THE CHASSIDIC TRAUMA UNIT

Abraham Boyarsky • Literary Fiction / Jewish Fiction / Psychological Fiction

Book Description

When Mrs. Batya Herzog calls the Chassidic Trauma Unit from a Walmart on Décarie, frantically screaming about her husband Binyomin, the phone goes dead — and Sender Pleskin, founder of the Unit, arrives to find Binyomin's body hanging by a belt in the men's washroom. What follows is a masterful exploration of faith, community, and the crushing weight of orthodoxy in contemporary Montreal.

Sender Pleskin navigates the impossible distance between the insular Bubmer Community and the secular world beyond its walls — a world of smartphones, libraries, and dangerous questions. As the rabbis scramble to rewrite Binyomin's suicide as a \"terrorist attack\" to permit burial in a Jewish cemetery, Sender confronts the deeper tragedy: a young father of five whose innocent desire to study psychology became a transgression his community could not forgive. Meanwhile, a teenage boy lies in an unexplained coma at the Montreal Children's Hospital, and Sender finds himself drawn toward a barmaid whose compassion he first noticed at the boy's bedside — pulling him further from the world he's sworn to serve.

THE CHASSIDIC TRAUMA UNIT is a novel of extraordinary compassion and dark humor — a portrait of a man caught between divine calling and human longing, between the suffocating embrace of tradition and the terrifying freedom of the secular city.

Recognition

• Gerald Lampert Memorial Award (1982, for Schielber)
• Toronto Jewish Literary Prize (1992, for The Number Hall)

Author Bio

ABRAHAM BOYARSKY is the author of several novels including Schielber (1982), for which he was awarded the Canadian League of Poets' Gerald Lambert Memorial Award; The Number Hall (winner of the Toronto Jewish Literary Prize, 1992); The Ratcatcher (2006, Oberon Press); Inverse Images (2010); A Gift of Rags (2015, Lester Publishing); The Chassidic Trauma Unit (2016, 8th House Publishing); Through Shadows Slow (2019, 8th House Publishing); and The Ballroom (2026, 8th House Publishing). He has also published a number of short stories including the collection A Pyramid of Time, and several seminal books on mathematics. He lives in Montreal, where he taught mathematics at Concordia University until his retirement.

Book Details

Also by This Author

THROUGH SHADOWS SLOW, THE BALLROOM (all published by 8th House)

BUY NOW