Howard Langer, "The Last Dekrepitzer" (Cresheim Press, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode: Howard Langer, "The Last Dekrepitzer" (Cresheim Press, 2025)
Host: Alfred Marcus
Guest: Howard Langer
Date: February 26, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, Alfred Marcus interviews Howard Langer, author of "The Last Dekrepitzer", a novel exploring the journey of Shmuel Meir Lach Bencher (Sam Lightup), the last rebbe of a Hasidic sect destroyed in the Holocaust, who reemerges decades later as a street musician and bluesman in 1960s New York. The conversation dives deeply into themes of black-Jewish relations, spiritual leadership, the aftermath of genocide, the fluidity of identity, and the economic and cultural transitions faced by immigrants and minorities in America.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Crossing Worlds: From Shtetl to Harlem

• Genesis of the Novel:
  • Langer was motivated to bridge the divide between the black and Jewish communities by exploring, through fiction, how each perceives the other.
  • The concept began with a short story about a Hasidic rebbe discovered playing music in the NYC subway. Building the novel meant imagining how he arrived at that point.

    "I wanted to write something that would ameliorate the tensions between the black community and the Jewish community. And I thought one way to do it would be to explain each to the other." (02:12, Howard Langer)

• World-Building Approach:
  • Langer admits to making up much of the rural Mississippi setting based on intuition, while thoroughly researching Reverend Gary Davis, the blues musician who appears in the novel.
  • Langer’s own life experience at age 70 reduced his need for traditional research.

Factual vs. Fictional Inspiration

• The protagonist, Shmuel Meir, is a wholly fictional character.
• Some similarities have been drawn to James McBride’s "The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store", but Langer sees key differences beyond the shared black-Jewish context.

Black-Jewish Relations and Individual Encounters

• Langer sought to challenge perceptions of antisemitism in the Black community, and of condescension or prejudice from Jews towards Blacks.
• Central to the novel: portraying people as individuals, not as group representatives.

  "In my book, the people relate to each other as individuals, not as groups. And that's very important." (05:25, Howard Langer)

• The most consistent theme in the book is kindness among individuals, despite evil (Nazis, Jim Crow) lurking in the background.

Spiritual Leadership Without Followers

• One of Langer's core explorations is: What does it mean to be a leader without a community?
• Shmuel Meir is compared to real Hasidic leaders like the Bubover Rebbe, who managed to reconstitute their communities post-Holocaust.

  "I wanted to see what it would be like for a Rebbe to have no followers, to have lost his mission, and how he would then go through life." (10:03, Howard Langer)

• In the novel, Shmuel Meir consciously moves away from seeking followers; he feels the old world is completely gone.

Musical Contrasts: Blues, Gospel, and Nigunim

• The book experiments with the interplay of Jewish nigunim and African-American blues/gospel (especially with the real-life Reverend Gary Davis).
• Reverend Davis used words and music as gospel to bring people to Jesus; Shmuel Meir’s music is wordless, serving as defiant prayer to remind God of the Holocaust's enormity.

  "His music is a direct prayer to God. And it's, as he says very often, it's to remind God what he did to his people." (08:16, Howard Langer)

• Langer grew interested in blues mainly due to copyright considerations, immersing himself in the music during his writing process.

Economic Life and Cultural Parallels

• Both the Polish shtetl and mid-century rural Mississippi are characterized by poverty and subsistence living, making the immigrant protagonist comfortable in both worlds.
• The story underscores the similarities between impoverished Jewish and Black rural communities.

  "While the people are different, the world in which they inhabit is very similar." (19:53, Howard Langer)

Inclusion, Exclusion, and Identity

• Lula, Shmuel Meir’s black wife, is both included and excluded—embraced as rabbi’s wife (Rebbetzin) by some, yet shunned or patronized by Jewish communities.
• Her identity is a crisscross of categories: black, Jewish, and Rebbetzin. She undergoes two conversions, the second to satisfy Orthodox legal requirements.

  "[Lula] has a certain level of importance spiritually." (29:40, Howard Langer)

• Ultimately, the family remains isolated: even among other Jewish immigrants (Holocaust survivors running chicken farms in New Jersey), they are subject to prejudice.

Intergenerational Uncertainty & Sequel Possibilities

• The novel concludes ambiguously: Is Shmuel Meir or his son Moses the "last Dekrepitzer"? Moses aspires to be the next rebbe, hinting at an unresolved legacy.
• Langer was encouraged to write a sequel, considering themes of black Jewish identity in the post-Civil Rights era.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Evil in the Story:

  "The evil is lurking throughout the book. First there are the Nazis, who of course destroy the Jews of Europe. And then there's the Jim Crow south and the Ku Klux Klan." (05:25, Howard Langer)

• On Spiritual Defiance:

  "He plays his music...purely in defiance of God. Though he ritually plays the music three times a day, the three times that Jews would pray during the course of the day." (21:17, Howard Langer)

• On Music as Prayer:

  "He's praying for—it is a substitute for prayer for him. And he's playing in defiance of God." (42:49, Howard Langer)

