A Fantasy Novelist Imagines a Great Jewish Exile, and a Jewish Rebirth

Robert Nathan (1894-1985), an American Sephardi Jew whose ancestors had first come to America before the Revolution, was a prolific author of fiction, most of it with supernatural themes. Although little remembered today, his work was very successful in the first half of the 20th century. In 1935, he wrote Road of Ages, which imagines a massive caravan of Jews—having been expelled from Europe, Palestine, and everywhere else—making their way to a safe haven promised them in Mongolia. Michael Weingrad writes: