Reviews of: Every Man A Slave

This riveting account of the genesis of American racial inequality portrays slavery in the traditional Biblical model, which ennobles self-realization. It considers the master as duty-bound as his servants, in contrast to the dehumanizing Roman practice. Echoing the Kuzari by clarifying the philosophical core of Torah Judaism in dramatic interplay with its imitators and detractors, the author provides thought-provoking insights into the debate over the means and purpose of Jewish survival.

Rabbi David Shapero
Ohr Somayach Detroit

There are certain writers who mobilize words into a tapestry of style and substance, pace and rhythm, alas, ideas and ideals. Though bracketed between the years 1807-1862, Sender Zeyv transports the reader into a fictional journey that at once poignantly captures and imaginatively transcends the immediacy of this fifty-five year timeframe. At its core, this is a story of “coincidence of opposites” and shared destinies: the one Black and the one Jewish. Slavery, its institutional setting in formative America and its human and humane parameters as set forth in Judaism’s Torah becomes the conceptual and very real groundwork of this penetrating narrative. Sender Zeyv carries the reader into a realm that abounds with the moral and ethical, with the political and philosophical, with the racial and religious. Every Man A Slave, as penned by Sender Zeyv, manifests R. G. Collingwood’s piercing insight: “as works of imagination, the historian’s work and the novelist’s do not differ.”

Dr. Emanuel Goldman
Educator, Baltimore, Maryland

A heroic work of fiction that reads like history, Every Man A Slave, Sender Zeyv's chronicle of the unique, generation-long relationship between a black slave and his observant Jewish master gives life to the Torah's charge to the Jewish People to be "...a light unto the nations." His meticulous historical research and attention to the politics of slavery of early 19th century America, interwoven with The Torah's laws regarding the humane treatment of slaves, is the framework upon which the story is constructed. It is a must read for everyone, regardless of ethnic background or race.

Sheila Abrams, Editor
The Jewish Press