Moshe ShamirThe Bridal Veil tells the story of Leah Berman from the age of 17, when she settles with her family in Riga, to the age of 31 when she sails to Eretz Israel. The first part of the novel depicts this talented young woman's encounter with life in the big city. There she meets Hugo Brodsky, the young revolutionary, who becomes her idol and lover and also the source of her tragedy. In the second part of the novel, Hugo returns to Riga, after five years' absence, as a leading figure in the Socialist-Zionist movement. After Leah has been released from prison, the two meet only to be separated again.
The last section portrays Leah's emergence as a roving revolutionary - printer, social worker, nurse and eventually leader of a group of women prisoners. She flees to Vienna and finally seeks new hope in the approaching shores of the old-new Land of Israel.
The Bridal Veil evokes with great vividness and meticulous authenticity the stormy days of the 1905 revolution in Tzarist Russia, the bitter disputes of the time and the personal sacrifice... The author's intuition catches the dramatic core of what normally becomes dry chronology in the hands of historians.
Maariv
English translation available (for publishers only)
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