The following is an excerpt from The Forgotten Commandment by Anson Hugh Laytner. It’s a featured Speakeasy selection, and there are still limited review copies available for qualified reviewers.
As the afternoon sun waned, the hour for stories arrived and the conversation shifted to the grandparents, their growing-up years in Paris, their experience of anti-Semitism at the hands of some of their fellow French citizens as well as the Nazis, and their amazing escape from death during World War II. Raizel and Anschel took turns telling their tale of survival.
“So, there we were, up in the hill-country of the Haute-Loire, being hidden by a peasant family just outside of the town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon—”
“It’s beautiful countryside. Rolling hills, rivers, forests. . .I understand that today there is a thriving tourist trade there—”
“Which is especially understandable, considering not just the terrain but also the people. You cannot imagine how wonderful the people were to us, even at their own peril, even though we were refugees—and Jewish ones at that!”
“And because of that generation’s good deeds, they and their descendants deserve our thanks and praise—”
“So, there we were, living on this farm outside of town, being sheltered by this wonderful family, along with another gentleman—”
“Benjamin Aboab—what a funny family name he had.”
“That’s because he was Sephardic!”
“As I was saying, he was only there with us for a year or so. What a scholar and mensch! Too bad he didn’t make it. Such bad mazal!”
“Yes, it’s true. Then as now, one has little control over the course life takes. We do the best we can with what we’re dealt. Of course, during the war years, chances of survival were much worse than they are here in Montréal. Why I can remember—”
“So, one day, I think it was in the spring of 1942, this man, Benjamin, comes to us and pleads with us that, should anything befall him, we should take care of something he has hidden away for safe-keeping.”
“And I think, what is it? Jewels? Dollars? What does a man treasure when looking over the precipice, facing death? Well, for Benjamin Aboab, it turned out to be some notebooks!”
“Notebooks! Can you imagine? Notebooks. Here the poor man had been on the run for years. He had lost all his possessions. His family had been snatched by the Germans and probably killed. And what does he cherish above all else? Notebooks! Well, maybe he was a little meshuggineh by then—which wouldn’t be too surprising considering all he had endured.”
“Anyway, one day our Mr. Aboab goes out to help escort a group of Jewish children to the Swiss border, but he never returns.”
“Later, we hear that the guide was probably a traitor, and that she likely had betrayed the entire group to les Boches, the Germans. At any rate, that is what we all thought. That was it. That was the end of them all.”
“So, we waited, and waited. Finally, we went to his hiding place, retrieved his packet, and put it with our own stuff for safekeeping.”
“And after Liberation, when we came over here, we brought it with us.”
“Why, I am not sure. After all, it was just a couple of notebooks. We looked them over on the boat here. There were two. One was a kind of diary, written in French with a smattering of Yiddish, talking about his experiences before and during the war.”
“The other was in Hebrew—only our Hebrew isn’t so good, plus his handwriting is not so great—so we really just glanced over it, but it seemed to be some kind of fable. Something about the animals debating with humanity about all the abuse they’d suffered.”
“But a vow is a vow, and we’d promised him, so we’ve kept them all these years, not knowing what else to do with—”
“WAIT! Stop. Please!” Adrian bolted from the couch with excitement. Cake crumbs launched through the air. “A fable? About animals? And how we mistreat them? It sounds like something I could use in my post-doctoral studies! Where is it now? May I see it?”
The grandparents were surprised by his outburst but recovered nicely.
“But of course, Adrian,” replied Anschel. “All we have to do is find it. It’s been so many years now. Wherever do you think it might be, my dear?”
While Raizel did her magic on a fridge full of leftovers in order to make dinner for them all, Anschel, Sophie, and Adrian searched through closet after closet for the long-forgotten notebooks. With a limited number of closets to examine, it was only a matter of an hour or so before they discovered them, wrapped in a crumbling, yellowed cloth, and tied with graying string. They lay at the very bottom of a box filled with mementos of Anschel’s and Raizel’s earliest years in Montréal, like the oldest layer of an archaeological dig.
Sophie carefully lifted the package from the box. She and Adrian and Anschel stared for a while at the cloth wrap as if their eyes could discern its contents. Finally, and with more than a hint of impatience, Adrian exclaimed, “Let’s open it, shall we?”
He looked at Sophie, and Sophie looked expectantly at her grandfather. He gave a slight nod and Sophie gave a tug on the string. It disintegrated. Hesitatingly, she began to unfold the wrapping.
Adrian could hardly contain his excitement. What in the world did these notebooks of Benjamin Aboab contain?
Praise for The Forgotten Commandment
“We are creatures of violence toward one another, and savage plunderers of kindred beings. Might we instead become the wisest of creatures? The most generous? Truly human? Drawing upon deep reservoirs of religious tradition, Anson Laytner creatively and deftly draws the straight lines between our contempt for human life and for the lives of our beyond-human kin. All this in a compact book that reads like a good mystery you don’t want to put down. I didn’t.”
—Carla V. Pryne, Episcopal priest
“Anson Laytner’s engaging tale leads the reader on a journey through Jewish history to explore questions about humanity’s capacities for both evil and righteousness. As our world teeters on the edge of ecological disaster, we are all like the young couple at the center of this story—challenged to balance personal desires and responsibilities with the call to action at the speed and scale demanded by the climate crisis.”
—Mirele B. Goldsmith, co-founder, Jewish Earth Alliance
“In this era of religious misunderstanding, The Forgotten Commandment, a beautiful tale of harmonious relationships among the peoples of the Abrahamic faiths, comes as a balm for the soul. A riveting story filled with drama and intrigue, Anson Laytner weaves together tidbits of little-known Jewish history with psychological insight and pearls of the Bible’s universal wisdom. Laytner accomplishes all this while bringing forth an authentic spiritual ecological message in a compelling and accessible way—so needed in the world at this time.”
—Ellen Bernstein, founder, Shomrei Adamah
“The Forgotten Commandment reads like a suspense novel that kept me interested from beginning to end. It has a challenging, hopeful message that can raise environmental awareness during this critical time and help shift our imperiled planet onto a sustainable path.”
—Richard H. Schwartz, president emeritus, Jewish Vegetarians of North America
About the Author
Anson Hugh Laytner is a retired liberal rabbi, living in Seattle, whose career in nonprofit and academic settings focused on fostering positive interfaith and interethnic relations. He is the author of Arguing with God (1990), The Mystery of Suffering and Meaning of God (2019), and Choosing Life after Tragedy (2023); coauthor of The Animals’ Lawsuit Against Humanity (2005); and coeditor of The Chinese Jews of Kaifeng (2017). To learn more, visit his website: www.ansonlaytner.com.
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