house to study with a controversial rebbe, then traveling to America to escape the pogroms. In St. Louis, his family and followers are under the patronage of an American rabbi. The immigrants are troubled by the Americans’ inattention to kashrut, their idolatrous love of money, and their inhumane treatment of their slaves.
Yitzhak is compelled by visions to move west, even though it means that food is scarce and they must violate the Sabbath because they’re traveling with a group.
In the book, Yitzhak and Chana pioneer in both a physical and spiritual sense. Yitzhak prays with his wife and shouts out God’s secret name, practices which were not usual for traditional Jews.
First, he dreams God’s secret name, then he says it out loud during prayer.
Yitzhak’s brother-in-law, Asher, hears his cry and shouts at him. “Stop! Stop! Madman! Apikoris! Heretic! Be quiet!”
The book continues, “Yitzhak blinked and came back into himself. He looked around. `Forgive me, Asher,’ he said. `I was dreaming.’
“He knew he was lying. His mind spun and rolled like a tumbleweed in the wind. It was the Master of the Universe Himself Who put that Word in his mouth, yet he had not the courage to insist with Asher. Which one of them was mad?”
Yitzhak, Veltfort says, is constantly balancing the tension between his own spiritual experiences and the rich tradition he’s inherited.
“He tries to fit those experiences into a context and when he fails he has to look for a broader context. He’s always in a tension between his vision and living in a community where others don’t always share his vision.
“In the early years of Cassidism,” she continues, “a lot of rebbes were considered heretics by almost everyone else. By the 19th century the movement had kind of degenerated in the sense of becoming institutionalized. It became more rigid.”
This tension, though not new, has echoes in the current “Who is a Jew?” controversy.
“I don’t think Judaism ever developed along a single party line,” Veltfort says. “It’s always been something that people have argued about. Those arguments have become more tense at more stressful times in history. I think it’s possible to break quite a bit with tradition and still be a Jew.”