A mesmerizing, inventive story of three souls in 1930s Philadelphia seizing new life while haunted by the old.
"ikh gleyb nit az di gantze velt iz kheyshekh."
"I do not believe that all the world is darkness."
In the swirl of Philadelphia at the end of Prohibition, Leyb meets Charles. They are at a speakeasy called Cricket's, a bar that serves, as Charles says in his secondhand Yiddish, its feygeles. Leyb is startled; fourteen years in amerike has taught him that his native tongue is not known beyond his people. And yet here is suave Charles, fingers stained with ink, an easy manner with the barkeep, a Black man from the Seventh Ward, a fellow traveler of Red Emma's, speaking Jewish to a young man he will come to call Lion.
Lion is haunted by memories of life before, in Zatelsk, where everyone in his village, everyone except Gittl and the ten non-Jews and Leyb himself, was taken to the forest and killed.
And then, miraculously, Gittl is in Philadelphia, too. And surrounding her are malokhim, the spirits of her siblings.
Flowing and churning and seething with a glorious surge of language, carried along by questions of survival and hope and the possibility of a better world, Moriel Rothman-Zecher's Before All the World lays bare the impossibility of escaping trauma, the necessity of believing in a better way ahead, and the power that comes from our responsibility to the future. It asks, in the voices of its angels, the most essential question: What do you intend to do before all the world?
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on October 11, 2022.
Reviews
“In startling language filled with the flavor of Yiddish’s combination words, Moriel Rothman-Zecher’s book moves forward and back and forward again in a dreamlike trance that acknowledges how the worst suffering exists side by side with the tender beauty of memory, friendship, words and the silences of recognition.”
—Ilana Masad, NPR (Books We Love, 2022)
“Original, daring, experimental, moving, poignant, engaging . . . With shades of Tony Kushner and Cynthia Ozick . . . Before all the World understands how our worlds are made by words, and in the altering of the later we may as yet redeem the former, a central commandment, axiom, and incantation being “ikh gleyb nit az di gantze velt iz kheyshekh” – “I do not believe that all the world is darkness.”
—Ed Simon, The Millions (Most Anticipated Books of 2022)
“Rothman-Zecher delivers a rich and engrossing narrative . . . A powerful story, brilliantly told.”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“A one-of-a-kind creation.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Before All the World is poetry as it should be: deliberate while feeling casual, a game with words that is at once playful and deadly serious (sometimes by turns, sometimes truly simultaneously). Just as poetry ought to, it swallowed me up, and then all at once, a word or a phrase would reach me like a bolt of lightning, charring and electrifying me all through.”
—Jo Niederhoff, Seattle Book Review
“At its core, Before All the World considers one essential question: what does it mean to remember the past while still imagining the future? . . . Its most striking accomplishment is its invitation to the reader to become a part of the novel’s chorus. What will you do, it asks, now that you’ve read this story?”
―Adina Applebaum, Jewish Book Council
“[T]his novel purports to be translated from Yiddish but, with so many linguistic inventions and interventions, this extensively footnoted end product most closely resembles something by Joyce or Samuel Beckett . . . A highly original and powerful tale told in defiance of the world’s darkness . . . ”
―Stephanie Cross, The Daily Mail
“The novel’s singular voice . . . is so distinctive—and so winning—that, after I finished the novel, it seemed a bit like the voice of an old friend: one that I missed, one that could make me happy as soon as I heard it again.”
―Alec Gewirtz, The Nearness
“Moriel Rothman-Zecher reads like a queer Jewish James Joyce…. Before All the World tells a gorgeous and important story about loss and diaspora and queerness and love.”
―Rena Mosteirin, Enthusiasms
“Before All the World” may be set in the 1930s, but it feels as though it is outside of time … Through “Before All the World,” Rothman-Zecher has uncovered something extraordinary: trauma itself is a kind of translation. It’s a recreation of events that becomes more removed as time goes on, and language is our only guide.”
―Mara Sandroff, Newcity Lit
“Packed a powerful punch . . . One of the most impressive books I’ve read recently . . . Before All the World took me on a wild, but ultimately wonderful ride.”
―Rachel Esserman, The Reporter
“Rothman-Zecher offers readers characters who defy the binaries of western colonialism, characters who defy the borders of established language, who are both mourning and joyful, who are willing to question what they have to offer, what they will do as they live their lives before all the world.”
―Jessica Thomas, The Yellow Springs News
“[A] novel of ingenious daring imagination . . . It is a masterful accomplishment that remains with the reader long after finishing this brilliant work.”
―Elaine Margolin, Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal
““Before All the World is an emotionally evocative exploration of the impossibility of escaping trauma, yet finding hope nevertheless when all seems destroyed.”
―Hannah Srour-Zackon, The Canadian Jewish News
"Contains the living Yiddish of poets and Communists… I marveled at the Yiddish spoken sweetly, seductively, which for many Jews of our generation is associated only with aging or religious fanaticism."
