Joseph Skibell Books in Order

After German soldiers kill his village's Jewish inhabitants, Chaim Skibelski rises from their mass grave and wanders the earth. Accompanied by a rabbi transformed into a crow, he seeks understanding in an unsettling, miraculous afterlife.

Musicologist Charles Belski struggles with marriage, fatherhood, and guilt over abandoning Jewish religious practice. A dream encounter with his ancestor intensifies his attempt to reconcile inherited obligations with the secular life he has chosen.

Young doctor Jakob Sammelsohn falls for one of Sigmund Freud's patients, who may be possessed by his dead wife's spirit. His pursuit of love becomes entangled with psychoanalysis, changing European ideals, and his own troubled history.

In personal essays, Skibell explores family relationships, uncertain memories, and the ways imagination shapes ordinary experience. Encounters involving his father, relatives, a telemarketer, and an elusive guitar blend comic incidents with reflections on affection and loss.

Skibell approaches the Talmud as a novelist, assembling scattered accounts of its rabbis into six connected narratives. His interpretations examine human fallibility, spiritual aspiration, and the continuing relevance of ancient stories to contemporary everyday life.