I remember hosting a program with author Stella Pope Duarte while she impersonated St. Theresa. An enigmatic character, she was able to capture her likeness and the audience. It was the energy she gave that electrified the room. It was a room full of students, and you could hear a pin drop. She left them entranced. It is with this idea that we look at Jacob Frank. An 18th-century self-proclaimed messiah, he led a heretical movement that included Judaism, Islamism, and Christianity. Was he a true founder of a new religion, a messiah, or a grifter?

Olga Tokarczuk boldly examines this man and his influence in Poland and Eastern Europe in the 18th century.
It is a time of uncertainty; a giant comet blazes across the sky, Poland's identity as a nation is about to be erased, and the Jewish people are experiencing a new round of persecution.

Tokarczuk brings to light the conditions in the Jewish community before introducing Jacob. The Jewish people were constantly vilified, accused of murder, horrific crimes, taxed, and forbidden to live within city limits. Wave after wave of accusations would hit the community. When Jacob Frank appears, it would seem he would be both a curse and a hope. He draws a large following with his enigmatic personality and preaching. However, his irreverent ways would draw the attention of the authorities. His power and influence would also hold them at bay. When threatened, he would convince his followers to convert to Christianity, severing them from their families and community but saving them from other persecution. This is all against the light of a giant comet seen in the sky. Is it the end of days?

Jacob Frank seemed to be a person who could attract and entrance a following. At times he reminded me of Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry. A grifter who would go from town to town peddling religion but in reality swindling his followers. Olga does not pass judgment on his actions but merely documents them. His teachings are incoherent, but he provides an idea of freedom. A hope that there is a law that would free humanity to be their true selves. While his preaching is never articulated, his followers would pass on to his daughter, and Frankists would continue for years after his death.

I had a particular interest in this story as it takes place in Poland (my ancestry) and Czestochowa, which becomes known as the place where Jacob Frank was imprisoned (and not spoken of taken kindly by him.)

Tokarczuk's beautiful prose, steady research, and neutral stance leave questions but equally entrance the reader. It is hard not to draw parallels with those who feel it is the end of days and are drawn to a charismatic figure who tells them what they want to hear.

Favorite Passages
"On the street, women in tattered rags gather dung and wood shavings for fuel. It would be hard to say, based on their rags, whether this is a Jewish poverty, or Eastern Orthodox, or Catholic. Poverty is nondenominational and has no national identity."

"Asher Rubin thinks that most people are truly idiots, and that it is human stupidity that is ultimately responsible for introducing sadness into the world. It isn't a sin or a trait with which human beings are born, but a false view of the world, a mistaken evaluation of what is seen by our eyes. Which is why people perceive every thing in isolation, each object separate from the rest. Real wisdom lies in linking everything together—that's when the true shape of all of it emerges."

"When the young wife sits down at Yente's bedside, Yente's hand shoots out from underneath the wolfskins and lands on Shneydel's belly, although Shneydel isn't showing yet. But Yente can see that a separate soul has taken up residence in Shneydel's belly, a soul still indistinct, hard to describe because many; these free souls are everywhere, just waiting for the opportunity to grab some unclaimed bit of matter. And now they lick this little lump, which looks a bit like a tadpole, inspecting it, though there is still nothing concrete in it, just shreds, shadows. They probe it, testing. The souls consist of streaks: of images, and recollections, memories of acts, fragments of sentences, letters. Never before has Yente seen this so clearly. Truth be told, Shneydel, too, gets uncomfortable sometimes, for she, too, can feel their presence—as if dozens of strangers' hands were pressing on her, as if she were being touched by hundreds of fingers. She doesn't want to confide in her husband about it—and anyway, she wouldn't be able to find the words."

"Her touch, her cheek, her hand had passed somehow into the poetess. Now nothing is so clear or colorful as it was—it's all sort of blurry, without any definite contours. Like a dream that vanishes on waking, that flies out of your memory like fog from over a field. The priest doesn't fully understand it, but he also doesn't really want to understand. People who write books, he thinks, don't want to have their own stories. What would be the point? In comparison with what is written, life will always be boring and bland. The priest sits with his pen, which has already dried up, until the candle burns out and with a quick hiss is extinguished. He is flooded with darkness."

