A surprising novel from Mark Binder

I have read and reviewed a number of books by Providence author Mark Binder (also known by his pen name Izzy Abrahmson), but his most recent novel, “The Council of Wise Women” (Light Publishing, 2024) fills me with surprise. It is unlike anything I have ever read by Binder.

To begin with, the author’s previous books have, for the most part, been collections of loosely connected family-friendly episodes centering about the comings and goings of the eccentric – but by no means crazy – Yiddish-speaking residents of Binder’s version of Chelm, a nineteenth-century shtetl somewhere in the “Old Country” of Eastern Europe. These books often center about such holidays as Hanukkah and Passover that are widely observed in some fashion or other by us American Jews.

By way of contrast, “The Council of Wise Women” is a continuous narrative of about 300 pages, divided into 11 sections, given such titles as “The Old Woman,” “The Girl,” or “The Council Resumes.” These sections are divided into 48 chapters, each one compelling the reader to turn page after page to find out what happens next.

The very title of Binder’s latest novel suggests that the author would highlight certain feminist themes. The book is filled with women’s complaints about men. Early on: “Babies are like men; they are immature and selfish. They always want service.”

Or midway through the book: Chelm’s Council of Wise Women are gathered in their cave to discuss a community crisis: “What do we want to do? The men of Chelm are useless.”

Further on: a woman complains about her husband, a tailor: “But for him, I am nothing but a cook and laundress, a cleaner and a shopper. I am a tool that he uses, like he uses his scissors.”

Binder’s novel overflows with well-drawn complex characters, but at the center of the story is Rachel, whom we follow from her birth through her early teenage years. She is far more than precocious; she is a child genius. By the age of 7, she has taught herself to read not only Yiddish and Hebrew but also German and English. When she was only 12 years old, she wrote a learned scientific paper which was accepted for publication by a prestigious Viennese journal.

But Rachel’s genius proved in some ways to be threatening to the shetl’s patriarchy; because of her obvious intellectual brilliance, she wound up at the age of 9 to be the first girl, but not the last, to enter Chelm’s all-boys yeshivah (echoes of Yentl). As she tells her mother, “For hundreds, if not thousands of years, men have assumed that knowledge was their domain. It’s not fair, and it’s not true. Women can be just as wise as men, if not wiser.”

Through her great gift for languages, her sheer persistence, and her desire to bring aid and comfort to her twin brother on his bar mitzvah day, Rachel memorized Yakov’s Torah potion and wound up mouthing it for him from her position in the woman’s section on the balcony of Chelm’s synagogue. The rabbi was so moved when he discovered how Rachel had helped her brother that he told her, “You have performed a mitzvah today, a bat mitzvah.” Rachel Cohen. Pioneer of Jewish feminism.

From the opening pages of Binder’s novel, the reader realizes that this will not be the heart-warming story of “heimish” Jewish family life so often depicted as the norm in the Eastern European Jewish shtetl. The Cohen family – Benjamin, Sarah, and their twin children, Rachel and Yakov – will not turn out to be a happy one, even less happy than the bitter-sweet shtetl family depicted in Fiddler.”

In his newest work, Binder plunges into the lives of real, non-idealized families. He casts a sobering shadow on the Yiddish humor that serves to hide the actual lives of the shtetl families we prefer not to see. Binder gets real about Chelm, real about how over time even the soundest of human relationships are darkened by anger, by hurt, by guilt, by savage twists of miscommunication, At times, Binder ‘s language becomes extremely precise, his well-chosen phases drawn from deeper, richer, perhaps more conflict-torn places. It is almost as if Binder’s words are flowing with such intensity that he seems to be taking direct dictation from his muse.

“The Council of Wise Women” does not end happily ever after, but neither does it end unhappily ever after. The story begins, flows on, and ends in ambiguity: confusing, yet at times hopeful, imperfect as life itself.

Note: To purchase a copy of “The Council of Wise Women,” order from your favorite bookstore, or order online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. For more information, visit the website: izzyabe.com.

JAMES B. ROSENBERG is a rabbi emeritus at Temple Habonim in Barrington. Contact him at rabbiemeritus@templehabonim.org.