• On Heritage and Survivorship:

  "He purposely plays in the subway stations that are in the Jewish neighborhoods." (44:43, Howard Langer)

• On Defiance as a Response to God:

  "We have this morality, and this morality applies to you as well as to us. And you have violated this morality. And I am reminding you that you have violated this morality." (45:27, Howard Langer)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:56 – Crossing between Shtetl, Jim Crow South, and Harlem: Genesis of the novel
• 04:44 – Intentions regarding black-Jewish relations
• 09:43 – The meaning and challenge of being a rebbe without followers
• 13:45 – Hasidic leaders post-Holocaust: Bhavaver vs. Satmar; leadership and trauma
• 19:35 – Economic parallels: shtetl Jews and Black sharecroppers
• 21:17 – Contrasting musical/spiritual leadership and responding to devastation
• 28:12 – Inclusion and exclusion: Lula, conversion, and the boundaries of community
• 32:36 – The son Moses' experience, race, and legacy: bar mitzvah, cross burning, "last" status
• 38:17 – Moments of adaptation and holding to an uncompromising core
• 40:02 – Shmuel Meir’s anger, defiance, and confrontation over theology
• 42:49 – For whom is he playing? Music as substitute for prayer, search for recognition
• 46:38 – Langer’s transition from lawyer to author, and the writing process
• 51:52 – Book’s commercial fate and experience with niche categories

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Further Reflections

• Langer reflects on his lack of direct Holocaust family lineage, learning about the Holocaust as a child via peers and televised events.
• Both interviewer and author meditate on the accidental nature of their own careers, crossing purposes between law, writing, and academia.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a nuanced examination not only of "The Last Dekrepitzer" but also of the intersections of identity, trauma, faith, exile, music, and the possibilities for cross-community empathy via fiction. Rich with both historical allusion and contemporary resonance, Langer and Marcus explore how individual lives can symbolize broader cultural negotiations—and how stories help bridge seemingly unbridgeable gaps.

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Transcript

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[Howard Langer]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Alfred Marcus]

Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Alfred Marcus. Today I'm speaking with Howard Langer, the author of the Last the Krepser, published by Krasnpress. It's a novel that follows the life of Shmuel Meyer Lach Bencher, later known as Sam Lightup, the last rebbe of a tiny Hasidic sect from a Polish shtetl destroyed in the Holocaust. We meet him decades later as a gray haired fiddler busking in the Columbus circle subway in 1965, playing blues, gospel and Hasidic nigunim. Along the way, he has lived among black sharecroppers in rural Mississippi, married across racial lines under Jim Crow, played with the Brown Sugar Ramblers, and then with Reverend Gary Davis on the streets of New York. Howard, thank you for joining me.

[Howard Langer]

Nice to be here.

[Alfred Marcus]

The book imagines a Hasidic rebbe who becomes in effect, a blues man and a street musician in the American south and an Harlem. What first drew you to this extraordinary crossing of worlds? Shtetl, Jim Crow, Harlem. And how did you research and build these settings?

[Howard Langer]

Well, I wanted to when I sat down to write, which something I hadn't really done seriously before. I wanted to write something that would ameliorate the tensions between the black community and the Jewish community. And I thought one way to do it would be to explain each to the other. And that is how I got into writing it the way I did. I didn't know when I set out That I was going to write the book that emerged. I had written the short story that you described about this man who's found. Excuse me, who's found fiddling in a New York subway station. And that got published. And the question then came to me, how did he end up in that subway station? And I didn't know the answer. But over time, I wrote the book and kept discovering different aspects of his life. In terms of the research that you asked, the truth is I did not do a great deal of research about rural Mississippi. I would say I made most of it up, frankly. I did do a great deal of research into the Reverend Gary Davis, the blues singer with whom he sings on the streets of New York. But I think one of the advantages of starting to write when I was 70 years old was that I had the life experience which really made the need for a great deal of research, much less.

[Alfred Marcus]

Is he actually a real figure then this rabbi, or.

[Howard Langer]

No, he's totally fictional.

[Alfred Marcus]

Totally fictional. Okay, okay. And there's also another novel that's in this genre. I think you're aware of it. I can't quite think of it myself. But do you know which one I'm talking about? It's about a grocery store.

[Howard Langer]

Yeah, the Heaven and Earth grocery store. People say that they're similar, and in fact, that book by McBride won the award that my book won the year before, and it was, of course, very big bestseller, Whereas my book is rather modest that way. But I don't. They're. They're considered similar because they have blacks and Jews in the books together, But I don't think they're really very similar at all.

[Alfred Marcus]

What kind of issues were you trying to ameliorate with regard to black Jewish relations?

[Howard Langer]

Well, you know, I think that there's a perception that there's a great deal of antisemitism in the black community and certainly know that there's a certain. I don't know what the word is. Patronizing or denigrating aspect, often of blacks by Jews. And I thought that both of those could be bridged by explaining each to the other.

[Alfred Marcus]

What is the message that you would want to get across from one community to the other?

