The Second Catastrophe

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

Professor Norman Rosenfeld, a cultural historian at a small Canadian
university, has almost finished his new and controversial book about
Israel and the Jewish people when he learns that his daughter, who is on
a one-year study program in Israel, has been injured in a terrorist
attack in Tel Aviv during the second intifada. He rushes to Israel with
his father, an elderly Holocaust survivor. While visiting his injured
daughter, Rosenfeld, an Orthodox Jew and a widower, meets and falls in
love with a secular Israeli woman. Their involvement and eventual
failure to fully understand each other’s belief systems form a core
section of the novel.

The professor’s reflections on the reasons for Arab attitudes toward
Israel are controversial to say the least, and he actually runs into
heckling at one stop on his book promotion tour. In fact, following this
book’s publication, Rotberg encountered a similar situation himself
during a reading at a book store in Waterloo, Ontario.

The Second Catastrophe is likely to arouse mixed emotions in its
readers, especially given the thesis of the academic book within the
novel. Quite apart from the politics in those chapters, and the question
of whether present-day conditions really could result in a Second
Holocaust, the unfolding of the affair between Rosenfeld and Tamar would
make an interesting jumping-off point for discussions among Jewish
groups or perhaps in student seminars. The book itself is handsomely
produced but marred by typos.