A Guide for the Perplexed: A Novel by Dara Horn, W.W. Norton & Co., New York; ISBN 978-0-393-06489-6 ©2013, $25.95, p. 352
By Fred Reiss, Ed.D.
WINCHESTER, California–Josephine “Josie” Ashkenazi, the protagonist in Dara Horn’s newest novel, A Guide for the Perplexed, is a brilliant computer scientist who becomes an entrepreneur, having created, and now markets, an amazing piece of software called “Genizah,” with more than five million subscribers. A geniza is a community’s written flotsam and jetsam, trash to its generation, but treasure to generations far into the future. Like its namesake, the software program Genizah records information, video and prose, sublime and trivial, storing it, and allowing the user to review it and delve deeply into its contents to extract so-called big data.
Josie is also a product of a dysfunctional family—overbearing mother, part-time father, and sibling rivalry with her older sister that lasts into her adulthood. Urged on by her husband and sister, Josie accepts an invitation by the Egyptian government to bring Genizah to their library system. There, in Cairo, she interacts with devout, but quite modern Muslims, who do not know that she is Jewish, speaks fluent Hebrew, is married to an Israeli, and is a loving mother to a daughter, Tali. It is in the dialogue and banter between Josie and her Muslim co-worker Nasreen that we become part of a philosophical journey: the Islamic mindset vs. the Western World’s way of thinking.
It is in the library in Alexandria that Josie gets to take with her a used and unwanted copy of A Guide for the Perplexed by arguably the greatest Jewish mind of the Middle Ages, Moses Maimonides. In this work, written exclusively for his student Joseph, whom Maimonides considers to rank one-in-a-thousand, he compares and contrasts Greek philosophy and science with the beliefs of Jewish theology, accepting or reconciling them when appropriate; rejecting them when necessary.
On the last night of her stay, she is kidnapped by Muslims, a man and a woman, who want her insurance money, money from her comprehensive kidnap and ransom insurance policy. Unfortunately for Josie, she never bought the policy.
It is through Josie’s captivity that Horn explores the relationship between radicalized Islamists and the “American way.” Through deprivations, torture, and even a broadcast video of her death, Josie survives with Maimonides as an unseen companion: Is there divine providence, or do things happen at random? Does one bring evil down on himself or herself? In fact, what is evil? Is it subjective, or is there a balance that measures the amount of evil vs. the quantity of good? Is there more evil in the world than good? Is there such a thing as predestination, or does free will really exist?
Horn examines the relationship between close relatives and we come to see how the dynamics of these relationships can unexpectedly change. For example, we see the connection between Josie’s husband, Itamar, and sister, Judith, who comes to live with Itamar and Tali after Josie’s death. After their relationship has crossed the conjugal line, Judith comes to believe that the death video is a hoax, but Itamar does not. Horn shows us that sibling rivalry ends with death, freeing the living sibling from animus and allowing that sibling to evolve into a “mensch.”
Although there is no guarantee that the perplexed will become unperplexed, the novel A Guide for the Perplexed is an exploration of relationships among family members and between differing philosophical perspectives of the world worthy of its lofty title.
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Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. He is the author of The Standard Guide to the Jewish and Civil Calendars; Ancient Secrets of Creation: Sepher Yetzira, the Book that Started Kabbalah, Revealed; and a fiction book, Reclaiming the Messiah. The author can be reached via fred.reiss@sdjewishworld.com.