Let's Discuss Deep Blue
A virtual bookclub
There’s nothing like revisiting an old classic - or discovering a new favorite that’s been waiting patiently for you for years. Today, eavesdrop on a bookclub-style roundtable discussion about Deep Blue by Meir Uri Gottesman. It’s a startling classic that’s at once emotional, zany, and deeply insightful, with suspenseful twists and turns that will get you hooked, no matter your opinion on angels in novels. Meir Uri Gottesman is known for pioneering his own genre, with vibrant and imaginative stories that bring the hidden world of spirituality to life.
Elijah Schiffman - the larger-than-life sea captain was always playing games. So when his grandchildren heard what their beloved Zeidah left them in his will - was it a game? As Uri realizes that there's much more to Zeideh's games, he finds himself on a seven-year mission that uncovers the secrets, mysterious life, and rich legacy that Zeideh left behind.
Listen in to the lively conversation I had with friends about the book, and then share your own. If you haven’t read it yet, put this email aside until you get your copy and devour it - significant spoilers ahead.
How did our perspective of Zeideh Elijah change throughout the book? How did Uri’s discovery of his grandfather progress, and how did it affect him/parallel his story?
Faigy: My perspective mirrored Uri’s. I don't think that at any point there was a feeling of how could he do this? I think I really followed Uri's journey as the author wanted. I read this book for the first time in elementary school, so I didn't come into it with an adult perspective. But as the book went on, I realized the sophistication of the game and how everything was orchestrated - how it wasn't just a crazy old man. I started to appreciate the depth of what's behind it together with Uri, not before him.
Yitty: We do get some teasers at the beginning of the story, so I was almost surprised the other way. Before we know the extent of Zeideh’s shenanigans, we just know that he's a wealthy guy, and he's giving Uri his Shas, which is clearly a meaningful thing to him. We know that the kollel grandson is his favorite one. So we almost come in from the perspective of Zeideh’s spirituality. And when we learn about the cruise ships and the whole race later, we're already assuming there must be something more to this.
Tova: You don't know exactly what Zeideh is planning on doing, but when you see how Uri trusts his grandfather, that Zeideh couldn't have done something bad to him, it points us very much in one direction. That really colors our feelings toward the grandfather.
Faigy: My feeling about that was different. I appreciated how the author portrayed Uri’s struggle to deal with the reality of the will. In the beginning, he’s shocked, he’s shattered. He doesn't understand how his grandfather could do it to him. He runs to Mr. Bookman (the lawyer), he runs to R’ Klonimus. He says, how could this be? I appreciated seeing that element of struggle where you think things should be a certain way, but this doesn't seem clear or fair.
The characters and emotions are caricatures, and it’s an animated world, a story narrated like a storyteller… Why do you think the story doesn’t cross the border to being silly or zany? What keeps it sophisticated?
Tova: Well, first, let’s put it out there that it does have a bit of zaniness to it, okay? But the conflicts are mature. Both the physical struggles and the internal struggles are things that adults can relate to very easily. The emotions are also things we can relate to, just in a more extreme way, which sometimes even gets us to see them more starkly.
Faigy: The storyline is sophisticated. It has deep feelings, and you’re not really rolling your eyes. You’re able to appreciate the way everything’s playing into each other, so you’re able to sort of overlook how everyone’s a caricature.
Tova: I think that because frum fiction has moved away from this so much, toward such sophisticated struggle and realism, where changes are small and everything is supposed to be reflective of our own little lives, this feels more caricatured…
Yitty: I wonder if part of it is also Meir Uri Gottesman’s tone. He has a certain fantasy-type of world, he wants you to believe you’re living in a world where spirituality exists in the real world. Where malachim are on earth. It’s not abstract—it’s concrete. So part of it has to be that subtle emotions are strong.
We’re used to internal action and external action. There’s something else here - perhaps ‘soul action’. How does the spiritual underpinnings play an actual part in the plot?
Tova: Oh, yeah. I saw that throughout the whole book. I’d overlap it with the internal conflict aspect, I don’t know if we can totally separate them, but we’re really seeing into his struggles, even his struggle to commit to learning. Part of how the author gets away with that is through that little bit of caricature style that lets him go deep into emotion while still having it feel believable. You see the character pushing himself again and again: to trust, to keep going, to wake up every morning and learn. And it's written out so clearly. It’s intense.
