The Gates of November; Chronicles of the Slepak Family

New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. First Edition stated. Presumed First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xv, [1], 249, [5] pages, illustrations., frontis illustrations., bibliography. Inscribed by the author, Chaim Potok. The inscription reads: To Lou & Miriam, Best Wishes. Chaim Potok, 14 November 1996. Letter from Technion Guardians Chairman Ben Sosewitz to Fellow Guardians laid in, sending this book. Technion Guardians is a designation for those who support the university at the highest level. This work of nonfiction chronicles the stormy lives of a Jewish father, Solomon Slepak, an inflexible old-guard Bolshevik, and his son, Volodya, who became an internationally renowned "refusenik" hero during the 18 years of his persecution for attempting to leave the Soviet Union. Chaim Potok, who first met the younger Slepaks when they were still under siege in Moscow, tells their story with deep understanding and empathy. Chaim Potok (February 17, 1929 - July 23, 2002) was an American author and rabbi. His first book The Chosen (1967), was listed on The New York Times' best seller list for 39 weeks and sold more than 3,400,000 copies. In 1967 Potok published The Chosen, which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award and was nominated for the National Book Award. Potok wrote a sequel to The Chosen in 1969 entitled The Promise, which details the issues of the value and identity between Orthodox and Hasidic Jews. This book won the Athenaeum Literary Award the same year of its publication. Not long afterward the Jewish Publication Society appointed him as its special projects editor. In 1972, he published My Name is Asher Lev, the story of a boy struggling with his relationship with his parents, religion and his desire to be an artist. In 1975, he published In the Beginning. From 1974 until his death, Potok served as a special projects editor for the Jewish Publication Society. During this time, Potok began translating the Hebrew Bible into English. In 1978 he published his non-fiction work, Wanderings: Chaim Potok's Story of the Jews, a historical account of the Jews. Between 1978 and 1989, Potok contributed articles to Moment Magazine. Potok described his 1981 novel The Book of Lights as an account of his experiences in Asia during the war. He said "it reshaped the neat, coherent model of myself and my place in the world." His novel The Chosen was made into a film released in 1981, which won the most prestigious award at the World Film Festival, Montreal. Potok had a cameo role as a professor. The film featured Rod Steiger, Barry Miller, Maximilian Schell and Robby Benson. It also became an Off-Broadway musical and was adapted as a stage play by Aaron Posner in collaboration with Potok, which premiered at the Arden Theatre Company in Philadelphia in 1999. Potok's 1985 novel Davita's Harp is his only book featuring a female protagonist. In 1990, he published a sequel to My Name is Asher Lev titled The Gift of Asher Lev. It won the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. Potok wrote many plays, among them Sins of The Father and Out of The Depths. In 1992 Potok completed another novel, I am the Clay, about the courageous struggle of a war-ravaged family. His 1993 young adult literature The Tree of Here was followed by The Sky of Now (1995) and Zebra and Other Stories (1998). Derived from a Kirkus review: Potok, whose novels of families at odds with themselves ring so true, turns his attention to a deeply divided real-life family of Russian Jews. Volodya Slepak's name will be familiar to anyone who was active in the movement to free Soviet Jews in the 1970s and '80s. He and his wife, Masha, were two of the most steadfast of the "refuseniks," Jewish activists who were denied exit visas to emigrate to Israel from the Soviet Union. What is less familiar about Slepak is his family's unusual history. His father, Solomon, was a high-ranking functionary in the Bolshevik movement who weathered the purges and bloodshed of the Stalin era. Virtually until his death in his late 70s, Solomon continued to uphold the party and the Kremlin, disdaining his son's political activities. Potok, who first encountered Volodya when he himself was active in the movement for Soviet Jewry, has had access to many hours of taped interviews with Volodya, Masha, their two sons, and other family members and friends, and he has used them to reconstruct the story of a bitterly estranged father and son, and the ideological civil war that split them apart. Regrettably, because so much of the history of Solomon's life is missing-the KGB wouldn't release his files, much of his early story can only be garnered by reconstruction and guesswork. When Potok begins to trace Volodya's history, his novelist's eye and ear help bring the tale to life. But the end of the story is a somber one, with both Volodya and the author given to pessimistic ruminations on the future of their respective homelands. This Potok offering will engage many readers, particularly those with vivid memories of the struggles of, and for, Soviet Jews.