The Shady Elders of Zion

Robert Gilbert
Available for acquisition
Author contact: shadyrealm@aol.com

First Chapter: robertgilbert.blogspot.com

Publishers and agents should contact authors directly for additional information about their work.

Dark comedy and high parody prevail in this tale of the recently deceased Ivan Kalinsky who, as the book opens, is watching his own funeral from the Realm of the Shades. Kalinsky, a former Bolshevik and Jew who reluctantly migrated to northern Minnesota from the Soviet Union, passed himself off as a Gentile in his adopted land. Even his wife never knew of his Jewish background. Yet he always remembered his fortune foretold during a séance when he was a young man back in Mother Russia: he was to lead a rebellion in heaven. When mourners glue a cross to his hands, Kalinsky realizes that he can’t lead the revolution if he’s buried with a crucifix.

Seeking help, he searches out Joshua Bronstein, the only local Jew he knows. Bronstein, once held in high regard in the town, became its scapegoat when the car he was driving drunk sank in a lake, drowning his infant son. His reason for the accident was that a moose praying at the side of the road distracted him. His wife has divorced him and is now running for State Senate. Bronstein lives in a trailer with his outcast girlfriend, the alcoholic Native American Debra Crow. Kalinsky goes to “haunt” Joshua and discovers other long-dead Jewish spirits hovering around Bronstein—they have plans for him, too.

Eventually, Kalinsky is able to maneuver Bronstein to the house of Greta Niemi, a medium and Kalinsky’s old flame. There, Bronstein “discovers” Greta’s affair with Terrance Goodlad, the local Catholic priest and Bronstein’s nemesis. Bronstein’s conscience over the death of his son is assuaged when Goodlad admits that moose do sometimes kneel at the side of the road to lick up salt left by snow trucks. When Greta enters a psychic trance, Kalinsky jumps into her body. He tells Bronstein to dig up his grave and remove the crucifix. At the cemetery, Bronstein does so and says a Kaddish over Kalinsky’s body to effect a proper Jewish burial. He prepares to do the same over his son’s grave.  Meanwhile, crucifix removed, Kalinsky is able to ascend to heaven, where he tricks God into letting him try the job out for a while.

This book (whose title is a send-up of the well-known forgery depicting a universal Jewish plot for world domination, Protocols of the Elders of Zion) is a wonderfully written parody from whose barbs neither Jews, Christians nor anybody else in this work’s colorful cast of small-town characters are exempt. It is also about big ideas: communism, revolution, Judaism and American cultural ideals. Its themes will undoubtedly resonate with fans of Michael Chabon’s latest work, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.