Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

The summer filmclub ended on Wednesday. The ten movies were altogether seen by 82 people. Each occasion was announced in a blog entry and after the event summarized in another one. The table below provides a full summary of our series. I am happy to announce that six of the movies shown are available for borrowing on DVD. I just created a new webpage that lists all of our DVD offerings, including these new additions.

Some of you might have read Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer. (If you did not, I recommend it; we have a copy. This was the first book that won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.) In short it is a story of a man in prison between 1904 and 1907, who is falsely accused and convicted in Tsarist Russia fueled by anti-Semitism. To a large extent it is the fictionalized version of a true story of Mendel Beilis. Ezekiel Leikin’s “The Beilis Transcripts: The Anti-Semitic trial that shook the world” contains both (the English translations of) the actual transcripts of the case and provides historical analysis to gain a better understanding of the context.

Instead of trying to describe the content of the book with my own words, let me quote it:

On March 20, 1911, the mutilated body of a twelve-year-old boy was discovered in a cave near Kiev, Russia. In reaction, a vicious anti-Jewish campaign was launched in the Russian press against the Jewish community, accusing the Jews of using human blood for ritual purposes. Although a police investigation pointed to a gang of thieves, pressure from anti-Semitic organizations led to the arrest of a Jewish scapegoat, Mendel Beilis, the superintendent of a local factory.

The Beilis case attracted worldwide attention, inspiring protests and public outcries by political leaders, artists, clergymen, scientists, and many others throughout Europe and the United States. Beilis was imprisoned for more than two years. After deliberating for several hours, a jury composed of simple Russian peasants found him not guilty.

The Beilis trial had been engineered by high officials in the czarist hierarchy and reflects the maladies and misadventures of Imperial Russia before its collapse in the 1917 Revolution. Beilis was-in a very real sense-a scapegoat of extreme forces, including the rabidly anti-Semitic ‘Black Hundred’ which held sway over Russian body politic under the last czar, Nicholas II.

It was only in the aftermath of the Revolution in 1917 that the archives of Imperial Russia were opened to public scrutiny. These declassified documents revealed the full scope of the conspiracy and how leading ministers of state were involved in staging the trial in a way that would malign Judaism and the Jewish people.

Even the last filmclub evening of the season provided me with learning opportunity. I got so accustomed to the assumption that the multipurpose room would be available that I forgot to check and reserve it in advance. When I arrived to the shul there was a meeting there. I would like to thank the nursery school that they cut short their PTA meeting for us. They were supposed to have the room till 8 PM but for our sake rushed through their agenda and finished by 7.30. Thank you for being flexible. This slight delay, as it took me a few minutes to set up the room, allowed the visitors to check out the library. Some of them have never been there so it turned out great.

I would also like to thank Ann, who brought a big bag of fresh, delicious and cooled tomatoes from her own garden. As the building was rather hot, it was the coolest refreshments we had and it sure felt great. Ann also mentioned, just like some other patrons, that she likes comedies. I will keep that in mind as much as I can when planning the next season, starting in January.

At the end seven of us watched Keeping up with the Steins, the last movie of our season. For the fall, for your big screen Jewish movie needs check out the JCC’s (Thirteenth Annual) Jewish Film Festival, starting September 23.

We have two new academic history books on Canadian Jewry. I would like to introduce them side by side because they cover almost exactly the same era and area. I copied the descriptions from the books’ flap. Short excerpts from both books, covering more or less the same topic, are also included so you could compare which author’s writing style you prefer.

