The next chapter is in the queue. Since I have a busy weekend ahead, it will be posted tonight.
I said in an earlier blog post that, at times while writing this story, I felt Harry Chapin crawl up my nose and plant some new ideas on the paper.
The character of Rabbi Isaac Mendel is one of those ideas.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am not Jewish. Nonetheless, I wanted to be as true as I could be to the character and his faith. To that end, I did a LOT of research as I was writing. But researching it and living it are two different things. As such, for any of my readers who are Jewish, I am begging you: if I have misrepresented anything about the Jewish faith or its practice, please let me know so that I can fix it.
The second of Harry Chapin’s three heroes, Pete Seeger, gets his shout-out in this chapter.
Also, a surprising influence in this chapter, the reference to a suitor being ushered out the door by the toe of Kenneth Burke’s boot: it comes from (the novel) Les Misérables, when Thenardier is trying to figure out how to approach Marius with his knowledge of Valjean’s true identity and true history. The English translation I read talks about Thenardier knowing that to try and approach Marius by bluntly saying “your wife is a bastard” would get him "ejected on the toe of Marius’s boot."