The Renegade by Ariel Toaff, translation by Cristina Popple; New York: Centro Primo Levi, Inc.; © 2023; ISBN 9781941-046371; 366 pages; $20.
SAN DIEGO – Author Ariel Toaff is an Italian rabbi now teaching at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. The Renegade is Toaff’s novel about an Italian rabbi who lived in Livorno, Italy, and Nablus, Israel in the early 19th century. The illustration on the book cover is a detail from the 1762 painting “View of Livorno’s Harbour” by Giuseppe Zocchi. The novel was published by The Centro Primo Levi, which is an exponent of Italian Jewish culture.
Readers meet the fictional Rabbi David Ajash, the renegade, after his death in Nablus, which may or may not have been by suicide. His son, Rabbi Moisè Ajash, reluctantly has come to Nablus from Jerusalem to mourn his father, who many a year ago – during Moisè’s childhood—abandoned his family.
An admirer of David’s, who knew nothing of David’s life before his arrival in Nablus, hosts Moisè and presents to him the single copy of David’s autobiographical manuscript. The structure of Toaff’s story, essentially, is Moisè’s reading and reaction to the revelations in his father’s candid and mostly unapologetic autobiography.
The father, in his memoir, confessed that he utilized his honored station as a rabbi to having been a thief, to having abandoned two religions, to committing adultery, to being a drunkard, and having been vainglorious, especially about his authorship of a Jewish religious commentary, which he had egotistically titled Kol David – The Voice of David.
David’s autobiography is not without humor and satiric descriptions of the functionaries of two religions – Judaism and Catholicism – with whom he had interacted during his inglorious stay on Earth. Moisè was surprised—sometimes disgusted—by almost everything his errant father had to say. And yet, the son could not help but feel a measure of sympathy for the old reprobate.
The book is a delightful tale, well told, about the hypocrisy of some members of the clergy. If I have a quibble, it is about the typography. Going back and forth between David’s memoir and Moisè’s reactions to it, clearer typographical differentiation was necessary. I found myself rereading certain passages to verify whether the words were David’s or Moisè’s.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.