[Howard Langer]

Well, in my book, the people relate to each other as individuals, not as groups. And that's very important. It's when people start looking at one another in terms of groups, and if I look at someone as a black rather than as a person or as a Jew or as a Christian or as a Democrat or as a Republican, that they become another. If I put it that way. Whereas if I deal with them as just the human being that they are, the relationships are usually much better. So, for example, in my book, it wasn't my intention, but people have said to me all the characters are very kind to each other, except for a couple of exceptions towards the end of the book. And they thought that there was a certain absence of evil. And I said, no, not at all. The evil is lurking throughout the book. First there are the Nazis, who of course destroy the Jews of Europe. And then there's the Jim Crow south and the Ku Klux Klan. So the backdrop of the whole book are two terrible evils. But the relationships in the book are all among individuals and they generally reflect a certain level of kindness to each other. I guess.

[Alfred Marcus]

I think that does exist in the world. Do you have a long term interest in blues music also? The music?

[Howard Langer]

Not really. Not really. People think that I'm now an expert in the blues. In fact, some of the reviews did that. The fact is that I became more expert in the blues because I thought I was going to have some copyright issues with the Reverend Gary Davis's lyrics. And I then went on a search for lyrics in the public domain that I could substitute if I had to. And I listened to a lot of blues at that time. But no, I had this record of Gary Davis at Newport, which was probably something I got when I was in college. And when I was writing the book, I thought it would be interesting for a Hasidic rabbi to be playing his music together with someone like Davis. So I took the record off the shelf, listened to it, remembered that I really found Davis in acquired taste back then. And I hadn't acquired the taste, but I subsequently listened to vast amounts of his music and he became an important character in the book.

[Alfred Marcus]

Why would a conceded Rebbe be attracted or his music be similar in some way to Davis's? What is the connection?

[Howard Langer]

Well, I don't think their music is similar. He ends up. It was really an experiment for me to put him together with Davis and to see what would emerge. A lot of the book were experimen like that. And what emerged is that they actually had somewhat different music in terms of the purpose of their music. Gary Davis played on the streets for over 20 years. He was discovered at a certain point and actually was lifted from poverty because Peter, Paul and Mary had given him credit for one of their reading songs, if I had My Way. But for some 20 odd years he sang mainly gospel more than blues on the streets of New York trying to bring people to Jesus. And by contrast. And the words of his music are very, very important. By contrast, the protagonist in my book, the Hasidic Rebbe, doesn't use words at all in any of his music. His music is a direct prayer to God. And it's, as he says very often, it's to remind God what he did to his people. So it's a very different expression, and I only learned that from writing the book, that there could be such differences in music.

[Alfred Marcus]

Is prepared from birth to be a Rebbe, the leader of a small, insular, religious community, and then that community is annihilated. From a leadership perspective, what does it mean to be a leader without followers? And how do you think about this, his sense of purpose after his institution was destroyed?

[Howard Langer]

Well, when I began writing the book, I had two concepts. The one I described already, and the second one was what would it be like for a Rebbe to have no followers? Because in the Hasidic world, the Rebbe first, as you described it, is kind of. How shall we put it, kind of becomes the Rebbe through a kind of primogeniture. And he stands in a position where he kind of mediates between God and his community, or at least his followers believe that of him. So I wanted to see what it would be like for a Rebbe to have no followers, to have lost his mission, and how he would then go through life. And I compare him in the book to a second rabbi who is a real person, the Bhabhava Rebbe, who, after the war at least had some followers who had survived, though thousands of them were killed, and he had a mission that he could still accomplish or fulfill, in contrast to my protagonist, the decrepitzer, who has no body. And they have conversations about that with

[Alfred Marcus]

the Baba Ver rabbi, Or does it. Does Shmuel Meir have conversations in the novel?

[Howard Langer]

Yes, they have very, very, very moving and direct conversations.

[Alfred Marcus]

Are there other Rebbes who failed to reestablish any leadership when they came to, well, after the war?

[Howard Langer]

I don't remember his name, but just two weeks ago, I gave a presentation at a seniors group at a synagogue, at an Orthodox synagogue. And yes, they raised the fact that there was a certain particular Hasidic rabbi who had lost his entire flock, so to speak, and was living for a time incognito, but eventually was himself discovered to be a Rebbe and returned to the Hasidic world, but without followers. But I just don't remember who he was.

[Alfred Marcus]

That process of reclaiming leadership, I guess, it occurred among Satner also. I guess he lost nearly all of his followers during the war. That must have been very difficult for any Hasidic leader.

[Howard Langer]

Yeah. Well, there's a sharp contrast. The Satmer left Europe and left his followers in Europe and survived the war, whereas the bubaver remained in Europe throughout the war disguised as a Hungarian Catholic and saved many people's lives. He was really quite an extraordinary person. But apparently when he came to America after the war, he was quite broken and suffered a serious spiritual crisis, but was persuaded by those rebbes who had survived that he had to pick up the mantle and try and reestablish his sect after the war. And he did, in a grand way. There were 300 Baba ver Hasidim at the end of the war in the entire world after there had been thousands. It was one of the biggest sects in Europe. And when he died, there were 30,000 people at his funeral.

