Local author and lawyer Howard Langer joins us to present his debut novel, The Last Dekrepitzer — historical fiction recounting the story of the sole surviving Rebbe of a Hasidic dynasty and his experiences living in a Black community in Mississippi post-World War II. To reserve your copy of the book for this event, please use the “Add to Cart” button on this page.
The fiddler busking in the Columbus Circle subway station in 1965 is the Dekrepitzer Rebbe, the sole survivor of the obscure Dekrepitzer Hasidic sect known before the war for its rebbes’ fiddling. The Last Dekrepitzer follows the life and spiritual quest of Shmuel Meir Lichtbencher, a.k.a. Sam Lightup, from his isolated shtetl in the mountains of southern Poland where he is brought up to be the future rebbe, to the wharves in Naples, where, at the end of the war, he ends up jamming with Black soldiers waiting to ship home. Dressing him in the uniform and dog tags of an AWOL soldier, they smuggle him home to rural Mississippi. He lives for years among the Blacks, speaks Black English, preaches, and plays the blues with the Brown Sugar Ramblers trio. His marriage to a Black woman, Lula Curtin, under Jewish law though forbidden under Mississippi law, results in a cross burning that forces them to flee to Manhattan. There he plays on the streets of Harlem and Midtown with the great blind guitarist, the Reverend Gary Davis, whose mission is saving souls for the next world. Shmuel Meir’s devout wife, the Black Dekrepitzer Rebbitzen, is spurned by the Jewish community. All the while, Shmuel Meir fiddles his prayers in defiance of God. But God gives the Dekrepitzer Rebbe no peace.
Howard Langer grew up in New York. He graduated the City College in 1973 where he had received multiple awards for his short fiction. He received his MA in Literature from the University of Toronto that same year. He graduated the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1977 and has taught there as an adjunct professor of law for the last twenty years. He is a founder of Langer, Grogan & Diver, a Center City law firm frequently recognized for its public interest work. Howard has received awards from Community Legal Services and the Philadelphia Bar Association for his pro bono work. His recovery of over $200 million dollars from Wachovia Bank on behalf of a class of primarily poor and elderly victims of fraudulent telemarketers that the bank serviced remains among the largest consumer recoveries in Pennsylvania.
Howard began writing The Last Dekrepitzer at age seventy the day after attending a Zoom presentation sponsored by the Free Library by George Saunders on the art of writing fiction. While he had published a text on Competition Law and published multiple short non-fiction pieces, it followed a hiatus of fifty years since he’d last written fiction. He has been astonished at the reception the novel has received, including most recently a “Get It” recommendation from Kirkus Reviews.