Introduction & Overview of The Pagan Rabbi by Cynthia Ozick

The Pagan Rabbi Introduction

"The Pagan Rabbi" was first published in the 1971 collection The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories, which garnered extensive critical acclaim for Cynthia Ozick. The book won the B'nai B'rith Jewish Heritage Award in 1971, The Jewish Book Council Award, and the Edward Lewis Wallant Memorial Award in 1972, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in 1973. It was also nominated for a National Book Award in 1971.

"The Pagan Rabbi" is told from the point of view of an unnamed narrator, who learns that Isaac Kornfeld, a renowned thirty-six-year-old rabbi with whom the narrator was acquainted, has committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree in a park. The narrator, seeking to understand Isaac's motive, first goes to see the tree from which he hanged himself, and then to see the rabbi's widow, Sheindal Kornfeld. The widow asks him to read the notebook and the...
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