"The secret of evil is the only one God doesn't ask us to take on faith, but rather has us consider." And so I considered this all day and all night, for sometimes my lanky body that ceaselessly demanded food did not let me sleep, out of hunger. I considered that perhaps it was true that God recognized the mistake he had made, expecting the impossible from humankind. For he had wanted a person without sin. Therefore God had to make a choice. He could punish for sins, punish incessantly and become a kind of eternal oeconomist of our world, the manager who whips the peasants when they do not work as they are supposed to in their master's fields. Yet God might also, in his infinite wisdom, have been ready to bear human sinfulness, to leave a space for the weakness of man. God might have said to himself: I cannot have a person who is simultaneously free and fully subject to me. I cannot have a creature free from sin who would be at the same time a person. Better sinful humanity than a world without men."

"Some people have a sense of unearthly things, just as others have an excellent sense of smell or hearing or taste. They can feel the subtle shifts in the great and complicated body of the world. And some of these have so honed that inner sight that they can even tell where a holy spark has fallen, notice its glow in the very place you would least expect it. The worse the place, the more fervently the spark gleams, flickers—and the warmer and purer is its light."

"Every one of us thinks differently, and imagines something altogether singular when he is reading. Sometimes it unsettles me greatly to think that what I write with mine own Hand, may be understood in a completely different way from how I had intended."

"Yente's mother died with the secret clenched in her fist. She died in a kind of convulsion, in a fury. She'll no doubt come back as a wild animal."

"Between the heart and the tongue lies an abyss," he said. "Remember that. Thoughts must be concealed, particularly since you were born, to your great misfortune, a woman. Think so that they think you are not thinking. Behave in such a way that you mislead others. We all must do this, but women more so. Talmudists know about the strength of women, but they fear it, which is why they pierce girls' ears, to weaken them. But we don't. We don't do that because we ourselves are like women. We survive by hiding. We play the fools, pretend to be people we are not. We come home, and then we take off our masks. But we bear the burden of silence: masa duma."

"People gaze into the flames and find they like this theater of destruction, and a free-floating anger mounts within them, although they don't know whom to turn it on—but their outrage more or less automatically makes them hostile to the owners of these ruined books."

"Asher has learned that people have a powerful need to feel superior to others. It doesn't matter who they are—they have to find someone who's beneath them. Who is better and who is worse depends on a vast array of random traits. Those with light-colored eyes consider themselves to be above those with dark-colored eyes. The dark-eyed, meanwhile, look down on the light-eyed. Those who live near the forest's edge feel superior to those living in the open on the ponds, and vice versa. The peasants feel superior to the Jews, and the Jews feel superior to the peasants. Townspeople think they're better than the inhabitants of villages, and people from villages treat city people as though they were somehow worse.
Isn't this the very glue that holds the human world together? Isn't this why we need other people, to give us the pleasure of knowing we are better than they are? Amazingly, even those who seem to be the worst-off take, in their humiliation, a perverse satisfaction in the fact that no one has it worse than they do. Thus they have still, in some sense, won.
"Where does this all come from? Asher wonders. Can man not be repaired? If he were a machine, as some now argue, it would suffice to adjust one little lever slightly, or to tighten some small screw, and people would start to take pleasure in treating one another as equals."

"He had intended to make notes, for he has not yet completed his work, but that multitude of books had an unexpectedly depressing effect on him. Father Chmielowski actually spent all that time—almost an entire month—going into the library to try to understand what organization prevailed there. But with ever-increasing anxiety, he became convinced that there was no organization to it at all.
"Some books are sorted by author, but then suddenly it changes and is according to the 'abecedary,' alphabetically. And then there are books that were purchased together just piled up, and then there are some that on account of their larger format would not fit onto the usual shelves, and so they have been separated onto other, more capacious shelves, or they lie around as if ailing in some way," Father Chmielowski says indignantly. "But books are like soldiers. They should always be standing at attention, one after the next. Like an army of mankind's wisdom."

