Ruben Blum

Ruben Blum is the main character and first person narrator of the novel. Ruben Blum identifies first and foremost as a historian and a scholar. As a young boy, Ruben grows up in New York with his Jewish parents in a Jewish community. He attends a Hebrew school, and later also attends a public school. Over the course of his education, Ruben becomes increasingly frustrated with the disparities between how his religious and secular educations represent history. In public school, history is entangled with American notions of progress. The past is something to reinvent and grow beyond. In Hebrew school, history does not exist, but rather blurs the past, present, and future into one ongoing cycle birthed from God’s mouth. These competing versions of history and reality gradually impress themselves upon Ruben. After serving in the army in World War II, he returns home to his...