Abbeville Press Big League Dreams: 2 (Small Worlds)

In St. Louis, it is the summer of 1920 and the day is the Sabbath, but there is little rest for the Jews from Krimsk and less reverence for the wondrous Krimsker Rebbe, who led them to the New World seventeen years before. The rebbe's former hasidim have embraced America to discover that the vision of "gold in the streets" evokes larceny in the heart. Matti Sternweiss, the ungainly, studious child wonder in Krimsk, now the cerebral catcher for the St. Louis Browns, is scheming to fix Saturday's game against the pennant-contending Detroit Tigers. It is an American Sabbath: Prohibition, bookies, the criminal syndicate, the Hiberian fellowship of the police brass, hometown blondes, a bootlegging rabbi, and big league baseball. It is also Krimsk in America: Boruch Levi, the successful junkman, confiscates his zany, crippled brother-in-law Barasch's sizable bets; Barasch's lusty wife, Malka, has her own connubial reasons for wanting to stop the gambling; the chief of police fatefully inspires his loyal disciple, Boruch Levi, to bring Matti before the Krimsker Rebbe on the Sabbath in order to preserve the purity of the national pastime. Recluse and wonder-worker, messianist and pragmatist, the Krimsker Rebbe navigates the muddy Mississippi River, haunted by a recurring prophetic vision of Pharaoh's blood-red Nile. In the final, decisive innings, with Matti crouched behind home plate, it will come down to Ty Cobb versus the kabbalah. Richly imagined, populated with robust, complex characters, Big League Dreams is a profoundly original, inspiring, and comic creation. It is the second volume in the series Small Worlds, which follows the people of Krimsk and their descendants in America, Russia, Poland, and Israel. In each volume Allen Hoffman draws on his deep knowledge of Jewish religion and history to evoke the finite yet infinite "small worlds" his characters inhabit. About the Author Allen Hoffman, award-winning author of the novel Small Worlds and of a novella and short stories, was born in St. Louis and received his B.A. in American history from Harvard University. He studied the Talmud in yeshivas in New York and Jerusalem, and has taught in New York City schools. He and his wife and four children live in Jerusalem. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Bar-Ilan University. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One The white-bearded old man opened the Fords back door and with surprising ease hoisted a large trunk into the automobile. Remarkably erect and robust for his seventy years, he was not even sweating in the warm morning sunlight. As a concession to the St. Louis climate and this mornings physical task, he had removed his suit jacket but not his hat. He would like to have taken that off, too, but he was slightly embarrassed to appear on a public street in a skullcap. The tree-shaded suburban neighborhood knew him as the Krimsker Rebbes sexton, and it wouldnt have mattered to the Germans, Irish, and Italians, who inhabited the numerous duplexes and occasional apartment house and were really very fine neighbors, friendly, polite, and respectful. It mattered to Reb Zelig, however, because this was America, and whenever he could avoid calling attention to the difference, he preferred to do so. He had shortened his side curls and had tucked them behind his ears; he wore a modern short suit jacket and broad-brimmed felt hat. Outside the neighborhood they often mistook him for an old-fashioned farmer. That is, when he was alone. The Krimsker Rebbe himself wasnt embarrassed to go anywhere in a skullcap--he didnt tuck his long side curls behind any ear either--and his long frock coat trailed ostentatiously behind him like a Civil War relic. When they had suddenly left Krimsk in 1903, Reb Zelig never had expected to understand the Krimsker Rebbe, and the rebbe did not disappoint him. But Reb Zelig had been puzzled more than usual rec