"Yente watches all of this—the similarity of the events draws her attention. Over time, moments occur that are very similar to one another. The threads of time have their knots and tangles, and every so often there is a symmetry, every once in a while something repeats, as if refrains and motifs were controlling them, a troubling thing to notice. Such order tends to overburden the mind, which cannot know how to respond. Chaos has always seemed more familiar and safe, like the disarray in your own drawer. And so it is now, here in Prossnitz, that they remember the day in Rohatyn, twenty-seven years ago, that Yente didn't exactly die."

"To be impatient means never really living, being always in the future, in what will happen, but which is after all not yet here. Do not impatient people resemble spirits who are never here in this place, and now, in this very moment, but rather sticking their heads out of life like those wanderers who supposedly, when they found themselves at the end of the world, just looked onward, beyond the horizon? What did they see there? What is it that an impatient person hopes to glimpse?"

"I don't believe in the disasters that might come. I believe in the ones we have been able to escape."

"Remember what we were going after, I said unto them. Religions, laws, books, and old customs have all been worn out. He who reads those old books and observes those laws and customs, it is as if he's always facing backward, and yet he must move forward. That is why he will stumble and ultimately fall. Since everything that has been has come from the side of death. A wise man, meanwhile, will look ahead, through death, as though this were merely a muslin curtain, and he will stand on the side of life."

"If human beings had only known how to truly preserve their knowledge of the world, if they had just engraved it into rock, into crystals, into diamond, and in so doing, passed it on to their descendants, then perhaps the world would now look altogether otherwise. For what are we to do with such a brittle stuff as paper? What can come of writing books?"

"Literature is a particular type of knowledge, it is"—he sought the right words, and suddenly a phrase came ready to his lips—"the perfection of imprecise forms."

"Nonetheless it is written that any person who toils over matters of Messiahs, even failed ones, even just to tell their stories, will be treated just the same as he who studies the eternal mysteries of light."

Thank you for the e-copy to read along side the physical copy. I think this book might take me all year. But enjoying the book so far. Excellent translation as always fromJennifer Croft

So...I have finished The Books of Jacob... and now I want to know which university is going to award me my honorary PhD in Judaic Studies?!

Seriously though....at 992 pages (35 h and 37 min of listening), The Book of Jacob is the 2nd largest book I have ever read (or listened to). Second only to War and Peace as far as I can remember.

I wish I could say that those 35.5 h just "flew by" and that it "did not feel like 992 pages at all"...but it really did.

While I have an enormous appreciation for the amount of research that Olga Tokarczuk had to do in order to write this behemoth of a book, I must warn you that if you loved her Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and expecting something similar - you need to adjust your expectation. It is nothing like it.

While entirely accessible (in that you really do not need any prior knowledge) The Books of Jacob is not for everyone, and many people will find it impossible to conquer. 

The Book of Jacob details the life of the "false" Jeweish Messiah, Jacob Frank. While there were MANY wannabe messiahs of the sort, Jacob Frank remains one of the most mysterious, and either hated or revered messiah wannabes of the eighteenth century.

The book is slow, and the plot is buried under the enormous amount of seemingly inconsequential details that describe the everyday life in Poland in the mid 1700s'. The characters are plentiful, and while some persist throughout the entire novel, others appear and then disappear, only to reappear again after like 400 pages BUT with different names (all of Jacob's followers got baptized at some point and took new (Christian) names). 

There are paragraphs upon paragraphs of the word by word quotations from the Jewish mysticism books. Sometimes in Hebrew. Followed by the translation.

If this sounds like a lot, that's because it is. 

Sure there are some "juicy" tidbits too. Jacob Frank, like most cult leaders (and that's essentially what he was of course: a charismatic cult leader not unlike Jim Jones or Warren Jeffs) had an insatiable sexual appetite. But all in all, not gonna lie, I am surprised that The Books of Jacob was longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. I honestly do not know how many people will be able to finish this book and have a good time doing it. 

Personally I found this book fascinating because of the historical fiction aspect of it. I am very grateful to this Polish woman for teaching me so much about my ancestors (my ancestors from the Jewish side hail from Poland). For the first time in my life I found myself googling just about everything related to the life of the Jewes in Poland in the 1700s'. It also made me very curious about my own family back then. What did they think of Jacob Frank? Were any of them "true believers" (Frankists)? Or did they remain true to the old ways (talmudists) and scoffed at and prosecuted Frank and his followers? Unfortunately, I will never find out. 

