Milton Steinberg (1903–1950)

I first read this novel before I studied Talmud, so I didn't realize it was based on actual Jewish texts. I was fascinated by Steinberg's descriptions of life in Roman Palestine, especially how the Jews lived, since there wasn't any other Jewish historical fiction from this time period. I wasn't so happy with the ending, never quite understanding why Elisha had to completely reject his religion when he couldn't reconcile it with Hellenism.

Later, when I studied the Gemara where his story appeared, I was even less happy. The Talmud is quite clear that Elisha ascends to Paradise with Rabbi Akiva and their 2 younger colleagues, and that all except Akiva are traumatized by the experience, Elisha so much that he becomes an apostate. Yet Steinberg leaves this crucial scene out of "As a Driven Leaf" so we never understand what set Elisha on his difficult path.… (mere)

A historical novelist myself, of course I was intrigued to learn that an unfinished novel by Milton Steinberg had been discovered and was going to be published. The author of As A Driven Leaf, the brilliant story of a Talmudic sage struggling with his faith in 2nd-Century Roman Palestine, had died in March 1950 at the age of forty-six. So for nearly 60 years, his myriad fans could only sigh and sadly wonder what great literature his untimely death had deprived us of.

I eagerly accepted the offer to read, and review, a galley of his new work, “The Prophet’s Wife.” Like “As A Driven Leaf,” “The Prophet’s Wife” is also taken from Jewish holy texts – in this case the biblical Book of Hosea. But the Talmud contains only a few tantalizing mentions of Elisha ben Abuyah, Steinberg’s first protagonist, while the Bible devotes fourteen chapters to his second, the Prophet Hosea.

Hosea lived in Northern Israel in the 8th century BCE, during the end of the First Temple period. The most intimately portrayed of biblical prophets, Hosea is told by God to marry a harlot, Gomer, which he does. Their marriage will symbolize the relationship between God and Israel, where the Northern Kingdom has betrayed God by whoring after other gods and violating the commandments that God has given her.

The bible tells us of Hosea and Gomer’s divorce, which mirrors God’s rejection of the Northern Kingdom, soon to be destroyed by the Assyrians and its population exiled [hence, the Ten Lost Tribes]. But God commands Hosea to take Gomer back, although the couple must refrain from marital intimacy. Despite this, Gomer apparently gives up her lovers, for after much preaching of God’s anger to the sinning Israelites, Hosea concludes his prophecy that one day Israel will indeed repent and thus God will renew the covenant and take Israel back in love.

The Prophet’s Wife begins with a prologue in which an unidentified man nervously approaches a rostrum in Samaria’s city square. Angry and disgusted with its sinful inhabitants, the man forces himself to climb up and address the people, “The word of the Lord thou shalt know, that came unto me, Hosea son of Beeri.” After introducing our hero, already a grown man, already a prophet, Chapter One takes us back a generation to describe Beeri, pious and prosperous, and his household. The child Hosea makes his appearance in Chapter Two, after a chilling depiction of his oldest brother’s cruelty and a brief display of his middle brother, Iddo’s growing proficiency with arms. Hosea manifests neither of these traits, and Steinberg paints a poignant portrait of a boy who is acutely sensitive and compassionate to those around him.

The elder brother soon receives his just desserts, and Iddo, after avenging the death, runs off to be a soldier. But before he leaves, he dances provocatively with beautiful young Gomer during the festivities of Sukkot. However it is Hosea who becomes smitten with Gomer, the niece of a local ne’er-do-well. Here Steinberg’s story diverges from the biblical, as Hosea marries the virgin Gomer with no intervention from God.

Hosea, now a scribe for the king, must travel throughout the Northern Kingdom. Here Steinberg’s masterful writing makes the reader one with Hosea as he is increasing confronted with, and revolted by, the corruption and idolatry of the land’s inhabitants. We also share Hosea’s longing for home and his shock when he does return only to find his brother Iddo in bed with Gomer. This is where Steinberg excels, forcing the reader to whipsaw between Hosea’s myriad emotions – outrage, betrayal, pain – along with the sorrow of knowing that he must put aside the wife he still loves.

Despising his own cowardice, Hosea cannot bring himself to denounce the adulterers and have them executed. He moves out, taking his children with him. He tries to devote himself to his scribal duties, but suffers humiliation from his colleagues when Iddo makes Gomer his concubine. Then suddenly, there is an attack against the king, sending Hosea to grab a bow to help defend the palace. But who is leading the rebels and promptly shoots an arrow straight at Hosea? His brother Iddo.