[Alfred Marcus]

Did Shulem have any inclination to do that? Does he struggle with it at all, or has he completely given it up?

[Howard Langer]

He seems to have completely given it up because he believes, you see, he was in the Russian army during the war, and he traveled back with the army from the east, across the Ukraine, back west, and there were no Jews anywhere. They'd all been killed. So that he thought that except for those who were in Palestine at the time and those who were in America who he'd been persuaded were totally different from him, that there were no Jews in the world.

[Alfred Marcus]

What is he say to the Bhavavur Rebbe in the book?

[Howard Langer]

Well, they have. He tries at first, when he discovers that the Bhavaver is still alive, he discovers that by reading about him in a Memphis Jewish newspaper. He immediately travels to New York, and the bhavver is about 10 years older than him. They knew each other. They'd met briefly before the war. And he tries to pour his heart out to the bhavaver. But the Bhavaver keeps telling him, you're the rebbe for the Rebbe. There is no Rebbe. You can't do this. You can't do this. And he is not able to tell him really of his anguish. But they discuss a great deal. The Bhavava tells him about his own background. And later, when the buvovate tries to persuade him to stay in New York and the decrepitzer says, no, I'm going back to my black people in Mississippi. I'm more comfortable among them. And they don't meet again until the Bubavert finds him playing with Gary Davis on the streets of New York years later. And then the relationship grows a little bit more intense, but the relationship actually is more with by then. The decrepiture's wife, his black wife, and the bovver. But the bhavver plays a very important part in the book. He's kind of like the characters in Shakespeare's plays who hold everything together, like Prospero and the Tempest. Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.

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[Alfred Marcus]

how you imagined all this. And this is your first novel. It's quite exceptional that you did it because it's all fictional, the part about the Bovaver. But I assume you also knew him or had some contact with him, is that correct?

[Howard Langer]

The answer is that when I was a very little child, maybe four years old, I lived on the west side of Manhattan and he was then on the west side of Manhattan. And my father occasionally would take me to his little shtibel on Saturday mornings because he knew that I liked the kugel they served there. But all I remember is the kugel. I do not remember the Rebbe at all. My father knew him.

[Alfred Marcus]

But you did a lot of research on him, or some. Enough, enough.

[Howard Langer]

Frankly, it's very hard to do research on people like the Bhubaver and a few of the other characters who are rabbinic in the book, because in their communities, in the ultra Orthodox communities, rather than biography, most of what there is is hagiography. But in the case of the Bhavaver, he lived until the year 2000. He lived to be a very old man. And there are wonderful videos on YouTube and reflections of him. There's a fantastic video of him describing his war experience, but it's all in Yiddish. I had to have a friend sit and translate it for me as I. Because I don't know Yiddish. But it's very moving.

[Alfred Marcus]

Did he leave any writings?

[Howard Langer]

Yes, the Bhavaver left extensive writings. They're in three, four very large volumes. They're mainly his weekly talks to his Hasidim, and they're mainly more transcriptions by people of what he said and I think more than things he actually wrote himself, but that I'm not sure of.

[Alfred Marcus]

Where are the Baba Beers mostly located now? Are they in Brooklyn or in Israel or both?

[Howard Langer]

They're both.

[Alfred Marcus]

Okay. And much of the novel's about work and economic life. Small villages, sharecropping, rural hospitals, the informal economies of music and preaching, free performance in New York. How did you want readers to see the economic structures shaping these characters choices?

[Howard Langer]

Well, I wanted. That was a very important part because in Europe, the protagonist lived in a small town shtetl that had no electricity, no running water, no plumbing, people very poor, raised, kind of subsistence farming and so on. And he's very comfortable among the blacks in Mississippi because they too are basically subsistence farmers living without electricity or plumbing or any modern conveniences. So while the people are different, the world in which they inhabit is very similar to the world that he had in Europe. And it's one of my points of trying to show the commonality between people.

[Alfred Marcus]

It's very beautiful. Throughout the book, as he said, the previously Shmuel Mayor fiddles his prayers and their wordless melodies sometimes in defiance of God. And Reverend Gary Davis, by contract, is portrayed as saving souls for the next world through explicitly Christian gospel. What did you want to convey about the different, quote, business models of spiritual leadership and how they respond to suffering and injustice?

[Howard Langer]

I didn't. I mean, in the case of the Rebbe, yes, he is no longer able to use words of prayer. Words are totally inadequate. And he believes that all of the words. And he holds the entire corpus of Jewish learning in his head. He believes all of those words are false as a result of what occurred in the Holocaust. But he has a firm belief in God. He even has a revelation in the course of the book so that he has objective proof that there's a God. And he plays his music, at least he believes, purely in defiance of God. Though he ritually plays the music three times a day, the three times that Jews would pray during the course of the day. The Reverend Davis I just don't think his music was doing the same kind of thing.

[Alfred Marcus]

Did he save a lot of souls? Did he have a following?

