Jewish Days

By Elias Sassoon

Our protagonist is Artie Shamash. The story explores his conflicted persona. How did that persona, his role identity develop? What is the mechanism involved that shapes each of us? The novel seeks to understand by through Artie Shamash’s life. On its face, the book’s a study of a man born into a world of secular Judaism and its assimilationist trend in America; we see the stress this creates. On another level, the theme is more universal, how each of our identities, our roles such as Christian, Jew, Muslim, American, Russian, German, etc., are nurtured. The novel spins counter-clockwise. It opens with Artie Shamash as the mature-conflict driven adult before examining, in episodic fashion, the subtle and not-so-subtle influences that shaped this alienated soul. Roles we play in life are not internal to the individual. They are fostered upon us by those around us. Are we really free or subject to external influences that mold us into something other than we are? That is a question.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781304878359

Elias Sassoon

Elias Sassoon is the author of approximately, roughly, terminally twenty-five works that include short story collections, novels, poetry collections and non-fiction, essay collections. While producing his writing by night, he has earned his daily wage in honest labor that ranges from professions like teacher/bathroom attendant to a door-to-door bible salesman/fish cleaner and everything in between. Elias continues to work hard, grinding out the words and turning them into literary gems, or if you prefer, literary pearls of wisdom. He lives with his wife, two children and a dog-named Brandon in a suburban area in the vicinity of the great Metropolis known as New York City. There he prepares barbecue dinners for neighbors and friends, roams the area for yard sales, watches flies and other moving insect life die in his backward where he also sits on a metal beach chair deciding on the future of the world as we know it.