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REVIEW: ‘The Last Dekrepitzer’

JL;DR SUMMARY "The Last Dekrepitzer" by Howard Langer, winner of the National Jewish Book Awards Book Club prize, follows Rabbi Shmuel Meir Lichtbencher, the sole survivor of a Hasidic sect exterminated during the Holocaust. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

HolocaustProtestFaithIntegrationPrejudiceHasidicViolinNiggunsJewish Book Awards

Places mentioned

Poland
"Rabbi Shmuel Meir Lichtbencher is the lone survivor of a small Polish Hasidic sect, the Dekrepitzers, who were wiped out during the Holocaust."
Naples, Italy
"through the chaos of postwar Europe, he is also a master fiddler whose niggunimwordless Hasidic melodiescapture the attention of Black G.I.s in Naples, Italy, who bring him back with them to Mississippi after World War II."
Mississippi, United States
"In the United States, Shmuel Meir is renamed Sam Lightup, and he acclimates to life in a rural, segregated Black community where he learns English from the locals, becomes a chicken farmer and shochet (ritual slaughterer)..."
New York City, New York, United States
"Shmuel Meir makes his way to New York City (his wife and son join him later), where he becomes an apprentice to an Austrian Jewish migr, Schiff, the go-to violin restorer for the likes of Yehudi Menuhin and Nathan Milstein."

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Retrieved 2025-11-13 05:30:56 UTC
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