[Howard Langer]

Reverend Davis I don't know. He actually preached every night at a different storefront church. And in the course of the book, there is a sermon that he delivers, which I actually just transcribed from a recording I had of one of his church services. There were people there, but I don't think it was like a big following. I think he probably had a bigger following once he became a folk singer.

[Alfred Marcus]

What does the embalavor say to the Shmuel Meir in their encounter? Does he share some of the same sentiments as Shmuel Meyer? Does he have a different view of the world? Does he confront him in any way?

[Howard Langer]

Well, the Bhavaver Bakras, he's a Rebbe, and because he has a mission that he feels he cannot. I don't want to use the word escape, but cannot throw aside, doesn't have the luxury, so to speak, of struggling with the implications of the Holocaust that the decrepitzer Rebbe, the protagonist, has to deal with because he has nobody left and he has no mission to fulfill. So. When they meet, that's one of the things that Shmuel Meyer, the protagonist, says when he tries to open up to the Baba, where he says, well, you're different. You have followers, you have Hasidim. I don't have any Hasidim. They're all dead. It's a sharp difference because one has a mission to complete no matter what, and the other one doesn't. But he can't escape the fact that he is in some way still a Hasidic Rebbe. Everyone keeps recognizing that about him. Early in the book, when he first meets the Bhavaver, the Bhavaver says to him, you're the Rebbe. You're the decrepitzer. When he meets the rabbi in Mississippi, briefly, the rabbi says, why you are the Rebbe. Or later on in the book, when he's describing the history of the family to his young child, the young child says to him, well, you're the Rebbe. So he can't escape that, but he has no way of fulfilling it.

[Alfred Marcus]

Do the blacks recognize that also?

[Howard Langer]

Well, the blacks call him the Rabbi. They always call him the Rabbi, and they know there's something special about him. I think the most poignant scene in the book is when I try to bring out that side of his personality. There's a deathbed scene where the father of the soldier who saves him is on his deathbed, and he asks to see a Shmuel mayor. And he tells him, you know, that he wants his prayer and that his prayer is very important to him. And he asks him why? And the old man says to him, because you've seen things that are beyond anything that's even in the Bible. You've seen him in a way that nobody in the world has seen him. So your prayer is a special, special prayer.

[Alfred Marcus]

Do you identify at all with Shmuel Mayer?

[Howard Langer]

I think so. I think that he expresses a great deal of issues that I've dealt with over my life.

[Alfred Marcus]

Do you have personal family connected to the Holocaust, or are you.

[Howard Langer]

No, I'm very fortunate. My family was in America since the turn of the 20th century. My father was in the Navy in World War II. I had very different view of the war. You know, my father was served on the Missouri, so he saw the Japanese surrender and was something of the hero in the community. And I had this heroic vision of World War II. And I didn't even learn about the Holocaust until I was in fourth grade. I remember a kid said to me, this guy Hitler had killed his family. I went home and asked my mother what he was talking about, and she gave me a brief description. But it was really only with the Eichmann trial being on television that I really learned about the Holocaust.

[Alfred Marcus]

What year did you sort of discover or have stronger memories or recognition of the Holocaust?

[Howard Langer]

I'm sorry, I don't really understand.

[Alfred Marcus]

When did you really become aware of the Holocaust? What year was it?

[Howard Langer]

I'm just curious when this kid told me about it or when I watched the Eichmann trial.

[Alfred Marcus]

Oh, was it the Eichmann trial? You watched the Eichmann trial on tv? Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think I probably became aware about 1963. I had actually a teacher who was the brother of the Chief Rabbi of England, Rabbi Jacobovitz. And I had this special summer learning, and he laid it out in quite detail. In any case, this is not about myself. But anyhow, the novel portrays organizational and communal boundaries. Lula, who's the Shmuel mayor's wife, knows herself to be a Rebbetzin. Yet the Jewish community in New York spurns her. What were you trying to say about inclusion and exclusion and how communities draw their lines, especially when their own survival has been threatened?

[Howard Langer]

I was looking more towards the isolation of the characters that way, because as you can see in the book, in the first half of the book, in Mississippi, the protagonist is white, and he's, as I mentioned before, called the rabbi by the people in the community. The community's entirely black. He's very much accepted, but he's clearly not of. Okay, but he marries this black woman, and when they get to New York, there's a crisscross, right? Because she's now black and Jewish. And for an interracial couple at that period in New York in the 1950s, she wasn't really going to be accepted into the Jewish community. And the point at which she thinks of herself as the decrepitzer Rebbetzin is when she goes to a large synagogue in New York for services. And the rabbi is very nice to her. He's very accepting of her as they're leaving services, shaking hands, but he's a bit patronizing in her mind. And she just, in her own head, kind of. She doesn't say anything, but she's kind of exploding inside about, you know, don't be patronizing to me. I'm the decrepit Sir Ebbitzin.

[Alfred Marcus]

What does that mean to her to be.

[Howard Langer]

What does it mean to her? That's a good question. It certainly means that she has a certain level of importance spiritually.