Author(s)	Sheldon J. and Judith C. Godfrey	Gerald Tulchinsky
Title	Search out the land	Taking root
Subtitle	The Jews and the growth of equality in British Colonial America 1740-1867	The origins of the Canadian Jewish community
Published	1995	1993
Cover
Pages	396	341
Major parts	Setting the stage Act One: British North America, 1749-1790 Act Two: British North America, 1791-1860	Old subjects in the new province, 1760-1846 Foundations, 1847-1882 The emergence of a national community, 1882-1900 The East European era, 1900-1920
Description	Mapping the history of Canadian Jews from the arrival of the first settlers before 1750 through to the 1860s, Search Out the Land introduces a new set of colourful players on Canada’s stage. Ezekiel Solomons, John Franks, Jacob Franks, Chapman Abraham, Rachel Myers, Moses David, Samuel Hart, Elizabeth Lyons, and a host of others now take their appropriate place in Canadian history. Focusing on the significant role played by Jews in British North America in the fight for civil and political rights, the authors compare the development of Canadians’ rights with that in other British jurisdictions of the time and set the contribution of Jews within the context of other minority groups, including French Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Quakers. Using extensive archival, genealogical, and legal research, the authors prove that settlers other than those of British and French origins were building, exploring, and developing Canada from its inception.	Jews seeking a new life in Canada faced problems beyond those of other immigrants. Farm colonists often lived in communities too small to afford a rabbi or ritual slaughterer, or even to form a minyan for worship. In French Canada, Protestant and Catholic school boards battled over who was responsible for educating Jewish children. In the cities, the socialist philosophies of Jews fleeing the poverty and oppression of Europe were anathema to aggressive New World capitalists. And when suspicion or resentment arose, there was always someone to revive the old anti-Semitic slurs and myths. Taking Root is the meticulously researched record of how Canadian Jewry coped with these obstacles, and flourished despite them. The book covers the 160 years from the beginnings of the community in the 1760s to the end of the First World War, including the great European upheavals that forever changed the lives of the Jews of Eastern Europe and their migration to Canada. Canada’s Jews took root in a nation with a distinctive history, political structure, and cultural diversity. Gerald Tulchinsky weaves the threads of Canadian Jewish history into the wider Canadian fabric, and shows how the unique character of this history reflects the political, economic, and social development of the country. Drawing on letters, synagogue records, diaries, newspapers, and biographies, as well as a host of archival sources, Tulchinsky makes Taking Root not just a historical account, but a very personal one.
Excerpt	Page 76 In Halifax, Jews were allowed to become shopkeepers engaged without restriction in retail trade, at a time when “two strange Jews” were not allowed to set up shops in Albany without being naturalized. Thus, in these early years of the colony, we find Isaac Levy and Nathan Nathans “Joyntly concern’d in the Trade of the Shop” as Nathans & Levy until Levy’s death in 1751. Abraham Andrews, an alien and a Jew, was maintaining a shop that sold to the public in 1752, and Mordecai Jones and John Franks were described, respectively, as a “shopkeeper” and “retailer. ” Indeed, if one takes account of the very high percentage of court cases in which Jews were involved - some 20 per cent of the total in peak years during the 1750s - it seems clear that the Jews formed a significant portion of the settlement’s merchant community, even though they constituted no more than one per cent of the population.	Page 82-83 Considerable numbers of Jewish traders arrived in Halifax shortly after it was founded in 1749, as a British naval and military counterpoise to the massive French bastion of Louisbourg. A number of Jews moved there from Newport, Rhode Island in 1751, including Israel Abrahams, Isaac Levy, Nathan Nathans, and the four brothers Abraham, Isaac, Naphthali, and Samuel Hart, “all of whom were sons of German Jews, who had settled in England.” By the 1750s there were many Jews among the army and navy purveyors and the merchants who supplied the civilian population, which numbered 4,000. Israel Abrahams and Nathan Nathans were New Yorkers who moved to Halifax in 1752.  A cemetery was acquired and some sort of community was established. The Jewish presence continued in the Nova Scotia capital into the 1760s, but the community gradually died out as trade with New England dwindled following the Non-Importation Agreement of 1765. The outbreak of the American Revolution temporarily ended the trade between Halifax and the American colonies; the cemetery land was appropriated for a provincial workhouse.
Extras	6 tables 46 illustrations/photos 110 pages of notes 26 pages of bibliography 18 pages of index	List of abbreviations 20 illustrations/photos 46 pages of notes, including bibliography 12 pages of index

The library received recently two books on the relation of Judaism and science. Old Wine New Flasks: Reflections on Science and Jewish Tradition by Roald Hoffmann (a Nobel-prize winner scientist (Chemistry) and a poet, philosopher, playwright) and Shira Leibowitz Schmidt (Israeli engineer, mother, and teacher) is a unique book both its content and its format. It shows how science and religion intertwines with each other to help shape human understanding. The book discusses “how authority is conferred and contested, what it means to be impure, whether humans have aright to dominate the environment, and the difference between natural and unnatural.” Those who are used to the style of academic books are in for a surprise. The body of this tome includes letters, emails, a play, transcripts and even autobiographical segments. In short the authors address the questions in holistic ways, non-linear fashion, similarly to the complex nature of the subject topic itself. Some would call this style Talmudic as on any given page a number of topics are discussed at various length. Lest I forget I have to mention that the book is often humorous and playful; a joy to read if you can follow the mental travels of the authors. The chapter title are intriguing, don’t you think so?

