Heshel’s Kingdom by Dan Jacobson

I have just finished reading Heshel’s Kingdom by Dan Jacobson. It is an exploration of the author’s family history over the last hundred years. Dan Jacobson is Professor Emeritus of English at University College London.

The book begins with Dan Jacobson examining a photograph of his grandfather, Heshel Melamed, a rabbi in Varniai, a town in Lithuania. Every aspect of the photograph (full beard, dark clothes, the sheen on the top hat) is recorded in forensic detail, so that no clue to the past is overlooked. The author recalls family anecdotes about their Lithuanian origins and decides to trace the story back to its source.

As social history the book is extremely interesting. It also illustrates the way in which chance events influence our lives. In 1912 Heshel Melamed travelled from Lithuania to New York with the intention of resettling his family in the new world. After a brief stay he decides that traditional life in Varniai was preferable to the uncertainty of America. This could have been a catastrophic decision, given the subsequent history of Lithuania, but once again chance intervenes, and Heshel Melamed dies suddenly of a heart attack in 1919. Unexpectedly destitute, the Melamed family takes the only option available to them at the time - emigration to South Africa (where they quickly re-establish themselves, later moving to the United Kingdom).

Having assembled all the information he can, Dan Jacobson “goes back” to Lithuania in an attempt to understand the social and historical influences that created him. It is a fascinating journey. In particular, he describes the landscapes extremely well - the listless towns, the secretive countryside, the endless ominous forest clearings where atrocities took place (described matter-of-factly by a guide called Shlomo - a character who would justify his own biography).

In contrast to Heshel’s Kingdom, the current television travel documentary Michael Palin’s New Europe is very disappointing. If you believe Michael Palin, eastern Europe consists entirely of oddballs and misfits and (here’s a surprise) Michael Palin fans. It seems no dirt track backwater is so obscure that he can’t dig out at least one star-struck devotee performing from memory a Monty Python sketch (sorry if this upsets any Michael Palin enthusiasts - I just find his ego too intrusive for a programme of this kind).