Windows To The World

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Among the other spring celebrations is the Jewish holiday Passover or Pesach. This year the celebration began at sundown on April 6, last Friday, and it ends the evening of Saturday, April 14.

The celebration begins with the traditionalSeder or dinner. A staple of this meal and other meals of Passover is unleavened bread or Matzoh, which symbolized the exodus from homes in such a rush that there was no time for bread to rise. During this meal, the Haggadah is read. This is a document of the account of the Jewish liberation and, as it is read, it fulfills the directive of telling one's son about the exodus from Egypt.

 For a long time, Haggadot  (books telling the story of the Jewish exodus from egypt after years of slavery and ten plagues)were hand-written, but eventually some were printed. These volumes of Haggadot were rare and cherished. Possibly the first printed texts were produced in 1482 in Guadalajara, Spain.

 One famous example is the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illustrated manuscript that is the oldest known in the world, originally coming from Barcelona around 1350.

In People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks has written a fictional account of the mystery of this manuscript. An expert book conservator, Hannah Heath lives in Australia. Awakened from a deep sleep, Hannah receives a phone call requesting that she come to Bosnia to use her skills to conserve and restore the precious Sarajevo Haggadah. The war between the Serbs and Croats is, one hopes, ending soon and the United Nations wants this book to be a unifying factor.




Through the years, this Jewish book survived many wars and travelled to many places as its owners moved or were moved from place to place. At least twice in its history it was rescued from certain destruction by people of the Muslim faith. Perhaps, on one occasion, it was saved from the fire by a Roman Catholic.

In the course of Hannah's repair of the book she came across small artifacts that can help in the investigation of where this book has been. One of these is a small insect wing that turns out to belong to an alpine moth. Another of these is a wine stain, perhaps mixed with blood, and finally there is a small thread or hair as well as some salt crystals. One last mystery that Hannah wants to unveil is why this book was published with illustrations in an era when the Jewish faith did not approve of images in their books, since they were considered sacrilegious.

The chief librarian in the museum where the Haggadah is located has a feeling about this special book: "The hagaddah came to Sarajevo for a reason. It was here to test us, to see if there were people who could see that what united us was more than what divided us. That to be a human being matters more than to be a Jew or a Muslim, Catholic or Orthodox."

Hannah tracks the passage of the book through the centuries by scientifically identifying how the artifacts in the book came to be there. At the same time, she is taking a trip into her own history, which has also been fraught with pain. One of her colleagues points out:

"… the book has survived the same human disaster over and over again….you have a society where people tolerate difference, like Spain, and everything's humming along: creative, prosperous. Then somehow this fear, this hate, the need to demonize the 'other'––just sort of rears up and smashes the whole society. Inquisition, Nazis, extremist Serb nationalists… same old, same old."



Similarly, Hannah's personal mysteries and sorrows also keep repeating themselves because she has yet to come to a mature understanding about them. The United Nations wants the restored book to be part of a shrine to Sarajevo's multiethnic heritage. It will be displayed amidst Islamic manuscripts and Orthodox icons. Hannah still has a way to go before she can put her past in true perspective.