The Old Religion

In 1914 Leo Frank, a Jewish factory owner in Georgia, was wrongfully accused of the rape and murder of a white Southern girl. He was tried, convicted, and lynched by an angry mob. In this searing narrative, David Mamet reconstructs the inner consciousness of this doomed hero, and in the process, powerfully challenges the assimilated American Jews of today by dramatizing the disastrous consequences of Frank's attachment to secular society.Based on extensive historical research, The Old Religion is artistically compelling and intellectually disturbing. Mamet has written a novel that is partly a work of moral philosophy, focusing on the theme of Jewish insecurity in a Christian society and exploring the psychology of assimilation as he seeks to expose the misplaced trust of Jews in a system of secular laws that, he seems to say, is designed not to protect the weak, but to mask our shared impulses toward tribalistic human cruelty.