A Jewish Odyssey starts with confrontations with a Jewish Tzadik who is acting as a college lecturer, His students have come to improve their creativity in whatever art or science they are involved. Amongst the students with whom the author is pitched are a German music critic, Hans Sachs, a couple of young Zionists, a Kurdish freedom fighter, an elderly Chinese/American woman and Sally, a pretty English girl.
The author endures six weeks of intense teaching from the Tzadik whom he challenges at every opportunity and in whatever way he is able. Eventually, he is driven away from the lectures and attempts to discover his own way forward without the Tzadik's insistence that the mind itself is all that is required to generate creative work. Instead, the author embarks upon a whirlwind Jewish odyssey around the world and back. He creates new stories that reflect the different environments, Brazil, Greece and, through the imagination of fellow students, Afghanistan, South Africa, Sicily, Paris, China, California, Chicago and Pacific islands. We experience flights of fantasy that take us back to Biblical times, to imaginary planets and confront lunatic political leaders, an impressive disabled woman, and numerous amusingly comic characters.
Eventually he returns home to England where he creates a set of short stories that bring him back to his roots and where he may, or may not, be able to find his home.
As in the earlier comedy, 'Jewish Tales Untold', we are challenged to reappraise the cultural and mythic roots by which Jews (and others) live. We meet the Tzadik again, but now as a lecturer trying to analyse creativity, language and the foundations of Jewish (and other Semitic) religions. We leave him to travel on a journey of discovery and self-discovery, encountering dark humour, current political conflicts, funny tales and sad ones. Familiar legends and creative new myths illuminate the pathway through South America, the eastern Mediterranean and other countries through which the author passes. Real events sit alongside inventive fiction: sci-fi alongside celebrated tales retold. We see the world through the changing perspectives of the author, uprooted and in search of home.
