Jerusalem Launch Monday February 8, 2016 in dialogue with Start Up Nation author Saul Singer Moreshet Avraham Rechov Adam 22 East Talpiot 18:30
contact information:
pater.amemoir@gmail.com
This page last updated Feb 2, 2016
Monday February 8, 2016
Elliot Jager in dialogue
with Start Up Nation author
Saul Singer
Moreshet Avraham Rechov
Adam 22
East Talpiot 18:30
For the latest news on
THE PATER
please visit our
Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/Pater-My-Father-My-Judaism-My-Childlessness-927232393986393/
http://www.jewishbookweek.com/events/be-fruitful-and-multiply
In German, the word “jaeger” means hunter and indeed Elliot Jager's story is a hunt for inner understanding and acceptance.
https://www.facebook.com/Pater-My-Father-My-Judaism-My-Childlessness-927232393986393/
JEWISH BOOK WEEK LONDON
Be Fruitful and Multiply
Elliot Jager
in dialogue with Simon Hattenstone of The Guardian
in dialogue with Simon Hattenstone of The Guardian
Sunday, 21 February 2016 - 11:00am
Location: St Pancras
Price: £6.50
In his provocative book The Pater, Elliot Jager tackles a near-taboo topic: the Orthodox Jewish attitude towards infertility and what it feels like to be a childless Jewish man.
In conversation with Guardian journalist Simon Hattenstone he also grapples with the concept of paternity and his complex relationship with his own father.
Simon Hattenstone is a feature writer and interviewer for The Guardian and has published two e-book compilations of interviews with actors and sporting giants.
Elliot Jager is a Jerusalem-based freelance journalist. He is a former editorial page editor at The Jerusalem Post, founding managing editor of Jewish Ideas Daily (now Mosaic), frequent contributor to The Jerusalem Report, and was, until recently, a daily contributor to Newsmax. He holds a PhD in Political Science from New York University.
Order tickets
Order tickets
http://www.jewishbookweek.com/events/be-fruitful-and-multiply
Pnina Moed Kass writing in Esra Magazine:
In German, the word “jaeger” means hunter and indeed Elliot Jager's story is a hunt for inner understanding and acceptance.
His hunt is an unrelenting journey through the land of psychotherapy, medical intervention, and an almost endless search within the dictates and philosophy of Judaism.
Though a dedicated hunter, he does not pursue his prey with anger or bitterness and in the end it is this balance of intellectual and personal inquiry that makes The Pater an intriguing read.
http://esra-magazine.com/blog/post/the-pater
 |
| Jerusalem Post Book Review |
November 27
Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Steve Linde personally reviewed The Pater
in today's Friday edition.
"The Pater must have been very painful to
write. But it's an unexpected pleasure to read. I highly recommend it."
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Books-Grappling-with-childlessness-435466
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Books-Grappling-with-childlessness-435466
November 20
I
just did my first interview with an Orthodox radio
November 6
 |
| Listen to the Podcast |
personality Nachum
Segal who was speaking from
the station's Lower East Side studio.
I liked it when he pointed out that dialogue using
weekly Torah reading is not an option open to
everyone. Here is the link. Let me know what you
think.
November 6
Hope you get a chance to listen.
Below is the Podcast link.
http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/4/1/a/41aea5291b72ce2d/TLV_Review_6-11-15_Elliot_Jaeger_64_WEB.mp3?c_id=10205010&expiration=1446810787&hwt=2bcbc6cea732f1a5123fa214ff16caad
November 1
The Pater is officially published by The Toby Press.
Who'd I write this book for?
My target audience is, foremost, Jewishly-affiliated people interested in memoir, theology, family, childlessness, father-son relations, self-help, and the small matter of "the meaning of life."
Obviously, I hope the book has resonance well beyond the Jewish world since these are really universal issues.
Hard Copy Edition
Hard copies are already available
in select brick & mortar book shops in the US, UK, and Canada. In practice,
a buyer will probably have to specifically request their book dealer order the
book.
Israel Availability
The hard
copy is due to arrive by December 1st and should be
available (by request) from the Steimatzky and Tzomet Seforim chains.
In
Jerusalem, Pomeranz (on Shmuel HaNagid just off King George/Hillel Streets) is expected
to keep the book in stock.
Kindle
The book may presently
be ordered for Kindle from Amazon.
Here's the link. http://www.amazon.com/Pater-My-Father-Judaism-Childlessness-ebook/dp/B017KF4KTE/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Order The Pater Online
All the major book sites
show they are stocking The Pater including Barnes & Noble, Book
Depository, and Amazon.
The book is also available directly from the publisher, The Toby Press.
The book is also available directly from the publisher, The Toby Press.
October 13, 2015
The Pater is reviewed in a The Huffington Post book section.
I'm so grateful for this heartfelt review
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/varda-epstein/the-pater-exploring-child_b_8276392.html
by Varda Epstein. I could not ask for a more sensitive and thorough
reader.
Sept. 4 2015
Haaretz covers the publication of The Pater.
The Stigma of Being a Childless Jewish Man
In an age when the Jewish community is showing more openness to gay and single people, author Elliot Jager wonders why there’s such insensitivity to couples without children.
