Witz
On Christmas Eve 1999, all the Jews in the world die in a strange, millennial plague, with the exception of the firstborn males, who are soon adopted by a cabal of powerful people in the American government. By the following Passover, however, only one is still alive: Benjamin Israelien; a kindly, innocent, ignorant man-child. As he finds himself transformed into an international superstar, Jewishness becomes all the rage: matzo-ball soup is in every bowl, sidelocks are hip; and the only truly Jewish Jew left is increasingly stigmatized for not being religious. Since his very existence exposes the illegitimacy of the newly converted, Israelien becomes the object of a worldwide hunt. .
Meanwhile, in the not-too-distant future of our own, “real” world, another last Jew — the last living Holocaust survivor — sits alone in a snowbound Manhattan, providing a final melancholy witness to his experiences in the form of the punch lines to half-remembered jokes.
Author: Cohen Joshua
Year of publication: 2010
Genre: Modern prose
Number of pages: 1236
Reading time: 20 h. 36 min.
Formats: FB2, EPUB, PDF