[Alfred Marcus]

Does Shmuel Meir instruct her? Does she know much about Judaism? And when they get in New York, do they. Do they regain contact with the Jewish community?

[Howard Langer]

Well, yes, the book is very clear that he's very insistent. He converts her himself. He teaches her before he converts her, he takes her down to the river and sees that she bathes in the river ritually beforehand. And then he marries her. And he marries her totally according to Jewish law. He explains everything to her. There are certain flaws under Jewish law, and what happens because there aren't any other Jews around for him to do it. Quite right. But when they get to New York, she converts a second time in front of the bhava verb. So there'll be no question of the quality of her conversion. And the first thing the bhabhavur says to her is, I don't have to ask you about things Jewish because I know if your husband converted you, you certainly know everything necessary. And I'm forgetting what your question was exactly.

[Alfred Marcus]

Well, we'll just go on, but. So Judaism becomes. Oh, when they come back to New York, how do they re. Establish contact with the Jewish community?

[Howard Langer]

Well, the wife does. The husband has no desire to.

[Alfred Marcus]

Really interesting.

[Howard Langer]

The wife tries, goes to services at A kind of modern Orthodox synagogue. And despite the rabbi's efforts, she's just not accepted and so isolated. And they eventually wind up living on a chicken farm in. In South Jersey, more or less by themselves, actually.

[Alfred Marcus]

I think a lot of those chicken farms. There were a lot of Holocaust survivors who had chicken farms. Is that correct?

[Howard Langer]

Correct. And the irony is that the other farmers first denigrate her when she goes to their service, and they try to spread the word that the chickens aren't really kosher, that they slaughter because they're a black couple that's raising the chickens. So you have an irony that the only people who are really unkind in the book are these survivors in South Jersey. Who are the other chicken farmers?

[Alfred Marcus]

They don't have children. Do they

[Howard Langer]

have. It's very important because they have a child, a son. And it's actually when they have the child that there's a cross burning, because it's almost like the child is named Moses. But it's like the story of Moses. He could only be hidden so long, and eventually, apparently, he's discovered. And that leads to the cross burning and they move to New York.

[Alfred Marcus]

Is that why they moved to New York? Because of the cross burning?

[Howard Langer]

Correct. First the husband, and then a year later, the wife and child. And, you know, the. The book ends when the child is about just after the child's bar mitzvah, when he's 13. And we learn from conversation between the wife, Lula, and the brother of a rebbe that the child wants. You know, he wants to be the next Rebbe because he knows that it's. He's in line. He's the next one in line. And she doesn't know what to do. So we don't know in the end. The title of the book is the Last Decrepitzer. But we don't really know in the end whether it's the protagonist who's the last decrepitzer or his son.

[Alfred Marcus]

Maybe you should write a sequel about his.

[Howard Langer]

Well, there's a writer in Harrisburg who read the book who so much wanted me to write a sequel that he was willing to give me an outline of how it should be written.

[Alfred Marcus]

If you wrote the sequel, how would you imagine what the sun's life would be like?

[Howard Langer]

Well, the sun would be coming of age at the period of great black militancy. First of all, late 60s. That's one thing I'd have to grapple with. I only wrote one scene trying to imagine what his life would be like because I went to a Orthodox Jewish High school. And there were no blacks there, obviously at the time I went there, but my brother's class, which was four years behind me, they were going to have their first black student. And I couldn't imagine what life would be like for him in that school. But I wrote a seeing imagining that. And of course, the son plays the fiddle very well, and he's been invited to play at some religious retreat. And he's talking to a friend of his. They're both in high school. And his friend says to him, stop fooling yourself. Where are you going to find a girl to even go out with, let alone marry you? So I've given some thought to it, but it would have been very unusual and very difficult. But maybe I'm working on something else now. If I'm granted a long life, maybe I'll go back to it.

[Alfred Marcus]

These issues still plague the world and the Jewish community, no doubt even in Israel, Ethiopian Jews, their lack of total acceptance.

[Howard Langer]

Yeah, but I think there's much greater acceptance than the interplay of black and white communities in the United States.

[Alfred Marcus]

In Israel, yes. What about in the United States? The situation right now and what these relations. We could get off. Maybe you have a few things to say.

[Howard Langer]

I. I believe that on an individual basis, people get along just fine. The most embracing groups that I've talked to truly have been to black seniors groups. When I talk about my book, yes, I haven't gotten a lot of traction in that community. But those occasions when I've spoken to them, really wonderful. I just did a. It just went online, a podcast with an African American woman, middle aged African American woman, wonderful podcast. So I don't think that there's this pervasive militant antisemitism, but I do believe that in certain circles there is this ugly antisemitism that gets articulated from time to time. But on the other hand, you know, there are segments of the Jewish community that have a rather dim view of black people as well. So I think it's reciprocal.

[Alfred Marcus]

One of the recurring motives is Shmuel Mary's being asked to pray for bodies and for souls by people whose experiences of God and religion are very different from his own. What did you learn in writing those scenes about what people seek from religious leadership in times of crisis?

[Howard Langer]

That's a difficult question. I really only have one scene. When I described to you before, I really have not explored that.

