Claire Datnow

The Nine Inheritors: the Extraordinary Odyssey of a Family and Their Ancient Torah Scroll Claire Datnow

We have all fantasized about inheriting great wealth, but what is the burden if the inheritance is a rare family legacy?a hand written Torah? The Nine Inheritors tells the intimate life stories of nine heirs and how the Torah challenges them in unexpected ways. In The Nine Inheritors, Datnow recreates the worlds of our forefathers and of contemporary America. We follow the Torah and it inheritors from its ?birth? in Jerusalem in the last decade of the eighteenth century, to a humble Lithuanian shtetl and then from New York City to the xenophobic South, from the top secret Manhattan Project at Los Alamos to burgeoning Silicon Valley, and from the colorful Jewish community of Mexico City to the struggling Palestinian State of the twenty-first century. All the while the Torah?s fate hangs in the balance miraculously surviving catastrophic events, until Neta Rosen, the eighth inheritor, accidentally desecrates it. In a surprising climax Samuel, the ninth inheritor, resurrects the Torah?and himself?in his own remarkable fashion. Readers of all persuasions can readily relate to The Nine Inheritors; a fascinating story encompassing the history of modern Jewry and in many ways serves as a microcosm of the culture's trials and endurance