Between the Lines: The Last Dekrepitzer by Howard Langer

The Last Dekrepitzer by Howard Langer

Part of Between the Lines: Author Conversations from The Library of JTS

Wednesday, February 4, 2026
7:00 p.m. ET
Online

Join us for a conversation with author Howard Langer about his award-winning novel, The Last Dekrepitzer.

About The Last Dekrepitzer

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 he jams with Black soldiers waiting to ship home at the end of the war. 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, legal by Jewish law though forbidden under Mississippi law, results in a cross burning that forces them to flee to Manhattan. He plays on the streets of Harlem and Midtown with the Reverend Gary Davis, the great blind guitarist whose mission is saving souls for the next world. Shmuel Meir’s devout wife, though she knows herself to be the Dekrepitzer Rebbitzen, is spurned by the Jewish community. Through it all, Shmuel Meir fiddles his prayers in defiance of God. But God gives the Dekrepitzer Rebbe no peace.

Read the Jewish Book Council’s review of The Last Dekrepitzer

About Howard Langer

Howard Langer’s novel, The Last Dekrepitzer, won a 2025 National Jewish Book Award. It is his first novel. He began writing The Last Dekreptizer in 2021 when he was 70 after attending a zoom workshop by George Saunders at the height of the Covid pandemic. Inspired by Saunder’s presentation, Howard began writing the next morning.

Howard graduated the City College of New York in 1977. He obtained a teacher’s degree from the Greenberg Institute in Jerusalem where he had the opportunity to study under Yehuda Amichai and Aharon Appelfeld. He holds an M.A.in English from the University of Toronto. While Howard won awards for his fiction as an undergraduate, he ultimately attended law school at the University of Pennsylvania where he has taught for the last twenty years. His law practice has specialized in protecting the vulnerable. His pro bono work has been recognized by the Philadelphia Bar Association and Community Legal Services among others. His text, The Competition Law of the United States, is in its fourth edition. He has published a number of short non-fiction pieces in recent years in Tablet and the Algemeiner.

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