If I Should Die Before I Wake, I Pray the Lord My Soul to Take

By Gary Chattman

Book Overview

Imagine you have become two different people. Today you are in the present, studying for your Bar Mitzvah. Then, suddenly, you dream that you have been transported back in time to Poland, and become caught in the Holocaust. Then you dream that you are in Poland in the Middle Ages. You are to be eradicated by gentile society that sees Jews as not chosen, but sub-human. How do you react? What is the true reality? How can you survive? What does it mean to be a Jew, today or then? And what about God? Is God listening to us? Does God care? Imagine you are Reuben Maimon, an impressionable young man of almost 13, about to take his Bar Mitzvah vows. He must question who he is, and what the ceremony's purpose is. What is the point of a modern Bar/Bat Mitzvah if it doesn't give Jews a link with the past? Imagine you are Reuben Maimon living these two different lives with the same cast of people, and not knowing what is the reality and what is the dream. Imagine what would happen if you die before you wake. Now imagine, if you were Reuben Maimon, if he should die before he wakes... Imagine.

About the Author: Gary Chattman is a retired administrator/teacher who lives in Yonkers, New York. He is writing a play about the effects of Kristallnacht on German Jewish children. He is a Bar Mitzvah, piano, S.A.T., and school subjects' teacher, as well as a college professor.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1612045243
• ISBN13: 9781612045245
• Release Date: February 2012
• Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing
• Length: 174 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"