Redheaded Reviews: People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

There really is a Hebrew codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah. A Haggadah is a text recited on the first two nights of Seder during Passover that includes the description of the Exodus from Egypt. A family would likely have more than one so everyone at the table could have their own copy to read from. Today they can come illustrated, but long ago in the Medieval times, the Jews did not believe in illustrating their texts as they believed that the commandment "Thou shalt not create any graven image by thy hand" applied here. But the Sarajevo Haggadah, made at that time, is beautifully illustrated in the style of the Christian manuscripts of its day. There is a story behind how it managed to survive all this time when other religions and governments were burning and looting such artifacts. But no one knows most of the story; only the bit at the end. The author has taken the liberty to fill in the spaces with her own suppositions and has also changed the names and created a backstory for those whose stories we know about.

The book opens with Hanna Heath an expert in book conservation, especially medieval books. She was chosen for this amazing job of doing the Sarajevo Haggadah, which has just resurfaced after having been missing since 1898 and before never having been heard of, not because she has the most experience, but because she is from Australia the least objectionable country. Dr. Ozren Kamaran, the kustos of it and the chief librarian of the National Museum and professor of librarianship at the National University of Bosnia turns out to be around her age of thirty and not at all what she expected. The two have an affair that is marred by the fact that he has a son in a permanent coma and a dead wife due to the Bosnian war. But watching Hanna work is a thing of beauty and fascinating as hell. Each artifact, stain, or marking that she notices will tell someone's story. There's an insect, a hair, a wine stain, some salt, and the lack of claps even though the book was set up to take clasps. It was not, of course, in its original binding, but was rebound many times, the last time in 1898.

The stories include one that concerns the insect is about a young Jewish girl named Lola from Sarajevo who runs off to the mountains when the Germans invade her town and begin rounding up the Jews. She joins the Partisans, a group of communists cells that are fighting the Germans in guerilla-style fashion. Her cell isn't much to talk about and is eventually disbanded and she is left alone so she goes back to Sarajevo where her path crosses with that of Serif Kamal, the librarian who saved the Haggadah from the Nazis.

Also, there's the story of the bookbinder and how the clasps came to be missing. Then there's the story of how the wine got there in Venice in 1609 and the relationship between priest Giovanni Domenico Vistorini and Rabbi Judah Aryeh. Vistorini was in charge of determining what books were edited or burned by the Catholic Church and sometimes he consulted with the rabbi or tried to convince the rabbi to get the illegal Jewish publishers to stop publishing the messages against Christianity. The rabbi would come to him with the Haggadah to get it passed with a seal for someone. The story of the salt comes from 1492 and the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition. This story concerns Ruti, a young woman whose father is a book writer and whom she herself reads the books only older men are allowed to read. She leads a secret life her family has no idea about. Her father buys the Haggadah off of a deaf-mute boy in the marketplace and decides to give it as a gift to his nephew for his upcoming wedding. But things change quickly when the Jews are told to leave Spain. The last one is told about the artist herself and involves the hair. She, Zahra al-Tarek is from Africa and drew pictures of plants for her father a healer. But when their village was attacked she was enslaved and her painting became her usable skill. It takes her to many places and saves her life.

Throughout this book, you continue the story of Hanna who has a mother who is a top neurosurgeon and head of neurology at her hospital in Sydney. The two do not get along as Hanna feels as though her mother was never there for her and her mother never told her who her father was. This will change in the book when someone dies and his identity becomes known to Hanna, opening up a whole family she never knew she had.

This book asks you to make some leaps that you just can't make, like Ozren being the love of her life after a very short time of being together and then not seeing each other for years. But the stories of the different people are so interesting and colorful and tragic in some ways, yet hopeful as the book keeps on surviving through the ages until today which is a testament to three major religions coming together to save something grand, glorious, and holy. Overall this was a book really worth reading if only to imagine what might have happened to this wonderful book as it marched across time.

Pictures of the Sarajevo Haggadah: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/483714816208821051/?lp=true

Quotes

Vienna is the laboratory of the apocalypse.

-Karl Kraus

Sometimes, I think if you took out all the universities and all the hospitals our of greater Boston, you’d be able to fit what’s left into about six city blocks.

-Geraldine Brooks (The People of the Book p 134)

Had not the Muslims, Jews, and Christians shared these lands in contentment—in convivencia—for hundreds of years? What was the saying? Christians raise the armies, Muslims raise the buildings, Jews raise the money.