Tamar Frankiel

Perhaps for This Moment Tamar Frankiel

After the Roman war machine crushed the second Jewish revolt in 135 CE, the population of Judea was decimated, with hundreds of thousands killed, enslaved, or dispersed to other provinces. Among the refugees are Dalit bat Levi and her husband, a rabbinic scholar from the Galil, who with their young children fled the bloodbath and landed in Laodicea, an ancient city in the province of Lydia in Roman Asia. Dalit confronts the challenge of living as a woman and a member of a peculiar minority in a thriving pagan culture, which itself is beginning to be challenged by diverse Christian movements, not all of them friendly to the mother religion. Her husband is convinced that their path should be a return to the homeland, but Dalit is drawn by a puzzling providence to old secrets that can be uncovered only in Lydia. Through the creative potential of historical fiction, this book brings a Jewish woman's unique perspective to an exploration of the highways and byways of one of the West's formative eras, including the reconstruction of Jewish community life in Israel, the beginnings of anti-Semitism, and post-apocalyptic Christianity struggling with its own new challenges. In the process, the reader will learn more about the conflicts of the time as well as the continual human search for truth and goodness.