The Rabbi Who Tricked Stalin

The reader of this book does not have to know much about the Jewish religion. The Rabbi symbolizes any possible simple citizen struggling against dictatorship. What brought A Rabbi to fake madness and hide that secret even from his wife, was a belief that God has given him that idea -:as the only way to convince the atheistic regime he is non-beneficial to communism - and deport him from Russia.Russia after 1917 revolution: Young Aaron Hittin is a Rabbi' whose wife commits suicide, becuse she has born a cripple baby, and she blames herself for that.The Rabbi remains with the child. His friend who is his late wife’s brother, and has become Stalin’s follower, helps him by sending his sweetheart, young social worker Natalya, to support the Rabbi to raise the child…The Rabbi falls in love with her but does not show that. Only after she is sent to Siberia, being blamed to be the Regime's enemy, he writes about that to her and dhe answers to him that she has to hi, the same feeliog, as his ex-friend betrayed her...Aftert three years in 'work camp' she uis released and the couple get married. However, the secret police (Gepau) humiliate and prosecute the Rabbi, because he appeals to Stalin to let him and his family get out of the atheist Soviet State, that tries to humiliate him and has broken down his small congregation...Antonov- Head of Gepau in town becomes the stubborn Rabbi’s enemy because Stalin refuses any emigration from Russia. He causes many troubles to the Rabbi, and at last he abducts his deformed child, who has been educated as a God Believer. The Rabbi seems to have become mad because of that act. Only his cripple child knows that he fakes madness. Rabbi's wife Natalya is frustrated, because he hides the truth from her, suspecting that she would oppose his plot, that intends to persuade the Regime to send him out of Russia.... Rabbi is brought into an asylum, where he suffers for more than a year from tortures by electric shocker - to make him confess he is sane, and facing many queer inquiries, because the communists consistently suspect him to be sane…In his willingly imprisonment he meets other insane pretenders - as well as true, real mads: The mads' suffering is described here in a grotesque, humoristic and passionate way...Despite his suffer, the Rabbi succeeds to survive in his disguise. After more than a year in asylum - his wife finds his sister’s address in Brooklyn, U.S.- and sends her a postcard, asking her to apply to Stalin: The insane Rabbi and his small family should be allowed to leave Russia for humanitarian reasons. After five letters without answer, The dictator Styalin suddenly agrees, and signs an order of ‘deportation’...How and why all that had been achieved - in a regime that no one could leave, becasuse it feared that millions would emigrate? - An answer to that you will find only by reading the whole novel.