The Frozen Rabbi

February 1, 2010
A family of long-suffering eastern European Jews protects a frozen rabbi from pogroms, revolution, and racketeers in this intermittently fabulous multigenerational saga. Stern (The Angel of Forgetfulness
) uses two narrative threads, one beginning in 1999 when 15-year-old Bernie Karp discovers a body in his family's freezer, the other beginning in 1889 when the rabbi is frozen during a winter storm. With a ferocious grasp of history and Yiddish humor, Stern follows the family of misfits and geniuses as they flee the Lodz ghetto in Poland with their icy cargo, eventually making their way to New York, Palestine, and Memphis, where, in 1999, the rabbi reawakens. Unfortunately, the brilliant Chagall-like eye Stern turns toward the first half of the 20th century is bleary when it glances at the recent past, in which the story concerns itself more with Bernie's inability to lose his virginity and the newly thawed holy man's lecherous and tedious determination to enjoy 1999, which he considers to be heaven on earth. Stern ties both narratives together neatly, but the remarkable characters who cart the frozen rabbi through such vividly realized hells on earth deserve a bolder legacy than the banal one they get.