PROPHECY MEETS THE ROMANCE NOVEL. Why not?

Rabbi-Novelist Mines Ancient Treasure

by Rachel Heller, Contributing Writer (JewishJournal.com)

Of all the prophets, Jeremiah has always been the personal favorite of Rabbi Zoë Klein. So in a series of two fictional works, the prolific pulpit rabbi and fiction writer did him a favor: She gave him a lover.

“He’s a brooder; he’s the most autobiographical of the prophets, and there’s something so desperately lonely and sad about him that I wanted to reach back in time and comfort him somehow,” said Klein, 38, senior rabbi at Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles. “I wanted to provide someone who is just mad about him and loves him as a man, not as a prophet.”

Faith and the healing property of love are themes Klein explores in her recently released novel, “Drawing in the Dust,” which follows fictional archaeologist Page Brookstone as she unearths a startling ancient treasure that challenges traditional theological beliefs in Israel and beyond.

Brookstone, a Catholic American excavating at Mount Megiddo, has spent her life hiding underground from personal demons and is haunted by the early death of her father. But when she begins a dig beneath an Arab couple’s home and discovers Jeremiah’s grave — his remains clasped in the arms of a mysterious woman — Brookstone begins to confront her fears and embrace love’s ability to transcend time.

The mysterious woman turns out to be Anatiya, a fictional contemporary of Jeremiah that Klein created for her first book, “The Scroll of Anatiya,” published earlier this year. Anatiya, who is mute, falls in love with the prophet after hearing him preach and spends her life longing for a man too consumed by holy work to return her devotion. One of the artifacts Brookstone finds near Jeremiah’s tomb in “Drawing in the Dust” is Anatiya’s scroll, whose 52 chapters, written in the poetic style of an ancient text, mirror the events narrated in the Book of Jeremiah.

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