Zieglitz's Blessing: A Novel

by Michael Goldberg

Overview

Zieglitz's Blessing tells the story of a multigenerational search for identity and the meaning of a man's life. From childhood, Rod Zieglitz questions the truthfulness of his Hebrew name, which means "God will show mercy." Sometimes that name seems fitting. At other times, though, it strikes Zieglitz as a cruel joke. Only on his deathbed, grappling with the challenges he's faced, does Zieglitz rightly understand the notion of God's blessing for the first time. While Zieglitz's Blessing is often comic and even irreverent, it's an ultimately serious tale that runs the gamut from suffering to consolation, transgression to forgiveness, and faith lost to trust restored.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781666740080
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	12/12/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Michael Goldberg has been a Jewish studies professor, management consultant, hospice chaplain, and congregational rabbi. Among his other books are: Jews and Christians, Getting Our Stories Straight (1985); Why Should Jews Survive?: Looking Past the Holocaust Toward a Jewish Future (1995); and Raising Spirits: Stories of Suffering and Comfort at Death’s Door (2010).
Dr. Michael Goldberg is an ordained rabbi and trained theologian living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Not only has he held two university chairs, worked as a management consultant with McKinsey&Company and its Fortune 500 clients, and acted as Special Consultant on Professionalism to the Georgia Supreme Court and State Bar, he has also served as a hospital and hospice chaplain.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Michael Goldberg’s new, genre-bending novel is itself a blessing: an unorthodox Rabbi’s quixotic search to heal the wounds he has suffered, and inflicted, since his own bris. Though an entertaining send-up of biblical contradictions and rabbinical hypocrisy, Goldberg also explores his sinner’s inherent decency, honor, and love of family. Zieglitz’s Blessing carves a memory not soon forgotten.”

—Lou Gorfain, Emmy award-winning screenwriter



“Zieglitz’s Blessing follows a man’s life through love, loss, anger, and redemption. At times funny, often heart-wrenching, and consistently thought-provoking, Goldberg’s novel will touch you in ways that will surely surprise you and stay with you long after reading it.”

—Randy Auerbach, film executive and producer



“Rare is the writer who can embed the deepest questions of human existence into a tale as absorbing as Zieglitz’s Blessing. Drawing on his considerable wit and on his lifelong experiences as a rabbi, a hospital chaplain, and as an ethicist, Goldberg has produced a novel that is tragic, comic, and, finally, redeeming.”

—Todd Brewster, New York Times #1 best-selling co-author of the The Century

Editorial Reviews

Michael Goldberg’s new, genre-bending novel is itself a blessing: an unorthodox Rabbi’s quixotic search to heal the wounds he has suffered, and inflicted, since his own bris. Though an entertaining send-up of biblical contradictions and rabbinical hypocrisy, Goldberg also explores his sinner’s inherent decency, honor, and love of family. Zieglitz’s Blessing carves a memory not soon forgotten.”

—Lou Gorfain, Emmy award-winning screenwriter



“Zieglitz’s Blessing follows a man’s life through love, loss, anger, and redemption. At times funny, often heart-wrenching, and consistently thought-provoking, Goldberg’s novel will touch you in ways that will surely surprise you and stay with you long after reading it.”

—Randy Auerbach, film executive and producer



“Rare is the writer who can embed the deepest questions of human existence into a tale as absorbing as Zieglitz’s Blessing. Drawing on his considerable wit and on his lifelong experiences as a rabbi, a hospital chaplain, and as an ethicist, Goldberg has produced a novel that is tragic, comic, and, finally, redeeming.”

—Todd Brewster, New York Times #1 best-selling co-author of the The Century

From the Publisher