Suicides, Secrets, and Sacred Questions: Reading Beyond the Pain

by Gabor Por · July 11, 2025

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Thoughts on “Here There Is No Why” by Philip Graubart

Pain can be a powerful driving force in one’s actions, both in how it motivates certain behaviors and how it guides actions to avoid further pain. There is so much and such a variety of pain hidden in “Here There Is No Why” by Philip Graubart that it defines the underlying ambiance. If you let it, it could overshadow the plot, the theological and political debate, and the possible learning points of the book. But please don’t let it.

Let me linger on the list of pains, before diving into the theology, politics and growth.

The opening line ( “ru going to funeral”) invokes death, ambiguity, decision-making, past and future. Eventually, we learn whose funeral it was, but the fact that it took a while extended the uncertainty, which is painful for many readers in itself.
On the third page, we learn that the protagonist’s daughter “discovered the hanging body of her own mother, my wife. Suicide.“ With this, we already jump into the heart of the book with multiple suicides at its center. For many, it is a taboo subject, so I appreciate that Graubart was brave enough to write about it, and he didn’t sentimentalize the topic. Instead, he provided a two-pronged approach. Through the investigation of one of the suicides, he guided us through the phases of grief, albeit not in the classic order. There was certainly acceptance, anger, and even a hint of depression. In the denial stage, we got several, rather legitimate suspects, each with their motivation and lack of satisfying alibi, who all may have murdered the “suicide” victim. The other suicide’s aftermath is shown more subtly, and how it influenced the development of the daughter. The reader has to work a bit on figuring out the connections, but they are there.
The title of the book comes from a line of Elie Wiesel’s Night. There a nazi guard–after commiting yet another act of senseless cruelty and Wiesel asked “why”–answered: “Hier ist kein Warum – Here there is no why.” This, the pointlessness of cruelty, is painful not just to the victims, but to any witness or reader with a sense of empathy. The Holocaust as a whole and in its billions of acts is too big to find an answer to the unanswerable question of why. Instead, for Wiesel, it became a catalyst for action, and for Graubart, a starting point for moral and relational clarity.

I made it sound like the book is painful or painful to read. It is neither. It is an excellent prose that sometimes feels like a stream of consciousness (as it is written in first person with lots of internal dialogue), other times as conversational live speech, often reflective, and always emanating a sense of rawness and honesty. I enjoyed the challenge of getting in synch with shifting timelines, sometimes more than one within a paragraph. If you enjoy reading a book with simple, direct sentences that can carry emotional weight and have a multilayer plot, you will enjoy this book.

The most pleasurable aspect of the book for me was the unfolding of the various suspects within the intricate web of Israeli religious and political life. The fractions, their representatives, overlaps, motivations, and hidden and overt agendas were vaguely familiar. Yet I still had to keep a running inner check, whether I am reading non-fiction, depicting real people and organizations, or fictional ones. That is another sign of excellent writing that keeps you guessing and on the edge of your mental seat.

When “there is no why,” the best you can do is to try to enjoy the journey and get the most out of it. It might be a cliche, but reading this book was a journey in itself. Looking for the truth about the death was the force that moved the journey forward, but the spiritual and emotional aspects were just as engaging as the mind and the heart of the reader, aka me. The irresistible draw for the search for meaning was not stopped here. The highest accomplishment of the book was how Graubart weaved together elements of Jewish mysticism, historical trauma, and adolescent angst to create a nuanced portrayal of Jewish-American life in the late 20th century.

P.S. I realize that I did not write about the actual plot of the book, but I know that you can find it from any of the links above or through a quick search.

P.P.S. As I often do I would like to share some of my favorite sentences from the book. For context, read the book.

Ilana was one of those people—like several elementary school teachers I knew—whose voices grew softer yet somehow more insistent the angrier they got. (page 10)
In those few sentences, Lerner somehow mutated through several personas, from the genial, joking grandfather to a biting stand-up comic to a mad, grinning psycho to some creature from hell—an imp, a dybbuk. (23)
But then she spoke about suicide in general—differing motivations, depression, trauma, hopelessness, chronic pain. She mentioned her mother. I was moved and proud. (83)
The smell of the shuk suddenly intruded. Spices, coffee, cardamom, sesame, leather, cinnamon, donkey sweat, church wax, shit, fruit, rotting vegetables, onions, human perspiration. Mixed together, it was not a bad odor. Good, in fact, when you’re in a good mood, when you’re exploring, when you’re young and in love. (151)
“‘Why’ is not the right question,” she said. She touched my finger. “It was never the right question.” (274 – last lines before the epilogue)

The author’s website and Facebook page.

Disclaimer: I have received a digital copy of this book and a small amount from the author, which did not affect my review in any way.

Year first published: 2024

The book's page at the publisher's site