The Mystics of Mile End

Sigal Samuel has created a beautiful love story in her first novel, The Mystics of Mile End.
Written as a coming of age story, we hear the story from four viewpoints.  First we hear the story from the point of view of a child, Lev.  The Hebrew translation of Lev is heart.  This is a story of the heart and how it can fall in love and how that love can be shattered.  After hearing the story told by Lev we hear the story through the eyes of  David, the childrens' father.  Then we hear the story retold from Lev's sister, Samara's interpretation.  This is always a terrific way to read a book, so that you are comparing the same life experience from the minds of many different characters.    In each narration new perspectives of the same facts help to flesh out the reality of the situation.  Then just when we think we have all the facts we hear the story from a fourth influential voice.  Chaim Glassman, their neighbor, Hebrew teacher and Bar/ Bat Mitzvah tutor.  From his vantage point both literally as he watches the comings and goings of the people in the neighborhood through his window, and also figuratively because he has the ear of his students.  Glassman has an influence on the young minds he helps to mold.

This is a story of Kabbalah and the mystical traditions of Judiasm intertwined with the disappointments in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the feelings of loss in a family after a death. Looking for answers to the meaning of life and the reasons for loss, Kabbalah gives the characters in this book something larger than life to strive for.  Each of the main characters in this story is searching for meaning in the hardness of everyday life.  Each of the characters in this novel are struggling with their religious beliefs.

Mr. Glassman gives Lev and Samara the explanation of Kabbalah as the ultimate source of knowledge of the Jewish religion.  Eating from the Tree of Life , Mr. Glassman explains will give
you the secret of how to live forever.   Lev asks, "The Tree of Live is one of those secrets? What does it do".  Mr. Glassman explains, "The most important one.  Centuries ago, it became a very popular kabbalistic idea.  You should  better ask, what does it not do! The Tree of Life does everything! It is what God used to create the universe out of nothing. It has ten parts—ten vessels—and when God poured His light down into them, the whole world appeared. And so our holy sages taught that a person who wants to go back up to God has only to climb this same Tree."

The story takes place in Mile End, described as the half hipster, half Jewish religious neighborhood of  Montreal Canada.  This is where Lev and Samara are growing up with their father, the college professor, David and all the flawed neighbors.  This is a sometimes humorous but always touching novel about the nature of life and the reason to exist.  It is about family relationships, how fragile and easily misunderstood they can become.  It is about silence and sound, looked at through a mathematical and scientific lens, and the need for human relationships.