Talk:The Source (novel)

Source for expanding the page

This was a fairly successful and widely-read book at the time of publication, and it's also an excellent piece of literature, so I think it deserves a more comprehensive article. I was originally put onto the novel by an honours thesis I was reading, so that may serve as a jumping-off point to get more material. -Nasica (talk) 11:10, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Great idea. I am thinking about adding Chapter Summaries, so readers and learn more about the historical times the book describes.Rachelskit (talk) 03:49, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

• • Can anybody finish the last four chapters?Rachelskit (talk) 01:45, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Historical Omissions and Poor Impressions

• Chapter #15 was 1880; Chapter # 16 was 1948. No mention is made of World War I in the Middle East; nor is their mention of the Zion Mule Corps; the Jewish Legion; the split of the Zionist movement between Ben-Gurion and Vladimir Jabotinsky; the rise of Arab Nationalism;World War II... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.53.145.35 (talk) 21:43, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Now Novels are a few historical facts with a lot of fiction mixed in {See Centiential as an example). Nonetheless, reading this book does leave a poor impression of "The People of the Book" (Torah) via the following fictional characters:

• The Zefat Rabbi: A knowledgeable Scholar who lacks humility...in the case of a faithful Jewish wife whose husband abandoned her and bigamsy married another woman. After he dies, she asks permission to marry again, but her brother refuses her permission backed by the Rabbi, who only responds "The Law is the Law" without explaining how a widow trying to marry again will break Jewish Law. {It is hinted that his lack of humility will bring about his death since his attitude echos a Jewish King [Abijam], who refused to let his enemies be immediately buried until they were unrecognizable, thus leaving their widows in an uncertain state of whether they could remarry again, thus his life was cut short.)

• Likewise, the impression of the rabbi is that of Ssmeone, who was in charge of his community during the 1948-1949 war...and his sole thought is to become a holy martyr while refusing in any way to defend his community from Arab attacks. Likewise, also during the 1948-1949 war, he quarrels with the Sabra wife of the Jewish main character. He never addresses the fact that she is an atheist who is spiritually alone, nor does he give any consoling that she feels great anger toward the Orthodox, as years before when her grandfather had tried to establish a Jewish settlement outside ghetto walls; he was badly beaten and humiliated. Lastly, he does not reapprove her arrogant claim that the new Jewish state will have a generation that does not know Rabbis, since the Jewish People, the Torah, and the Land of Israel are all interconnected.

• Eliaav the Jew: Eliaav, the new Secularized Jew, claims proudly to be a Cohan, yet violates a rule that Cohans should not go near a graveyard. When the Tell he is helping to excavate is the very place where his Sabra wife was killed in 1948-1949 war, he also seems to be quite ineffective in dealing with particular cases. For example: a pair of Jews from India who cannot marry because they can't prove their 700 year old lineage; a pious Jew from New York who can't open a Kosher restaurant because of nitpicking advice; and a gentile woman atheist whose son had a Jewish father but the son is refused to become of the Jewish Nation. He gives no indication of trying to solve any of these problems. [Possible solutions: The India Jews, while they cannot prove their lineage, could be asked before a Bet Din court of what they know about being Jews and if they are sincere believers to marry; the New York Jew should not have been subject to last-minute nitpicking, but instead should have had a long session step-by-step on how to make his food kosher; the Gentile woman and her son's issue should not be whether the woman herself converts to Judaism but if her son sincerely wishes to do so (legally he cannot inherit Judaism as in cases where the mother is Jewish, but again he should be brought before a Bet Din court on whether he sincerely wishes to believe in and convert to Judaism)]. It is also hinted that Eliaav will pursue a course of "Peace Now" with the Arab nations, something he began even when he was fighting them back in 1948-1949(!).

• Jameel the Arab: In contrast to Eliaav is the anti-hero/hero Jameel who comes out looking better than Eliaav, who admits frankly that his family, which has existed since caveman times at the sight of the Source, has held to one firm belief to never leave this land and that politics and religion matters not...thus they have been Canaanites, Jews, Pagan Greeks and Romans, Christian Crusaders, and lastly Arab Moslems. [It is not explained how his family line survived the destruction of the Crusader ancestors 700 years before..unless his family happens to be descended from the baseborn child of the last crusader and his mistress(!)] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.102.32.94 (talk) 08:23, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Location of the Tell

I don’t know where in the article to add this, but I think it’s worth noting where in Israel the (fictional) tell is supposed to be located. I’ve been listening to The Source on Audible, which has 104 chapters. In the middle of chapter 72, which corresponds to the end of chapter 13 in the book, it transitions from the late 13th century to the early 16th century. At the end of the transition, the narrator says, “Then, in the early 1500s, a few men and their families began returning from the far ends of the Mediterranean and from ports in between. They were Jews. And they came not to Makor, from which they had sprung but of whose existence they knew nothing. They came to Safed, 17 miles to the east.” So, the tell was supposed to be located 17 miles west of Safed. That places the tell somewhere on the western front of the Galilee region. DAK4Blizzard (talk) 06:08, 4 February 2022 (UTC)