Rembrandt's Model

Esther M. Price, a former educational librarian and high-school English
literature teacher, currently teaches conversational English to Russian
immigrants in Israel.

By giving an imaginative identity to a shadowy figure in Rembrandt van
Rijn’s engraving “The Jews in the Synagogue,” Ternar has created a
compelling character. The character is reborn as Samuel Salvador, the
orphaned child of Sephardic Jews who is raised by Jesuits and becomes a
Christian scholar. Led by signs in dreams to master other tongues and
cultures, he leaves for Amsterdam to live as a Jew. Readers follow
Samuel as he drifts through the disparate worlds of 17th-century
Amsterdam (wealthy Sephardim, Eastern European vagabonds, Rembrandt and
his friends) and he becomes the model and soulmate of the great artist.
When Samuel leaves for Turkey, Rembrandt’s model develops into a
variation on the theme of Shabbetai Zevi, a false messiah. Samuel
despairs that the two worlds he inhabits, Christian and Jewish, are
“locked in a never-ending battle” with “no hope for true
understanding.” A tantalizing question surfaces. Why does he stay in
Turkey? An exploration of his final, unexamined philosophy tempts the
imagination.

The novel’s framework story leaves the world of mystical exploration
and supposition to drop the heroine onto a Montreal therapist’s couch
and into pop culture psychotherapy. A parade of extraterrestrials and
the ubiquitous “white light” of trauma patients join the fantasy of
multiple identities and past lives. All are explained away in a banal
conclusion. Samuel’s story deserves better. There are a few other
dizzying transitions, and the reader has a sometimes uneasy feeling that
the writer is trying too hard to squeeze in as many historical and
symbolic references as possible, whether or not they influence the
action. Despite these problems, Ternar’s central story is an
entertaining and thought-provoking tale for readers who are acquainted
with Jewish history and mysticism.