The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness: A True Story
Written and Narrated By: Joel ben Izzy
Length: 4 hrs and 35 mins
Drop dead WONDERFUL!!!
Okay okay okay!!!
So The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness isn’t TECHnically Hanukkah, but it’s Joel ben Izzy for freak’s sake and dude! he soooo had me at Dreidels on the Brain! The man is a gifted Gifted GIFTED Storyteller, so let’s just all calm down and let him do his magical heartrending joyous work this Hanukkah season and call it a day, shall we? Er… Make that EIGHT days… and nights…
What happens when a gifted Storyteller gets cancer and wakes up in his hospital bed only to hear himself raspily whisper “sonofabitch”? This man, whose most basic tool is his voice, has lost said voice. Oh sure, it’s not permanent or anything. Might take a few days, or weeks… no longer than two months, tops!
Unless it’s permanent… and it looks like it is.
Through stories from around the world, ben Izzy (Who took his name from his grandfather Izzy, a man like no other to spin a yarn) tells us tales and then weaves his life into them, showing us how he journeyed and became less than a man. This, my dear fellow Accomplice, is a slow jaunt into hell and how ben Izzy (May I call you Joel?) tried in ever increasing amounts of despair, ever increasing amounts of resignation, ever increasing amounts of anger, to find his way back to a sense of self.
From his beginnings as a young Storyteller who sought out another gifted Storyteller as a mentor (Lenny, a crusty old fart whose cunning riddles confounded and enlightened the young Joel) all the way to becoming a broken and whispering guy up there onstage whispering stories at a Bar Mitzvah, Joel spins his tales of woe and carefully forged rage. After his spectacular failure onstage, he’s further embarrassed by this old guy who screeches at him, hey I know you! whadda ya? you don’t talk? you don’t say hi to an old friend?
It’s Lenny, in Joel’s life again, this time even more a drunk, this time with even more riddles, but also with guidance that just miiiijiight set Joel on the right path again.
It’s drop dead gorgeous and heartbreaking and profound, let me tell you. In Joel’s broken state, he starts unspooling himself, finding himself in the riddles, the zen-like stories, that Lenny casts at him. He learns that his life is like that of the Lost Horses—Every blessing can be a curse, every curse can be a blessing. When life closes a door, a window is opened.
Soon Joel is finding himself by stepping oh so gingerly through that window that was opened when Life grimly slammed the door shut. Silence. There is no such thing as total silence, for within it is such beauty, say the sound of his children’s voices, the melodies that his wife has taken to singing to the children at bedtime since he can no longer give them stories in bed. There’s the laughter of Lenny, there’s the whisper of a gentle breeze. There’s a profound sense of love throughout it all, and isn’t life just grand?
Naturally, I started getting twitchy about two hours into this barely 4 1/2 hour audiobook because OBVIOUSLY at some point (I mean, the man is narrating this himself!) he gets his voice back, so when does it happen? Nope, it’s a slow grief-stricken slog.
Until it isn’t. Until it becomes about Joel becoming a better man, a more grateful man, a man who listens when his dying mother unpacks all of her own grief-laden suitcases and tells him her own stories, that of a woman who once had dreams, saw them die, then came to make do, thanking Life for all the open windows.
And yeh yeh yeh, I’ll tell ya here and now, it all ends with the brightest, most grateful of Hanukkah celebrations as the ben Izzy family comes together, singing and loving in the best way possible.
No, this isn’t TECHnically a Hanukkah audiobook, but oh my good golly gosh, am I soooo glad December 10, 2020 had me choosing this! Right now, when we’re all yammering about Pandemic Fatigue, let us all sit back and listen to this and think of all the beauty that fills out Silences. Oh what glorious stories from around the world, oh what glorious stories ben Izzy has pulled from the sorrows of his life, oh what glorious stories we might craft from our own!
L’chaim!!!!
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