02337cam a2200373 4500 1147828383 TxAuBib ||||||s2016||||||||||||||||||||||||und|u 2016007096 9780374280024 hardcover 0374280029 hardcover 9780374938215 open market edition 0374938210 open market edition TxAuBib Foer, Jonathan Safran, 1977-, author. Here I am / Jonathan Safran Foer. First edition. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016. ©2016. 571 pages ; 24 cm. ""A novel""--Dust jacket. Before the war -- Learning impermanence -- Uses of a Jewish fist -- Fifteen days of five thousand years -- Not to have a choice is also a choice -- The destruction of Israel -- The bible -- Home. In the book of Genesis, when God calls out, ""Abraham!"" to order him to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham responds, ""Here I am."" Later, when Isaac calls out, ""My father!"" to ask him why there is no animal to slaughter, Abraham responds, ""Here I am."" How do we fulfill our conflicting duties as father, husband, and son; wife and mother; child and adult? Jew and American? How can we claim our own identities when our lives are linked so closely to others'? Unfolding over four tumultuous weeks, in present-day Washington, D.C., Here I Am is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. As Jacob and Julia Bloch and their three sons are forced to confront the distances between the lives they think they want and the lives they are living, a catastrophic earthquake sets in motion a quickly escalating conflict in the Middle East. At stake is the meaning of home -― and the fundamental question of how much aliveness one can bear. Arab-Israeli conflict 1993- Fiction. Dysfunctional families Fiction. Dysfunctional families. Earthquakes Middle East Fiction. Jewish families United States Fiction. Marital conflict Fiction. Washington (D.C) Fiction. Jewish fiction. Domestic fiction. Fiction.