[Alfred Marcus]

So if we translate the story into the language of strategy, Shmuel Mayer keeps adapting his offerings to different constituencies. Black Mississippians, urban New Yorkers. Where do you see him genuinely learning and changing, and where do you see him holding onto an uncompromising core? He's sort of himself, but he changes all the time.

[Howard Langer]

Well, there are two points towards the end of the book where I try to make a point that I don't think anybody actually picks up on, which is he has been playing this wordless music, defiance of God, so to speak, throughout the book. But towards the end of the book, he's in Washington Square in the 50s, which was the big folk scene in the 50s, and he hears Bob Gibson, who was a real person, singing a particular song and tell all Bill. And he's very moved by that secular song which becomes part of his own little repertoire. So that's a movement towards something at the same time. At this very same time in the park, he meets a character who's much younger than him, who's also a rabbi, who is very taken by his music and is himself a musician and says, look, let's get together and play together sometime. And they do. And when they do, he discovers that this person has tried to put words to his music and just explodes and walks out and tells him never to play his music again. So there's some kind of complicated development. I don't think it's something I could articulate to you this way. It's in a book, it's in a novel. It's complex.

[Alfred Marcus]

Is he angry? Shmuel Mayer? Is his defiance anger? Or how would you characterize it?

[Howard Langer]

I think it's. I mean, I always thought of it as anger. I mean, he does the only times. It's kind of funny. He loses his temper only three times in the book. Okay. He loses his temper early. Well, not early in the book, in New York, when he meets another character who we haven't discussed, who is a rabbinic scholar who survived the Holocaust but was in the camps, who tries to explain the Holocaust by telling him that God doesn't intervene. He exists but doesn't intervene. And Shmuel Meir gets very angry at him and says, just because you don't like what he does doesn't mean he doesn't exist. Why don't you just accept that he's done these things and, you know. And twice that comes up in the book in relation to that character when he gets terribly excited, when he voices this idea that God doesn't intervene in the world. On the other hand, later in the book, he blows up at this young man who was playing his music and tried to put words to his music. And the words that he tries to put to these music are words that praise God, and nothing could be more offensive to him than having those words put to his music.

[Alfred Marcus]

You don't insert Shlomo Carlock into this.

[Howard Langer]

Well, he is. He really is. The character that he meets in the park, he's fictionalized. But last week, you know, the. The person interviewing me, the rabbi, you know, he just simply referred to him as Shlomo Karbach.

[Alfred Marcus]

And also, your book is, I think, building on that Chaim Gratis, that famous short story. It's a long short story that he wrote in the movie.

[Howard Langer]

I. I don't think so. I mean, I. It occurred to me that I. It occurred to me, but I don't think so. I. I purposely cut short discussions like that in the book that could occur. I am. Grata is one of my very, very favorite authors, but it's amazing.

[Alfred Marcus]

His work's amazing.

[Howard Langer]

Yeah, but I don't really think I was. We're dealing with similar themes, but I don't think I was harking back to that.

[Alfred Marcus]

When Shmuel Mayer played, who was he playing for? Was he playing for himself? Was he playing for God somehow? Did he have an audience? Who did he conceive his audience was? And how was he relating to that audience? What was he trying to impart?

[Howard Langer]

That's a very good question. It's very complicated. I don't think he would be able to articulate to you exactly why or who he's playing for. But when I say when I had that little Freudian slip, it almost said he's praying for it is a substitute for prayer for him. And he's playing in defiance of God. And there's some point in the book where towards the end of the book, there's a long discussion between two of the other characters, but neither of whom we've mentioned so far, and they're discussing why different people play music. Okay. He says straight out in the discussion, the person who is very close to a Shmuel Mayer, he says, look, he doesn't play for the people around him when he's playing in the subway. He's playing for other reasons, because the question comes up why he still plays the ancestral fiddle, which is a piece of junk, so to speak, compared to the fiddles that he could be playing. And he says, well, he plays that fiddle because it's got his soul, so to speak. So, yes, he plays in places for two reasons he plays that are articulated in the book. He plays in defiance of God to remind God of what he's done. And he plays because that is his heritage. That's all he has left. And he also plays in the hopes that someone will recognize the particular nigunim, the particular melodies that he plays that were of his sect, and he'll find that there was another survivor. So he purposely plays in the subway stations that are in the Jewish neighborhoods.

[Alfred Marcus]

Do people actually recognize this nigunim that he's playing because he's his head?

[Howard Langer]

The only person that recognizes it is the person in the introduction in the prologue to the book who's a student at Columbia of Ethnography, who's just heard the music because it had been collected by someone before the war. And the protagonist is crushed when he realizes that this person is not a member of the sect, but only someone who had heard the music and knew of the music.

[Alfred Marcus]

Can you say a little bit more about defiance? What is it? You know, it's anger. What else is connoted by his defiance?

[Howard Langer]

Well, he tells his son at the end, you know, that I play to remind him of what he did. And it's very complex. I believe that in a certain way, the Rebbe is saying to God, we have this morality, and this morality applies to you as well as to us. And you have violated this morality. And I am reminding you that you have violated this morality. That's very beautiful.

