What Was Forbidden
In Jonathan Bockian’s captivating historical novel What Was Forbidden, a skeptic is murdered, his sister tries to bring his killer to justice, and a community is changed forever.
In seventeenth-century Venice in the Jewish ghetto, smoke and shouts arise in the predawn. People rush outside, where Yehudit, a widow, learns that her brother, Mordechai, was set on fire in the public square like a sacrificial goat. Her grief overwhelms the patterns of her sequestered life—patterns she’d already begun to question by holding a secret belief in Shabbetai Tsvi, a man who claimed to be the messiah. Mordechai himself challenged the status quo in public, promoting philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s controversial Theologico-Political Treatise. Whether either deviation was a motive for Mordechai’s killing is questioned, as both the book and the possible messiah represent complex threats to the ghetto’s unity.
The chapters alternate between the weeks leading up to Mordechai’s murder and the weeks of Yehudit’s subsequent investigation, creating a double layer of suspense. Mordechai’s illicit affair with a gentile courtesan waits to be discovered, and Yehudit fights to become the decisive, courageous heroine whom she wants to be, though feeling bound by the Republic of Venice’s antisemitic and misogynistic strictures. Her every action outwardly constrained, Yehudit abandons a bit of obedience with each step she takes outside the walls of the Jewish ghetto and into a world of men. She is consumed by self-doubt, wondering if she has the intellectual and moral strength to investigate the spider’s web of corruption and power that ensnares Jews and Christians alike.
A gripping, erudite historical novel, What Was Forbidden follows a sequestered widow as she risks her safety and her place in her community to solve the heinous murder of her brother.
Reviewed by
Michele Sharpe
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
