Reviewed by Magdalena Ball
Ferryman:
The life and deathwork of Ephraim Finch
By Katia Ariel
Wild Dingo Press
ISBN: 9781925893861, Paperback, June 2025
Writing a biography of a person like Ephraim Finch can not have been an easy task. It’s clear from the outset that the man is a local legend, the backbone of the Melbourne Jewish community, and a deeply respected and lauded person. The story is a dance between the concrete and the esoteric, between memoir and biography. Ephraim Finch is former Director of Melbourne’s Chevra Kadisha, death worker, ferryman to the human soul at the end of life, and comforter to the mourner. Ephraim’s journey moves from his Anglican upbringing in Ashfield, his whirlwind romance with Cas, the woman who became his wife, their conversion to Orthodox Judaism, and then to becoming a community leader. Ephraim’s own journey to self-discovery is itself a terrific story, but what really makes Ferryman stand out is the silky, almost surreal quality of Katia Ariel’s writing. Ariel leans into the complexity of biography, its subjectivity, the interpretations, perspectives and gaps to create a delicate and complex portrait that feels true precisely because it doesn’t connect every dot:
I am aware that my portrait of Ephraim is mutable, but with any luck, faithful to his complexity. I am mapping his ethical contours as I go, listening to his words and the reverberations of his actions. It is a relief to know that in some foundational way, I am limited; I will never capture him entirely or definitively. But I would like to capture the bits that collide, the facets of his being that butt up against each other to make sparks. It is these sparks that seem to hold his essence, this lifelong agitator who reveres tradition, this once-outsider who has fought so hard to bring others home, to enfold them in their belonging. (161)
Unlike many of the people who will be reading this book, I did not come to it already conscious of Ephraim Finch’s importance, but reading Ferryman, I could see clearly how universal his work and how immediately relevant to my own life:
He will intone the names of his mother and father. He will weep for them, while knowing the limits of his weeping. He will continue bending, head bowed, holding all the connections in all his body. And I will sense, simply by being next to this softly moving human, the shuddering proximity between us all, the near-misses, the churn of loss and the majesty of memory, the ceaseless current of our arrivals and departures. (11)
Ariel’s research is extensive, incorporating many voices and artefacts including Finch’s own journals, his meticulous archives of those he has cared for, along with interviews, recollections, stories, personal experiences, other books, and items which have been saved. Ariel layers Finch’s stories into the narrative, along with her own story and the story of the book’s making. This creates a complex portrait which nevertheless moves easily between Finch’s childhood, conversation to Judaism, directorship of the Chevra Kadisha, journey to Auschwitz, some of the difficulties he encountered, along with a nonlinear collage that brings in Ariel’s own search for meaning and connection, her relationship with Finch, and the dead and living voices Finch carries. The way he grapples with spirit and tradition feels almost radical:
As I get closer to the end of Ephraim’s story, I am clinging. I feel pre-emptive regret at what I haven’t covered, either through the exigencies of time or through my own shortcomings. I become married to memory, who goes where I go now, my life-giving bride. Ephraim’s stories — early, recent, prophetic, age-old — invade my sleep, they follow me down the street. I dream of shrouds on the bodies of the dead. The wrap of innocence, these rags of light. (220)
So much ground is covered in this book, from the power of ritual in times of grief, to the importance of community, of seeing everyone with empathy, about how connected we all are to one another, the nature of time with all its strange contradictions, and what it means to be alive in the face of our inevitable mortality. Ferryman is an exquisite story told with deep sensitivity. In creating such a mercurial, exquisitely wrought and tender portrait, Katia Ariel has given us all a gift.