Abruptly, Steinberg’s stirring words stop, to be followed by essays by Rabbi Harold Kushner and novelist Norma Rosen, who posit how they imagine that “The Prophet’s Wife” should have ended. The switch from Steinberg’s vivid prose to these cerebral commentaries is like replacing a full-bodied glass of wine with a cup of weak, tepid tea.

I was aware that Steinberg had left “The Prophet’s Wife” unfinished, but that advance knowledge did little to assuage my disappointment and frustration. Surely the climatic scene would have been Hosea’s encounter with God, and I was keenly anticipating how Steinberg would have written it. Yet Kushner and Rosen say nothing of this, concentrating instead on what kind of relationship Hosea and Gomer would, or should, end up with. Kushner seems confident that Hosea will go to become a prophet, never to reconcile with Gomer. “God may be able to forgive a chastened and repentant Israel, but Hosea … is not capable of bestowing such forgiveness.” Rosen creates a feminist, and happier, ending. Hosea and Gomer do reconcile, and the pair share his prophetic travels.

Steinberg has written another beautiful and moving novel, one that delves deep into Hosea’s mind and heart. The historical novelist’s task is to take the reader on a mental vacation back to a time and place that is otherwise inaccessible, while simultaneously providing a compelling story populated with fascinating characters. If the novelist manages to educate the readers, as well as entertain them, so much the better. In The Prophet’s Wife, Steinberg admirably fulfills all these tasks.

On every page Hosea’s 8th-century world is brought vividly to life. We see through Hosea’s eyes why the Northern Kingdom deserved to be destroyed. And not just through his eyes – we share all Hosea’s senses. The feel of a drunkard’s slimy hands; the seductive tinkling of harlot Gomer’s ankle bells as she walks past him; the vile smell of whores’ perfume on men leaving a brothel; the taste of Hosea’s own vomit after being forced to watch animals being sacrificed to Baal. Yet despite never giving us Gomer’s point of view, Steinberg lets us experience her thoughts and feelings through Hosea. We know her shame and guilt, and that deep inside she loves Hosea too. The Prophet’s Wife allows those readers familiar with the bible to understand how Hosea and Gomer’s relationship so well symbolizes that of God and Israel.

And this is why I believe that it is probably just as well that The Prophet’s Wife remained unpublished until now. Rabbi Steinberg died just after details of the Holocaust in Europe had demoralized the Jewish world. Surely his likely audience would have recognized a parallel between the destruction of European Jewry and God using Assyria to annihilate the ten tribes of Northern Israel. Publishing a novel on the Prophet Hosea, who warned the Northern Kingdom that God would destroy them as punishment for their sins, could be seen as tantamount to saying that the Holocaust occurred because of its victim’s sins – a view that Steinberg undoubtedly found abhorrent.

Today, sixty years later, when the shadow of the Holocaust no longer so completely darkens the Jewish world, we can read The Prophet’s Wife with sufficient distance between Northern Israel’s fate in the 8th century and that of Europe’s Jews in the 20th. So I gladly welcome this final work in Steinberg’s corpus, frustratingly incomplete as it is. However my review would also be incomplete without this historical novelist’s version of how The Prophet’s Wife should end.

Obviously Steinberg intended for Hosea to kill Iddo, and thus Hosea achieves justice and revenge, as well as acclamation as a hero. Coming back to the biblical story, which neither mentions Iddo nor a revolt against the king, Hosea now receives the call from God, Who tells Hosea to take Gomer back, that their marriage will embody the covenant between God and Israel.
Hosea returns home to his patrimony to find that Gomer is still there, continuing to manage the family estate that Iddo had neglected. She begs Hosea’s forgiveness and beseeches him not to force her back to harlotry. Hosea shares God’s words with her, and she swears that she has repented all the evil she did Hosea, and henceforth will be the most faithful of wives. They remarry, but Hosea, determined to remain pure to receive God’s word, will not cohabit with her. Gomer soon finds that she is pregnant, and Hosea, realizing that this child would be Iddo’s heir otherwise, claims the pregnancy as his own, thus fulfilling the Bible’s text that gives the couple three children. The final scene, a mirror of the opening, shows Hosea climbing onto the town rostrum [perhaps with Gomer watching from afar]. Only this time we hear the words that God has put in his mouth, including those that Jews read twice a year on Tisha B’Av and Shabbat Shuva:

Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God,
For you have fallen because of your sin.
Take words with you and return to the Lord.
Say to Him: “Forgive all guilt and accept what is good”
… [then] I will heal their affliction,
Generously will I take them back in love.… (mere)