Yitty: It’s this cosmic view of the world. It almost feels like the story is told from the perspective of Heaven, and certain actions register big time. Not that it’s actually narrated from Heaven, but it’s being told from a place where what matters are these deep, cosmic things. Usually, a story starts from the perspective of a person’s life, and maybe there’s some theme that emerges. But here, it feels like the story starts from a cosmic idea, and it just happens to be playing out through this one person's life.
What do you think about the ending? Does it feel like a fairytale/ wrapped up in a bow? Is there more significance than just “man suffers and then lives happily ever after?”
Tova: Well, the money is definitely a major part. To me, the ending felt like wrapping it in a bow, which this type of book needed, because it has that fairy-tale style. But it was a fairy tale ending in its own way.
Faigy: Even though it might have been wrapping it in a bow, I think he left it open-ended, and I would like to think that, having watched Uri's struggle, he grew. Throughout the book, we don't think it's so simplistic, “Oh, I was jealous because I didn’t have money, and now I have the money.” It's not so black and white. I think the point of the ending wasn't so much that he got the money as much as the significance of how Deep Blue played a role. Not so much: “Oh, his bank account just grew,” or “Guess what? He can support a hundred daughters and a hundred sons in Yeshiva.” It was about ending the Deep Blue part. Also, Uri’s a simple, temimusdike Yid trying to do the right thing. That part of him being so grounded, so plain-Jane, shvitzing his way through— I think that saved it from a “fairy tale” feeling at the end.
Yitty: One thing I found a little annoying about the ending - you know how the story builds up this mystery about what his grandfather used to call him? It said “Eerie.” I wasn’t even sure how to pronounce it. Was it eerie like rhymes with “hairy”? When it’s finally revealed, it felt like a lot of buildup for nothing.
Faigy: Right! You expect it to mean more. It keeps mentioning how the brothers teased him, and even Zeideh apologizes for calling him that, acknowledging it was a big deal for Uri. But if it’s just that it reminded him of Yerushalayim, why couldn’t his grandfather just say, “Uri, you remind me of Yerushalayim, so I’m going to call you that”? What’s the aura of mystery about?
Tova: Someone has to stick up for the author here!
Yitty: Zeideh’s very into Kodshim, the masechtos concerning the Beis Hamikdash. It’s the only masechta he wrote notes on. A lot of the transformation of the pen and notes happens over Kodshim too. And what about the fact that the son-in-laws were going to Eretz Yisrael?
Tova: His son also got hooked on Kodshim. He wanted to go to Eretz Yisrael because of it.
Yitty: It feels disconnected, but I wonder if there's a theme that we're not picking up on.
Throughout the book there’s a strong theme of speed versus quality, the two boats against each other. One of them is going full force ahead, and one of them is taking it nice and slow. And at the end we find out that was the theme of the whole race. Do you think this plays out in Uri and Yirmiyahu’s relationship? Uri is speeding ahead, Yirmiyahu is taking it slow. And - does the author have an opinion about which of these ways is better?
Faigy: Uri didn’t keep moving because believed that way was better, but because he had pressure to finish on time. His son said, “No problem, I’ll finish shas one daf a day, but I’m also going to come back to these masechtos.” He woke up early to learn those because they mattered to him. That’s the significance of the fact that Yirmiyahu gets the pen running and he's filling in the empty lines of the notebooks with it: he's shvitzing it out.
Yitty: On one hand, Yirmiyahu, the slower one, is rewarded with all the “prizes”—the pen, the discovery of the handwriting. But he’s not presented as an ideal person - the author clearly thinks he’s too intense, unbalanced. On the other hand, Uri says he’s learned the same Bava Basra his whole life, and is now going fast for the first time. So how could you punish Uri for being fast? He's the slow one who was forced to be fast!
Tova: I don't think that the author would have set it up that way. If Uri’s the one we're rooting for, how could we say that Yirmiyahu’s the one the author wants you to favor? The author’s general opinion must be that slow and steady is better, because Deep Blue wins. And look at the book's title! But I don't agree that Yirmiyahu represents that. Maybe Yirmiyahu finding the pen and getting all of the goodies was part of the early struggle that Uri has to deal with.
Yitty: Finding the notes didn’t touch Yirmiyahu because he never had an adult relationship with Zeideh. For him, it was just learning. For Uri, it's a relationship. And he saw his grandfather in one way, so he wasn't going to take the notes seriously. But over time, I think we see Yirmiyahu coming to appreciate his grandfather.
