Book Description

A desperate Jewish mother, living in the Polish town of Shedlets at the end of the 18th century, seeks a cure for her daughter Reina-Haya, who suffers from epilepsy, the disease that has taken the lives of all her other children. The Seer of Koznits sends her to a Jewish goldsmith and Cabbalist in Danzig so that he can cast a magic ring, made of ten gold bands, for the girl. The mother returns to her town accompanied by the goldsmith's son, Shmuel. He puts the ring on the girl's finger, saves her and marries her. Reina-Haya and Shmuel Bergman raise a family and return to Danzig shortly before the rise of anti Semitism in Europe. At the time, a Jewish prostitute called Leah, also epileptic, lives in Danzig. Her lover, Lazer Kochman, steals the ring in order to rescue his beloved from illness and prostitution, and thereby brings disaster on the Bergman family. The theft of the ring is the beginning of a struggle between the Bergmans, an aristocratic Jewish family, and the Kochmans, a family of Jewish prostitutes. The struggle - for the magic ring - lasts for three generations. The son of Reina-Haya and Shmuel, Gershon Bergman, a Zionist thinker, is married to Bella, daughter of a Danzig family of horse traders. Leah Kochman sends Esther, her only daughter, to Buenos Aires, where she falls into the hands of a Jewish pimp who takes her to his brothel. She is raped, imprisoned and forced to adapt to the terrible reality. Baron Hirsch [an actual historical figure] invites Gershon and Bella Bergman to immigrate to The Argentine and establish a network of Jewish educational institutions in the Baron's settlements. In The Argentine, Gershon's homosexual leanings find expression and he is faced with a dilemma in his relations with his wife. Bella Bergman searches for the ring in order to save her relationship with her husband and clashes with Esther, who has the ring. The confrontation between the families does not end in that generation. When the Tzvi Migdal organization is shut down, Esther dies and her daughter Esperansa, the narrator of this inter-generational novel, receives the ring. Bella and Gershon Bergman die and their son Jose, a Jewish doctor, discovers the secret of the ring - and the fact that his daughter Graciella is epileptic. Jose Bergman contacts Esperansa in order to save his daughter from her illness. The tale ends with the surprising union between Graciella Bergman and Flora Gantz, the daughters of the two families who have been quarreling for three generations over one ring."