K'tia, A Savior of the Jewish People
by Roberta Kalechofsky
pbk. 264 pgs
Description
This is a collection of fourteen short stories that trace the inter-relationship of Jew, pagan, and Christian from the time of Augustan Rome to the present. Many of the stories are based on real incidents.
The story of K'tia is a good example of this. "K'tia" is a codeword the Talmud used to refer to the Roman senator, Flavius Clemens, nephew to the emperor, Domitian, and in line to be emperor himself. The word means "the cut one" or the "circumcised one" and seems to refer to the fact that Flavius Clemens had converted to Judaism.
A theme of most of the stories is the impact of the "megalomaniacal" impulse in human beings and its impact on history from the time of Caligula to Hitler.