Faigy: And Uri was so surprised at the end when he realized that his grandfather was a talmid chacham. That's not the Zeideh he knew. Yirmiyahu didn't come in with any preconceived anything. It's just: Here's the gemara! Here's the notes! Let's go.
We’re given a matter-of-fact storytelling of the race, before Uri knows what was really going on. How reliable was the narrator of this story?
Faigy: Zeideh had to behave a certain way to play the story along as it was going. The narration of the story was, of course, missing details, because we weren’t supposed to know things then, but I think it did a very good job portraying Uri’s perception of the events at that time.
Tova: I think it was accurate. Even if Zeideh planned the whole competition, he was still on his own boat, and he was really trying to find out if he would win. I do think he suffered humiliation. Do you think he wanted every newspaper in the whole world to be making fun of him? I think that it was a blow to him, even if he was the one who arranged the whole thing.
Yitty: Maybe it proves that the grandfather wasn't very objectively trying to find out the difference between these two approaches. He had one approach, and his whole life until then would be disproved if Deep Blue wins. It's interesting how Uri only knew the first grandfather; the second grandfather post-race was a different person. They all thought he went crazy, but actually, he was just a changed person. But until this whole journey, this whole game, he was never privy to who that person was.
Were there particular moments of the book that surprised you, made you re-read, or made you emotional?
Tova: I struggled a lot over Yirmiyahu being able to use the pen for the first time. It almost hurt me. Why did he get this privilege when we’re rooting for Uri so much? I also enjoyed the race part. I thought that was just plain fun, even down to the bitter end. Here’s this person who we’ve been referencing the whole time in the book, but we never really got to know, and we suddenly are thrown into the biggest act of his life.
Faigy: For me, a moment that made me stop and take it in was after Uri kept going back to Bookman to get the next masechta, and we were taking for granted what his relationship with Zeideh was like. He was figuring out the notes, and it was becoming such a rich experience. And then all of a sudden the next one was empty, there were no notes. His line was, “I feel like Zeideh has died right now.” I think that encapsulated Uri’s whole journey, and how Zeideh was alive with him. It started off as learning for him, and then it became something bigger. First it was the money, then the whole relationship and memories, then the notes, then the pen. And then all of a sudden it was taken away from him.
Tova: It’s the first time we feel it, too. In the beginning of the book, we don’t feel a loss because we start without knowing Zeideh at all. Only then do we feel his loss also.
Yitty: I loved all the moments where the learning was personified. It was a living, breathing human, almost like a character alongside Uri that touched me in a certain way. Also, the lead up to the siyum was really intense, including the freneticism that built up. I was emotional when it got to the siyum, when he went to heaven. It was somehow acting out a very subtle internal thing and making it real and concrete and it felt so rich.
Why do you think Uri experienced the heavenly siyum in a dream, which is then repeated while he’s saying kaddish? It would not be beyond Meir Uri to have the dream happen in real time during the kaddish, and create a more direct correlation.
Tova: There were lines while Uri was saying the kaddish that made me think Uri didn’t remember the dream the next day. At that point we know more than Uri.
Faigy: Yes, the book says that Uri rattled off the names of the sons of Rav Papa, and “He stopped, caught his breath, and smiled. ‘Why do we mention them?’ he wondered. But there was no time to linger. Everyone was waiting.” The dream is a treat just for us, the readers.
Yitty: It's almost giving us the heavenly perspective on everything going on. Here's this little guy, he's working so hard, and in shamayim, they appreciate it. Don't underestimate this guy! Maybe the kaddish is why the ending didn't feel juvenile. Because that really was the ending. It’s almost like two stories are going on at once. There was the practicality of why the will was done this way, and there's the journey that comes to an end with the siyum. But we still have to wrap up the practicalities.
Faigy: We don't see everything in life play itself out like that. We don't get to see the strings being pulled up on high, and it's so easy to forget what we’re really doing. But it's true. So it was such a rich portrayal.
Now it’s your turn! We have some questions for you:
Which is your favorite of Meir Uri Gottesman’s novels, and why?
Why do you think Deep Blue and the author’s other books don’t cross the line into feeling juvenile, despite their caricatured characters or mystical stories?
What do you think was the significance of Uri’s nickname, Eerie, and its connection to the broader plot?
Share your thoughts on one or all of these questions by replying to this email. Can’t wait to hear from you!
(For more book-talk, check out our roundtable discussion about Within My Walls by Leah Gebber.)