[Alfred Marcus]

So what are you working on now?

[Howard Langer]

I'm writing a book about a family in the post war period on the west side of Manhattan. So, you know, obviously bears a lot of resemblance, but it's totally fictional to, you know, the period in which I grew up.

[Alfred Marcus]

Was it hard to make. You were a lawyer by training. Right? And you. You really accomplished an enormous amount as a lawyer. Was it hard to make this transition? Are there connections between being a lawyer and writing fiction?

[Howard Langer]

The answer is yes, there was some connection. But I always wanted to be a writer. I had a very, very. I'm still a lawyer. I've had a very fulfilling career as a lawyer. I've always been a plaintiff on the plaintiff side in commercial matters, class actions. My own field was antitrust and consumer law. My biggest case is a case in which I got $200 million returned by a bank to poor and elderly people who've been defrauded by telemarketers. And, you know, I had a career like that, but I always wanted to be a writer. And I won awards when I was in college for my writing, but I didn't feel like I had anything to say. And I saw this presentation by the writer George Saunders during COVID on writing. And I've said this a million times already, but he said, if you want to write, you gotta stop thinking about it, you gotta stop talking about it. You have to sit down at the table and start writing. And I started writing the next morning. I said, I'm 70 years old. If I don't start, I'll never start. And it wasn't a difficult transition. I found this book just flowed. I mean, I later got an editor and improved it and so on, and went through many drafts. But the story itself, even though I didn't know the story when I started writing, I only knew the ending, which was a short story that I'd written. I had no idea how he got there. And in fact, I was mistaken in terms of where I thought he was going to end up getting there. It turned out quite differently.

[Alfred Marcus]

What did it actually take to write the book?

[Howard Langer]

It took about a year from the time I sat down until I had the story told in a manuscript. Then it took me about a year of editing it. And then I got myself an editor and I would say it took another six months because she gave me very, very concrete ideas about how it could be improved.

[Alfred Marcus]

A big deal to write a book. Many people, including myself, have these fantasies that someday I will write a novel or a memoir of some kind, even a semi fictional. So it's amazing accomplishment that you really do.

[Howard Langer]

Well, I was very lucky on the one hand, maybe lucky in the way someone said to George Orwell when he was in the hospital after he'd been shot through the neck during the Spanish Civil War, you're a very lucky man, Mr. Orwell. If that had been a fraction of an inch over, he'd be dead. And Orwell said, no, if I were a lucky man, I wouldn't have been shot through the neck. And it's the same thing here. Nobody would publish my book. And Cresham Press is basically a creation of my own that I put together. And it was only if I hadn't won this National Jewish Book Award for the book, I think it would have just languished in obscurity.

[Alfred Marcus]

Is cresem doing other books? Are you thinking of expanding its.

[Howard Langer]

I've thought about it because I've. Because we created the website and everything else. We've gotten a couple of inquiries by writers, but. But I, you know, I can only do so much at this point in life. Creating another publishing company in addition to writing, being a lawyer, be a little

[Alfred Marcus]

bit much as a business strategy professor. I would say book publishing is not a Good industry to participate in at this moment in history.

[Howard Langer]

Well, you know, that's what you say. But in fact there are a vast number of books being published and I'm overwhelmed at the competition, so to speak. Like my book is published, is printed and distributed by Ingram and Ingram publishes on its single day 100,000 books. Wow. New York Times, I think gets as many as 600 books, either a week or a day, I don't remember sent to them. So the number of things being written is really mind boggling. I don't know the number of books that are on Amazon, but I'm sure if you. Well, you can see that it's in the millions because they give you the rankings. So it's. People are reading books.

[Alfred Marcus]

I hope so. My son and daughter in law are book review editors and I know they get hundreds of books because there's so few reviews that are actually done and they have to be very selective in what they can actually do. So this has been a great interview. The novel is really fantastic. It's very absorbing. It's actually done very well. Isn't that. I think you're. I just looked on Amazon. I think you're one of the top selling novels, Jewish novels right now.

[Howard Langer]

I don't know. The funny thing is it's been the top seller in the Kindle Blues category from time to time. But I think that's a very thinly, very thinly traded category, so to speak.

[Alfred Marcus]

Yeah. Just as an aside, sometimes I think it is kind of accidental what we actually do with our lives to some extent. Because sometimes I think I would have loved to have been an attorney like you to go out, you know, go be a plaintiff on the plaintiff side and go after the bad guys. And I used to teach a little bit of tort law. But this has been a great interview. I really enjoyed speaking to you. Howard, thank you for joining me on the cusp between strategy and ethics. The book is the Last Decrepiter from Chris Heilm. Chris Hein cressempress For listeners interested in identity, leadership and the moral pressures of crossing worlds, it offers a powerful fictional lens on the themes we talk about on this show. Thank you for all listening on the New Books Network. If you have comments or suggestions, you can reach [e-mail]. amarcusmn Eduardo Foreign.

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