The Rabbi’s Suitcase, with Robert Kehlmann and Carole Joffe
To register for this free in-person program, click here. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy.
Author Robert Kehlmann will be in conversation with Dr. Carole Joffe about his new novel, The Rabbi’s Suitcase, and its exploration of the enduring challenges women have faced in shaping their identities from Ottoman and Mandate Palestine to Depression Era America and beyond.
Inspired by history and a trove of love letters, The Rabbi’s Suitcase recounts how, in the early 1880s, a battered steamship, overcrowded with Orthodox Jewish travelers, makes a treacherous journey from Lithuania to Jerusalem, the home of their patriarchs. On board, Yosef Siev, a twelve-year-old mystic, is entranced with wild-haired Chana. Their story is told against a backdrop of Ottoman rule, the privations of WWI, and British Mandatory uprisings.
In 1926 Yosef and Chana’s seventeen-year-old granddaughter, Zipora, enters into a forbidden relationship with Reuven, a young Lithuanian immigrant destined, as a close ally of David Ben-Gurion, to become a founder of the State of Israel. The liaison extracts a heavy toll. With dreams of self-discovery and a better future for herself and her family, Zipora travels to America determined to contribute to Reuven’s studies at the Sorbonne. Conflicts arise over issues of politics, gender inequality, and fidelity, forcing heart-wrenching decisions.
Robert Kehlmann is an internationally acclaimed glass artist and art critic whose glasswork has been acquired by major museums and showcased in prestigious exhibitions and publications. An honorary lifetime member of the Glass Art Society, he has authored two books of art criticism and been awarded NEA grants for both his artwork and critical writing. The Rakow Library at the Corning Museum of Glass houses Kehlmann’s artist and art critic archives. Research materials and early drafts of The Rabbi’s Suitcase, his debut novel, are preserved at New York’s YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
Carole Joffe is a professor at UCSF Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health and a professor of sociology emerita at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on the social dimensions of reproductive health, with a particular interest in abortion provision. Her most recent book (with David Cohen) is After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe but Not Abortion. Her other books include Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us; Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe v. Wade; and The Regulation of Sexuality: Experiences of Family Planning Workers.