The Dream: By Avner Gold

Avner Gold‘s expanded edition of The Dream is the hair-raising sequel to The Promised Child. After years of captivity in a monastery, Shloime Strasbourg finally returns to his family and his people. But will he ever take his rightful place in the illustrious Strasbourg rabbinic lineage? Or will it come to an end with him?

While studying intensely in the seclusion of remote Wielkowicz, he has a terrifying dream that warns of looming peril to his mother back in Pulichev. On his journey home, he befriends Elisha Ringel, a wandering adventurer. The two men travel together to Pulichev, where they find that the Rebbetzin has contracted a mysterious illness that is slowly killing her. Will they identify the cause of the illness in time to save her life?

Meanwhile, they must also contend with the local priest who is inciting the people against the Jewish population and a blacksmith who has appointed himself the ringleader. Escalating tensions threaten a pogrom. Danger lurks at every corner.

The Dream is a suspenseful story of hatred, revenge and a desperate race against time to avert the dual disasters looming over the Jewish community of Pulichev. It is a story of ingenuity, resourcefulness, courage and faith in the battle of good against evil.

The expanded edition also features a set of new chapters about a tragic period in the life of Rav Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, author of Tosefos Yom Tov, while he was the rav of Prague. It tells the story of his betrayal by members of his own congregation, his imprisonment, the imperial decree of execution and his ultimate delivery from death. These historical events are drawn from Rav Yom Tov’s Megillas Eivah. The reader should not be surprised to discover that one of the fictional Strasbourg characters offered invaluable assistance.

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