I think if you have a special interest in religion, theology and/or philosophy you will find this book to be fascinating. There are a lot of philosophical musings on what/who the god is. Is he omnipresent? The imperfections of god are hypothesised. Was the world created by his design or was it perhaps a mysteake? An oversight? Perhaps god was too tired? Created the world and then forgot about it entirely?  And on and on and on...

Audiobook Vs. the physical book. The Books of Jacob audiobook is narrated by Gilli Messer, who is the main narrator, and by Allen Lewis Rickman - who narrates the "Scraps" of Nachman of Busk. Both narrators are great, with Gilli definitely being the star of the show. I feel that it is important to note that Gilli is fluent in Hebrew. So if you want to know what all the Hebrew letters, and words, and let's be honest THE ENTIRE PARAGRAPHS supposed to sound like - go with the audio. This being said, here is a full disclosure: I am fluent in Hebrew. So I actually understand all the Hebrew parts (of which there are plentiful in this book). It is hard for me to imagine how a person who does not understand Hebrew could possibly have the same experience reading (or listening to) this book that I did. It might even be a better experience, seeing how the book was written by a non Hebrew speaking author, but again, it is hard for me to imagine, and therefore, to comment on this objectively...

I will say that there is a certain merit to reading this book vs listening to it as well. Yes, you will not get the benefit of hearing all the Hebrew, but this gorgeous brick of a book (thank you for the gifted copy Riverhead Books!) has so many illustrations (of the historical documents, art, Kabballistic writings etc, etc) that if you are a visual person who enjoys this type of stuff you may want to consider reading the physical copy. Plus, let's be honest, this audio is NOT for a novice listener. It is slow and hard to follow. Despite the impressive performance of both narrators. 

A Few words on translation. Polish is a challenging language. One of the hardest to learn actually (it has seven grammatical cases!). But translating a literary work from Polish is a whole new level of "challenging". Translating in general is challenging (those of you who have ever done it for whatever reason know what I mean), but when you need to translate AND somehow preserve the author's unique writing style...well that sounds like hell to me. Polish sentence structure for example is flexible (word order does not matter). But in English it is not the case. Tokarczuk's writing style is very unique in that she manages to make a sentence sound profound (by using some pretty formal language) AND whimsical all at the same time often utilizing the above mentioned sentence structure flexibility to accomplish this effect. If you are interested in learning more about specificities of translating her work please read the article in lithub.com titled "The Order of Things: Jennifer Croft on Translating Olga Tokarczuk." All this is to say that I truly believe that Jennifer Croft deserves some sort of award for her work. I am not sure about the International Booker Prize, but SOME prize for sure....All in all I do not regret spending nearly 36 hours of my life listening to The Books of Jacob: I learned A LOT, and there are some brilliant tidbits that I will be thinking about a lot and for a long time. This being said I honestly cannot think who would I wholeheartedly recommend it to. Not too many of my friends and family for sure.

I think you should give it a try if:

1. You are a theology student and/or enthusiast, or have a strong interest in topics such as transcendence 

2. If you are a psychologist with a strong interest in cults, and cult leaders

3. If you are interested in learning more about The Jewish Diaspora in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Especially about their life in the mid 1700s (yes, I realize that this is very specific  )

4. If you have special interest in Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism

THE BOOKS OF JACOB (translated by Jennifer Croft) is set in mid-eighteenth century Poland and centers around Jacob Frank, a real Jewish historical figure who creates his own religious sect (later known as Frankism) and claims to be the Messiah. The novel is told from various perspectives and follows historical events, cultures, and religions across Eastern Europe during this time.

In this heavily character-driven story, Tokarczuk weaves together dozens of narratives to paint a captivating portrait of 18th century Poland. The story contains diary entries, pictures, and letters scattered throughout. My favorite parts were the dashes of magical realism and reading from the perspective of Yente as she watched events unfold from above. I can’t even begin to comprehend the research and time that must’ve gone into a historical novel of this magnitude. Coming in at 1000 pages, this one is dense but the effortless prose kept me engaged throughout. If you enjoy complex historical novels then I’d recommend checking this one out!

