Authorpreneur Dashboard – Aaron Zerah
Joseph in the Land of the Mizraim
Literature & Fiction
WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU ARE FACED WITH YOUR OWN HOLOCAUST? Joseph in the Land of the Mizraim reveals the real-life and interwoven stories of Joseph, a precocious Jewish boy from Warsaw; Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat who disobeys his government to save Jewish refugees; Jerzy, a gay Polish comedian in love with a Nazi officer, and his funny and foul-mouthed parrot, Pu-fu; Noorunissa Khan, the heroic Indian princess-turned-spy working for the British in Paris; Marian, a lusty German farm girl whose father uses Jews as slave laborers; Michal, the philosophical Polish priest (based on Pope John Paul II) who is captured and taken with Joseph on a cattle-car bound for Auschwitz; and an all-too-human Adolf Hitler, whom the reader first meets attending an intimate dinner party at the home of his close friend and adoring young niece in the Black Forest.
Book Bubbles from Joseph in the Land of the Mizraim
Chapter 1 Malchut/Realm
Joseph in the Land of the Mizraim is a unique “Holocaust” novel that delivers to the reader an unexpected and ultimately transformational story. All the principal characters in the book are based on real people. Joseph, the main protagonist, is modeled on my father, and his story is at the heart of the novel. Like his namesake, the Biblical Joseph, he finds himself at a young age imprisoned in the land of the mizraim. In Hebrew, mizraim literally means Egypt, yet its root and spiritual meaning is a place of confinement and constriction - the birth canal. In Joseph in the Land of the Mizraim, each character faces his or her own mizraim, and is called to make soul-changing choices. Joseph in the Land of the Mizraim unfolds in the form of the Kabbalistic “Tree of Life”, ascending from Malchut/Realm to Keter/Ultimate, and Joseph takes this journey too, from his first surprising encounter with a friendly Nazi guard in the Warsaw Ghetto to his realization of spiritual freedom at Auschwitz after the war. Each chapter (branch of the tree) illuminates a quality of the divine (Beauty, Loving-kindness,...), and provides the reader a spiritual framework to make, as they move through the book, their own climb into greater understanding and wisdom.
