This week I concluded reading Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon. Great fun, like reading a classic comic book -- tricks, swords, and adventure in the Caucasus Mountains a thousand years ago.

Gradually it dawned on me that there's more to this short tale than "Jews with swords," which, incidentally, is the title Michael Chabon first planned for this novel.

In Chabon's much quoted Afterword, he writes, "maybe it's time to look backward at (Jewish) tradition... and find some shadowy kingdom where a self-respecting Jewish adventurer would not be caught dead without his sword or his battle-ax."

Jews as helpless victims? Not in this book. Gentlemen of the Road opens with the two main characters, Zelikman and Amram, running a little scam at a caravansary somewhere near the southern end of the Black Sea. In cahoots with the local innkeeper they stage a mock-deadly fight, planning to meet in the woods later to collect all bets placed on the outcome. This time the game doesn't work out as planned, and the tall lanky one and his giant African friend must hightail off to the next adventure.

Everything here will remind the reader of any number of classic adventure stories read and mostly forgotten in the days of pre-pubescent youth. The numerous pen-and-ink illustrations seem torn from old Prince Valiant comics, and guess what -- artist Gary Gianni "currently draws the syndicated newspaper adventure strip Prince Valiant." No wonder he was chosen to lushly illustrate this old fashioned tale. Good choice.

Jews with Swords. "When I happened to tell people the name of my work in progress," Chabon writes, "it made them want to laugh... They pictured Woody Allen backing toward the nearest exit behind a barrage of wisecracks and a wavering rapier. They saw their uncle Manny, dirk between his teeth, slacks belted at the armpits, dropping from the chandelier to knock together the heads of a couple of nefarious auditors."

Along more serious lines, I've been reading Jews and Power by Ruth Wisse, the latest volume in the Jewish Encounters series from Schocken Books. Wisse argues that Jews always have been vulnerable, and at the same time improbably strong because of religious and cultural cohesion. She believes not enough scholars have considered the implications of this politics of weakness, and sets out to explore it more deeply.

At the same time I've been dipping into Reza Aslan's history of Islam, No god but God and discovered the multi-layered early relationship between Mohammed and the Jews. Most of this may be old hat to others, but it's new and exciting to me. In the old days, Jews and Muslims not only mostly got along but fought together. Mohammed believed that "Our God and your God are the same; and it is to Him we submit... He who wrongs a Jew or a Christian will have me as his accuser on the Day of Judgement." Jewish documents written during this period refer to Islam as 'an act of God's mercy.'

The idea of Jews as uneasy wanderers in a land controlled by others is a familiar theme in Jewish history. The characters in Gentlemen of the Road fit the pattern. They survive by their wits and courage. Their fighting skills are daunting, but rarely used.

Chabon writes that "adventures are a logical and reliable result -- and have been since at least the time of Odysseus -- of the fatal act of leaving one's home, or trying to return to it again.

"All adventure happens in that damned and magical space, wherever it may be found or chanced upon, which least resembles one's home... you have entered into adventure, a place of sorrow, marvels and regret."

Aired Sunday December 2, 2007 at 10:55 am and Wednesday December 5, 2007 at 1:00 pm

Orders/Information:

Gentlemen of the Roadby Michael Chabon. Ballantine Books hardcover $21.95. ISBN 9780345501745.

Jews and Power by Ruth R. Wisse. Schocken Books hardcover $19.95. ISBN 9780805242249.

No god but God, the Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam by Reza Aslan. Random House paperback $14.95. ISBN 0812971892.

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