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/.premium-1.674508
Sept 2 , 2015
The New York Jewish Week's book critics Sandee Brawarsky
Covers publication of The Pater.
over's
http://www.thejewishweek.com/special-sections/arts-preview/book-0A literary memoir that covers territory rarely explored, Elliot Jager’s “The Pater: My Father, My Judaism, My Childlessness” (Toby Press) probes the meaning of life for a Jewish man without children. The author looks back at his own father — a Holocaust survivor who deserted Jager and his mother — and then reconnects with him many years later, and also at his relationship with God. He weaves interviews with other childless Jewish men, whether single or married, gay or straight, into the narrative. (November)
The Jewish Book Council reviews The Pater
http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/the-pater-one-man-s-meditation-on-childlessness-and-fatherlessness-in-jewish-civilization
Elliot Jager skillfully interweaves three narratives: his personal struggles with childlessness, interviews with individuals and couples who open up about their experiences with childlessness, and the story of his personal relationship with his somewhat estranged father, who is continually recommending faith-based approaches to infertility.
Presenting at Limmud / Jerusalem
Thank you
לימוד ירושלים Limmud Jerusalem
Delighted to have had opportunity to talk
about the issues my book raises before
Limmud on Friday, August 28
😊
---------------------------------
"Jager writes unguardedly about his difficult relationship with his own father and the grief of not being able to become a father himself. But the most interesting parts of the book are his interviews with other Jewish couples struggling with infertility—every technique from IVF to praying at the grave of a tzaddik is employed—and the ways they try to reconcile this grief with their belief in a benevolent God."
<> Adam Kirsch, Tablet magazine, August 6, 2015
Letter to my Readers
A very personal book I've written is about to be published — and I’m having second thoughts. Not about my decision to write about what it's like to be a childless man in Jewish civilization, which places "Be fruitful and multiply" near the top of its preferences. And not about my critique of Judaism for what it says about childless men. Rather, I am concerned that readers will come away from the book disliking my father for having abandoned me when I was a boy.
I anchor the
narrative about my childlessness in the context of my relationship with my
Holocaust-survivor father. He ran away to Israel twice —once when I was an
infant, then permanently when I was eight. We didn’t see nor speak to one another
for 30 years. My mother and I remained on New York’s Lower East Side.
When he and
I began our awkward reconciliation in 1994, my father, who is hassidic, trained
a laser-like focus on my childlessness, wanting to investigate every possible
supernatural cause of it. Did my wife cover her hair, as mandated by Orthodox
Jewish law? Did she visit the mikve ritual bath at the conclusion of her
menstrual cycle? Had I checked my mezuzot—those small cases containing
Scripture that observant Jews affix to their door frames?
He cajoled
me to visit living hassidic masters, and the gravesites of dead ones, to ask
them to intercede in heaven on my behalf. For years, whenever we spoke, my
father would be fixated on one thing: my childlessness.
When I tell
people about the book and my father’s behavior, they often cut me off with
comments such as, “What business does he have telling you anything about
how to live your life?”
When I
offer a quick rundown of the book, my father comes out a villain—just as he was
to me during my formative years. I couldn’t understand how a man could walk out
on his wife and son; how he could not provide child support, forcing us onto
welfare. As a kid, my anger smoldered because I was ashamed of living in a
single-
But during
the cathartic process of writing my book, telling the stories of other
childless men, talking to rabbis, philosophers and intellectuals, I gained a fresh
perspective on Jewish civilization’s harsh attitude toward men who have no
offspring.
More than
that, I began to see my father—now elderly and frail—not as a scoundrel, but through
the eyes of his new family and his ultra-Orthodox community. Without exception,
locals would tell me how fortunate I was to have so pious a man for a father.
They regarded him as a self-effacing saint and came to him for a blessing.
When he
started a new family they lived in a tiny, squalid apartment. What little money
he earned as a butcher’s assistant he gave away to charity. His daughter—my lately
discovered half-sister—told me that had her late mother not earned a living as
a cleaning lady they might not have had food on the table. She said this from a
place of approbation, attributing her happiness as a wife and mother to our
father’s self-sacrifice, piety and otherworldliness.
I
remembered a father who was cantankerous, tightly-wound, uncompromising. She
describes growing up with a man who was soft-spoken, joyful and brimming with
kindness.
In the two
decades since our journey of reconciliation began, I have grown closer to this
inscrutable man. We never talk about that 30-year chasm. I am now 60, and he is
in his 90s. He can barely hear, his sight is failing, and he is homebound. My
sister cares for him, refusing to place him in a nursing home.
My father
and I never engage in chit-chat. It's not his way. We study the weekly Torah
portion. He believes that the biblical psalms have mystical power and is
teaching me which ones to invoke for life’s contingencies. He cannot comprehend
my refusal to grow a hassidic beard. He worries it will count against me in the
World to Come.
I am moved
when he confers on me the traditional father’s blessing to a son that begins: “May
God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.” Following the blessing, I kiss his
hand, old-world style. He kisses mine.
I have let
go of my anger. I've come to realize that my father was emotionally broken by
the Holocaust. Try as he may, he could not function as a European Jewish
immigrant in the United States. He tried to convince my mother to run off with
him to Israel. Together they could insulate themselves, and me, from the
outside world. They'd become immersed in the inward-looking haredi world – a
waiting room for the real World to Come.
I am
eternally grateful she didn't allow herself to be enticed.
But I now know
that my father didn’t abandon me in the very deepest sense. He invested every
spiritual resource—charity, prayer, mysticism, his entire ethereal existence— in
watching over me from afar.
And I worry
that someone who gives my book a perfunctory read will think badly of my Pater.
He doesn’t deserve that. I’ve come to understand that he’s suffered my absence far
more than I suffered his.
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