Nathan Englander

In Hasidism and Modern Man, Martin Buber, the great philosopher and folklorist, tells of a traditional account between a Jewish zaddik, a person of outstanding virtue and piety, and his young son. The zaddik asks his son, “With what do you pray?” And the son, perhaps in an effort to impress his righteous father, responds: “Everything of great stature shall bow before Thee.” When the son asks the same question of his father, the zaddick dryly says, “With the floor. And with the bench.” The anecdote, especially the zaddik’s practical approach to divinity, is an apt metaphor for the fiction of Nathan Englander.