The Books of Jacob by Olga is an over nine hundred page story, split into seven books focusing in a Jewish heretic movement based on gnostic conspiracy in the middle of the 18th century Eastern Europe.

Jacob Frank, a young Jew amasses a large following, thought by some to be the messiah and by others a heretic— we follow Jacob as he wreaks havoc with his heretical beliefs.

This books is written from multiple voices, my favorite being Yente, an almost dead women who’s spirit is observing everything that is happening.

This book at times can be difficult to follow and I found myself having to research a bit as I was reading to get some background knowledge on certain themes and terms. I would say, if you’re looking for a more simple, accessible novel, this one might disappoint you. I however enjoyed really enjoyed it. It felt worth the challenge. There were so many dreamy moments and sentences that left me winded.

I definitely want to read more by this author.

The Books of Jacob is a true megillah of fantastic storytelling. The amount of care and research Tokarczuk put into this novel is evident throughout its pages as she centers her focus on a historical figure most would not have encountered before.

This is one of those deliciously hefty tomes just made for winter days: The Books of Jacob by Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk.

Written in 2014, The Books of Jacob is considered Tokarczuk’s masterpiece. Readers in English are now getting their first experience with this book from a translation by Jennifer Croft.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Penguin Group- Riverhead for an advanced copy of this historical novel.

At 900+ pages Noble laureate Olga Tokarczuk's novel The Books of Jacob, translated by Jennifer Croft, is of course a big book physically. However, it is a big book of ideas, on religion, freedom, messianic people and followers, and about finding something to believe in, even when you know somehow it might not be real. As a reader this is a lot to take in, and well even more to write and translate. In this we are lucky that Ms.Tokarczuk is a master at balancing out a large story, based on real people and events, with characters that we care about, even if we don't understand their intentions.

The novel tell of Jacob Franks, a man who appears in a small town in Poland in the Eighteenth Century, who reinvents himself into the role of a mystic. Soon he gathers a group around him, and he travels around parts of Europe expounding and changing his thoughts and religions regularly, sowing confusion among the religious hierarchy, those who need to control the populous, and his own followers. Considering the times, I found this story fascinating, in that he accomplished all that he did, without a trip to the gallows or a stake in a fire.

The book is told through different narrators, friends, fans, and foes of Franks. The style and the ideas make it a hard book to just dive into, and some of the religious talk can get a tad confusing. However this work is worth the work put into it. The story is absorbing and well told. I understand the length could be a factor, but the page count works for the story, giving a lot more time to explanations and growing certain characters that in a shorter book might lack motivation for acts they do. This is the third book by Ms. Tokarczuk I have read, and I think her most interesting. Historical fiction where you learn a lot about subjects you had no idea occured or would even think about.

Described as Polish Nobel laureate Tokarczuk’s magnum opus, this impressively sprawling story reveals the life and times of Jacob Frank, an eighteenth-century Jewish messianic figure. Frank is enigmatically charismatic and incredibly disruptive: a self-described “simpleton” sporting Turkish garb who violates social norms. Opening in 1752 in Rohatyn, a Polish market town, and passing through numerous other European and Ottoman locales, the novel delves into the circumstances that shaped and elevated Frank, including the fact that Jews were forbidden from buying land and overburdened by taxes, and therefore seeking deliverance. In this bizarre, intricate journey based in history, Frank and his followers come to reject the Talmud and, eventually, convert to Catholicism. With language that’s engaging, erudite, and spiced with witty colloquialisms and wonderful turns of phrase via Jennifer Croft’s supple translation, Tokarczuk explores the state of being an outsider in places with fixed cultural boundaries and how Frank tries to work the system to his and his followers’ advantage. Among the intriguing, diverse cast are Nahman, Frank’s ardent supporter, and Yente, a dying woman whose spirit views events from above. A wealth of fine quotidian detail and brilliantly connected narrative threads draw the reader in. With its length, dozens of characters, and theological discussions, Tokarczuk’s panoramic tale requires commitment, but it is masterful.

(Reviewed for Booklist, 12/1/2021 issue)