Leaving Egypt

About the Book

Leaving Egypt takes place during the nineteen fifties in Cambridge, Boston and New York City, but behind its events lies the Bible's story of the ancient enslavement of the Jews in Egypt and their exodus to freedom. More than fifteen years since the end of World War II and the revelations of the horrors of the death camps and the crematoria, no one wants to think about the Holocaust. Bruce, a Jewish student at Harvard, decides that being a Jew has no meaning for him. He falls in love with Anne, a Radcliffe girl who seems to be almost his mirror image. But she looks critically at him, sees his evasions of reality and rejects the life he has chosen. She leaves him behind as she begins a voyage of self-discovery and learning. On the way she meets Daniel, a medical student connected to his Jewish identity. When she descends into the depths of Widener Library where the history of the Holocaust lies hidden in dusty, neglected books, one poignant photograph dramatically and shockingly connects her sorrow for the lost Jews to her love for Daniel.

About the Author

Judith Civan studied English literature at Radcliffe and went on to earn an M.A. in the same field at Columbia. She worked as a reporter and feature writer at the Newark Star-Ledger, and later wrote a column on personalities in Jewish history for the New York and Washington Jewish Weeks. She is the author of "Abraham's Knife: the Mythology of the Deicide in Antisemitism", a literary and historical study of the origins and ramifications of the deicide accusation, and "Leaving Egypt", a novel.