Bottle Parables

In this novel Tammuz deals with the issue of Jewish identity after the Holocaust and what he sees as the place of Judaism in Western culture. Bottle Parables is the story of an assimilated Jew who lives in London and works as an art dealer and a muralist, painting on restaurant walls. At the lowest point in his life, when his art has become completely commercial, he meets an old Jew, a Holocaust survivor, who brings him salvation. The man, a former art collector who published Yiddish magazines, expounds his views on the essence of Judaism and the role of the Jew in the world. He claims that the natural place of the Jews is in the Diaspora and not in a country of their own, because their spirituality and intellectuality preserve Western culture from decline and degeneration.