The second scroll

the long version

"The Second Scroll is an ambitious and complex work that interlaces prose, poetry, drama, and commentary. The narrative follows a Canadian Jew to the newly established state of Israel on a double mission - to collect the emerging national literature and to search for his Uncle Melech Davidson, a Holocaust survivor. Klein creates a modern Torah out of the uncle's crises of faith as he attempts to come to terms with the atrocities of the Second World War. The five chapters of The Second Scroll mirror the books of the Pentateuch (the 'first scroll'), and the language is rich with biblical, talmudic, kabbalistic, and literary allusions as both the narrator and his uncle wrestle with the meaning of Jewish identity, messianic faith, and homecoming."--BOOK JACKET.