"At once an intimate love story and a multigenerational family drama, The Rabbi's Suitcase is a moving portrayal of the difficulties of forging a new life in a strange land. Robert Kehlmann beautifully weaves elements of his own mother's letters with strands of the past to create a portrait of a young woman navigating the trials of modernity. The novel is a moving example of how family sources can be used to illuminate the broad sweep of history and how sometimes forgotten stories are waiting to be rescued from the archives."-Stefanie Halpern, director of the archives at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research "This is not a usual family saga. It is the intersection of history, faith and courage. What is more, it is so well written. It is not a typical Jewish novel filled with stereotypes and cliches. It is a moving homage to a real Jewish family, and it is positively cinematic." -Arthur Kurzweil, past editor-in-chief of Jewish Book Club and past president of Jewish Book Council "The Rabbi's Suitcase is a beautifully written, meticulously researched historical novel based on the author's family's remarkable journey from the Old World to the New over a transformative fifty-year period. Kehlmann gives a moving account of his mother, Zipora-a granddaughter and daughter of rabbis and the eldest of eight-as she struggles against the strictures of the religious, patriarchal milieu into which she was born. Her passionate and forbidden love affair, involving an illegal abortion and its harrowing aftermath, serves as a powerful testament to the struggles women have faced, and still face, in finding and asserting their identities."-Carole Joffe, professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, U. of California, San Francisco and coauthor of After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe But Not Abortion

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Danielle Oaks - Reviewer Last updated on Apr 14 2025 This is a beautifully written and well researched historical novel. I could not put this book down when I read it. This book is about an Orthodox Jewish boy who has ups and downs with his community and trying to understand life in a new land. Franziska Kirchholtes - Reviewer Last updated on Apr 21 2025 Beautifully Written Family Saga Robert Kehlmann's debut novel The Rabbi's Suitcase might not exactly fit its title, as said suitcase plays a marginal role, but the ancestors he writes about come vividly alive in this tender, honest and gripping story spanning 50 years, 3 generations and several continents. The Siev family decides to make aaliyah to Ottoman-controlled Palestine in 1879. Following their young son Yosef, the atmosphere of departure is convincingly told and the perils, hopes and promises of the journey feel so real in Kehlmann's writing that it is easy to imagine these people living history. While initially, things happen that seem to teeter between dream and reality, Kehlmann grounds the narrative by injecting for...