―Anna Beresin, Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations
“Before All the World startles and swirls, and makes fresh the experience of language itself. It has it all: a gripping story, an original structure, and a tender, ghostly glow.”
—Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
“Before All the World is beautiful and original. It is also strange, arresting, high-risk. Very quickly this novel starts to work on the mind, making itself felt in complex and powerful and visionary ways, led by rhythm in the language and the urge to make that language new.”
—Colm Tóibín, author of The Magician
“Evocative, inventive, vivid, and strange, Before All the World is a mesmeric, enrapturing read.”
—Eimear McBride, author of Strange Hotel
“A ride as breathtaking as it is gratifying, Moriel Rothman-Zecher’s Before All the World deftly explores the relationship between three broken people: two pogrom refugees persecuted in their homeland by virtue of religion who cross an ocean to cross paths with a man persecuted in his own homeland by virtue of race. With tragicomic adroitness, Rothman Zecher’s meticulous prose is full of delicious humor and irony, a glorious Yidenglish tapestry confirming that the world is indeed not all darkness.”
—Kia Corthron, author of Moon and the Mars
“Before All the World is a song about survival and a refusal to be erased. Daringly crafted and poetically told, this novel is a celebration of Moriel Rothman-Zecher’s extraordinary talent, compassion, and love for humanity. To read Before All the World is to abandon all of our expectations and privileges so that the torch of curiosity and the beauty of words can lead us to unexpected places, where we can see ourselves in those whom we might have considered the Other.”
—Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, author of The Mountains Sing
“Before All The World is astonishing, spellbinding and poetic. It is a groundbreaking and awe-inspiring song of resilience, memory, identity and love. I can’t recall the last time I was so mesmerised by a work. The way the reader is carried by its characters, transported by its language, enveloped by its many worlds is stunningly beautiful. Simply, it’s a masterpiece -one of those rare books that upon reaching its last words you immediately need to start reading again!”
—Ariana Neumann, author of When Time Stopped
“One of the most stylistically bold punches in the guts I've read.”
―Bram Presser, author of The Book of Dirt (on Twitter)
“Moriel Rothman-Zecher delivers a dazzling narration of his novel of trauma, identity, and sexuality in 1930s Philadelphia . . . Every sense is engaged by the novel's precise, inventive language and Rothman-Zecher's impassioned performance such that listeners may see, hear, and smell the sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hopeful world portrayed.” -AudioFile Review, Dec. 2022 (Read here)
Published by Corsair / Little, Brown in the UK on January 12, 2023.
Watch: Moriel Rothman-Zecher In Conversation With Prof. Huda Fakhreddine, at UPenn’s Kelly Writers House:
Read: Feature in the Yellow Springs News
Nov 25, 2022, by Jessica Thomas
“Elaborating on the possibility of a Black Yiddish speaker, Rothman-Zecher gave examples of organizers, performers, and thinkers of the 20th century, like Paul Robeson, who spoke Yiddish.
“Finding these kinds of great Black intellectual thinkers, artists, with this connection to Yiddish was this exhilarating thing for me,” Rothman-Zecher said, highlighting the long history of solidarity movements between Jewish people and Black people.
With these thoughts in mind, Rothman-Zecher offers readers characters who defy the binaries of western colonialism, characters who defy the borders of established language, who are both mourning and joyful, who are willing to question what they have to offer, what they will do as they live their lives before all the world.”
Link here.
Watch: Moriel Rothman-Zecher In Conversation With Yiddishkayt’s Director, Rob Peckerar Adler:
Read: Interview with the Dayton Jewish Observer
Nov 23, 2022, by Hannah Kasper Levinson
The novel is heart wrenching and its characters have undergone deep traumas, but at the core is the phrase, “I can not believe that the world is only darkness.” Do you think Before All the World is ultimately an optimistic story?
I came across a gorgeous quote recently by the poet Derek Walcott: “For every poet it is always morning in the world; history a forgotten, insomniac night. The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world in spite of history.” For me, this book is exactly that. It’s not optimistic in the sense that the “lessons” of these eras have been internalized and metabolized for the better. But it is a book that very much stands against despair. Even in the most excruciating circumstances, there is still this human capacity for decency and love.
Link here.
Listen: Interview with WYSO’s Vick Mickunas (The Book Nook)
Dec 7, 2022. “I had no idea what to expect from Moriel Rothman-Zecher when he returned to the program to discuss his second novel,"Before All the World." His new novel is incredibly different from his first book. Moriel always gives a great interview. The last time I had interviewed him was also a rather unusual experience, we talked about his first novel before a live audience at the Wright Memorial Library in Oakwood.”
Link here.
Watch: Reading and Conversation with Writers.com:
Read: Feature in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent
Oct 27, 2022, by Sasha Rogelberg.
“Writing the book, researching the book and living in the book and moving around the book was this opportunity to be in conversation with people who weren’t alive anymore,” he said. “It has been a special feeling, to feel the presence of my family members, both literal and literary, as the book goes out into the world.”
Link here.
At the Franklin Park Reading Series in Crown Heights, BK, February 2023