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A Cobbler's Journey into the Dreamworld and Beyond...
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KIRKUS REVIEW for The Righteous One This second installment of a religious thriller series stars a humble cobbler. Gordon's novel continues the story of the legendary tzaddik, a group of 36 pious and supernaturally gifted Jews who always exist in the world in a kind of mystical balance with their evil counterparts, the rasha.
Moshe the cobbler, a humorous and unassuming worker in New York, is a tzaddik, the son of a man named Pincus Potasznik, who founded a group called the Landsman Society of Krzywcza.
For years, New York City Councilman Arnold Lieberman has been searching for the son of Pincus in order to recruit him in the age-old fight against the rasha, here in the form of a Bronx-based Jewish gangster named Solomon Blass and his ruthless son, Myron.
Only a teenager in the first book, Moshe is now 60 years old and decidedly non-heroic in his daily routine. But Lieberman is persistent, and soon Moshe is embroiled in a battle that sprawls over the real world and the dream realm.
Gordon writes all of this in a smoothly controlled narrative that's equally adept at both the small, personal details--each main character is well shaped and the bad guys are every bit as three-dimensional as the good guys--and the larger philosophical tapestry inscribed with the minutiae of the cabala. "In order to connect with the Light, we must learn how to face the Opposition, the source of life's challenges," readers are told at one point. "The uninitiated at first cringe at this term. However in order to achieve authentic spiritual growth, the Opposition must not be feared, instead it must be accepted as a blessing from the Creator."
Throughout the enjoyable sequel, the author playfully overlays the quotidian New York reality onto a dramatic supernatural backdrop whose existence most ordinary people never suspect. This second volume can easily be read independent of the first.
An entertaining, thought-provoking fantasy in which a plainspoken protagonist is enlisted in a war.
Summary of The Righteous One
Moshe the cobbler, is a gentle, sixty-year-old tzaddik—a righteous and saintly Jew—who is called upon to rekindle his divine connection to the Almighty in order to destroy the notorious New York gangster and rasha Solomon Blass, a man who uses his power of foreseeing events via his vivid dreams to advance his own financial interests.
While Solomon and his son, Myron, seek to control much of Manhattan—its biggest businesses, its police department, and its city government—they find themselves embroiled in conflict with numerous powerful people from both their waking life and the dream world, where Moshe has begun training with the descendants of an ancient mystical spirit for his inevitable confrontation with Solomon.
As the final battle approaches, the divide between good and evil becomes ever clearer and each character faces the consequences of his past, present, and future actions. Will Solomon’s wily tenacity prevail, or will Moshe be strong enough to destroy the rasha’s wicked soul?
A page-turning peak into the journey of consciousness through the experience of lucid dreaming and how such dreams can influence us all. Ideal for anyone captivated by spiritualism, intrigue, gangsters and more.
