Description
Description
In her memoir My Father, the Messiah, Gil Hochberg traces a father-daughter relationship as it transforms across decades--from intense closeness in childhood to a fraught distance as Hochberg's father Yossi becomes increasingly convinced that he is the Messiah. After building a career as a statistician in the US, Yossi returns to Israel and becomes an avid Zionist, while having several psychotic episodes. Hochberg reconstructs her relationship with her father through an archive of letters between the two, as well as her father's personal writings, painting a tender portrait of the non-normative family life within which Hochberg's queer identity unfolds and a heart-rending account of her father's mental decline. Hochberg crafts a powerful story of intimacy and loss that dovetails with sea changes in Israel's religious and political environment since the 1990s.
About the Author
About the Author
Gil Hochberg is Ransford Professor of Hebrew and Visual Studies, Comparative Literature, and Middle East Studies at Columbia University. She is author of Visual Occupations: Vision and Visibility in a Conflict Zone, Becoming Palestine: Toward an Archival Imagination of the Future, and In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"A powerful account of watching a loved one descend into mental illness and the messy, emotional process of retroactively trying to come to grips with a parent's life and legacy. It's an insightful portrait of one woman grappling with the weight of personal history."--Publishers Weekly "Over the course of the book, the interplay of various elements of Hochberg's and her dad's lives yields a compelling portrait of someone slowly coming to terms with the death of a loved one. Readers who have dealt with similar tumult in their own lives will likely feel a strong connection with this work. Those with a specific interest in Jewish history and culture will also treasure the book as a deeply reported account of late-20th-century Jewish life amid various social upheavals. A compelling and well-crafted family portrait."--Kirkus
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Duke University Press
Pub date:
2026-02-03
Length:
198 pages

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