Reviews

"* With a keen eye for custom, award-winning Sabato (Aleppo Tales) beautifully captures the daily rhythms of an Israeli Sephardic community. Ezra Siman Tov has worked in the same laundry next to Jerusalem's Mahane Yehudah market for 50 years, cleaning and pressing prayer shawls to adorn a bevy of grooms as they await their brides under the bridal canopy. But Ezra is also a storyteller, and the characters at his command include a blind violinist whose plaintive tunes melt even the hardest of hearts; a frustrated scholar who pulls a prank and pretends his own verse is really the creation of a famous medieval poet; a yeshiva student whose planned treatise on the Talmud is threatened by writer's block; and a judge whose sight is miraculously restored after its loss is falsely rumored to be divine punishment for taking bribes. A pious, simple man who is generally content with his lot in life, Ezra must contend with the gentrification that threatens the laundry and with his beloved daughter's defection to Christian missionaries. His measured response conveys a community's timelessness. Publishers Weekly"

"* With a keen eye for custom, award-winning Sabato (Aleppo Tales) beautifully captures the daily rhythms of an Israeli Sephardic community. Ezra Siman Tov has worked in the same laundry next to Jerusalem's Mahane Yehudah market for 50 years, cleaning and pressing prayer shawls to adorn a bevy of grooms as they await their brides under the bridal canopy. But Ezra is also a storyteller, and the characters at his command include a blind violinist whose plaintive tunes melt even the hardest of hearts; a frustrated scholar who pulls a prank and pretends his own verse is really the creation of a famous medieval poet; a yeshiva student whose planned treatise on the Talmud is threatened by writer's block; and a judge whose sight is miraculously restored after its loss is falsely rumored to be divine punishment for taking bribes. A pious, simple man who is generally content with his lot in life, Ezra must contend with the gentrification that threatens the laundry and with his beloved daughter's defection to Christian missionaries. His measured response conveys a community's timelessness. Publishers Weekly"

With a keen eye for custom, award-winning Sabato (Aleppo Tales) beautifully captures the daily rhythms of an Israeli Sephardic community. Ezra Siman Tov has worked in the same laundry next to Jerusalem's Mahane Yehudah market for 50 years, cleaning and pressing prayer shawls to adorn a bevy of grooms as they await their brides under the bridal canopy. But Ezra is also a storyteller, and the characters at his command include a blind violinist whose plaintive tunes melt even the hardest of hearts; a frustrated scholar who pulls a prank and pretends his own verse is really the creation of a famous medieval poet; a yeshiva student whose planned treatise on the Talmud is threatened by writer's block; and a judge whose sight is miraculously restored after its loss is falsely rumored to be divine punishment for taking bribes. A pious, simple man who is generally content with his lot in life, Ezra must contend with the gentrification that threatens the laundry and with his beloved daughter's defection to Christian missionaries. His measured response conveys a community's timelessness. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.