• Is Nature Natural?
• A Sukkah from an Elephant
• You Must Not Deviate to the Right or the Left
• Bitter Waters Run Sweet
• The Flag That Came out of the Blue: A Play in Three Acts and Two intermezzi
• Signs and Portents: No Parking in the Courtroom
• Pure/impure
• Camel Caravans in the Pentagon

In case you are wondering what the title refers, it is a quote from the Mishnah (Avot 4:29), “Look not at the flask, but at what it contains. There may be a new flask full of old wine, and an old flask that has not even new wine in it.”

The other book’s scope, connecting science and religion is less ambitious, but equally riveting. Miryam Wahrman, in Brave New Judaism: When Science and Scripture Collide, draws on her expertise in both biotechnology and Jewish law to apply the ancient precepts of Judaism to thoroughly modern medical situations. The topics addressed are best covered by showing the chapter titles again,

• Introduction: Bioethics and the Jewish Spectrum Fruit of the Womb
• Be Fruitful and Multiply: Male Infertility Embryonic Stem Cells: When Does Life Begin? Bone of My Bones and Flesh of My Flesh:
• Human Cloning
• The Seven Deadly Diseases
• Designer Genes, Designer Kids Chosen Children: Sex Selection
• TAG A CAT: Jewish Genes and Genealogy I Judging Genes
• Kosher Pork: Brave New Animals
• Treife Tomatoes: Brave New Plants : When Science and Scripture Collide

In each of these chapters, she introduces us where science stands now and what might be possible in the future. She also shares what classical Jewish sources (can) say about these topics. She cites hundreds of sources and not just from science and halacha, but also from popular press to convey common approach on these issues. It is a thought-provoking, comprehensive survey that does not necessarily provide clear cut answers, but helps to ask the right questions.

Now that the Olympics are over in Beijing I feel more comfortable recommending two Olympics related items. In general Jews did rather well on Olympics both before and after the state of Israel was established. Unfortunately the items we have do not celebrate these accomplishments, but commemorate two stark Olympics. First we have a picture book on the Nazi Olympics, Berlin 1936, by Susan D. Bachrach. It was published by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. We learn from 130 pages and through hundreds of pictures not just how the event looked, but also what went on in the words of politics. It is a serious history book, which details the various constituencies who organized and made the event possible, despite numerous calls for boycott. It also shows how the Nazis used the games fro their own political purpose.

We also have a VHS tape documenting the “1972 Olympics Slaughter at Munich.” It is a recording from 1992 and not the 2005 film by Steven Spielberg. It covers how the Black September group killed 11 Israeli athletes during the games in Munich and then what happened to the terrorists themselves. While we are in the process of getting a DVD copy of the feature film I recommend to check the story’s documentary description.

On August 27, Wednesday at 7:30 PM we will be showing the last movie of the Library’s summer filmclub: Keeping up with the Steins. It is 99 minutes long, PG13 rated, US comedy, with an all-star cast, telling the story of a 13-year-old boy who uses his upcoming bar mitzvah to reconcile the strained relationship between his father and grandfather. The movie is full of jokes, mostly verbal and some physical. But it also has a message, talking about and against taking material outlook onto life too seriously. It is recommend to everybody who had a bar/bat mitzvah or will have one or ever attended one, or thinking of attending. You will laugh with the movie and afterwards will appreciate real life celebrations in a more meaningful way.

Without further due, here is the trailer.

Looks like I still can learn how to project films correctly. This time the movie’s on-screen proportions were not correct. Firs we played it with 4:3 ratio. Then we tried with 16:9, which gave an even more elongated view, so we switched back to the 4:3. According to the DVD’s cover we should have used 1.66:1, but that was not an option. In fact there were no more options on the DVD player. As a member of the audience remarked people are taller in France, so it is OK to see them narrower.

Despite this technical glitch all six of us seemed to have enjoyed Monsieur Ibrahim. Last week our movie (Edges of the Lord) was more Catholic than Jewish, while this week it was more Sufi/Islam. Nevertheless both had one Jewish character as their protagonist, so I feel justified showing them. There are certainly lessons in it we could all use, e.g. “Slowness is the key of happiness,” or “They [the Sufi dervishes] spin around their hearts because God is there.”

Let me share the movie’s poster from the official website, because it shows the atmosphere,

For today’s entry I will shamelessly lift the books’ description from the authors’ website: kleinfoundation.org

On September 23, 1945, Gerda Weissmann wrote to Kurt Klein, “With you I have been able to laugh again as I never thought I could. I guess there is no pain or sorrow that love can’t heal.”

Before then, Gerda had lost everything and everyone… except her soul. In May 1945, barely alive in a Nazi slave labor camp on the German/Czech border, Gerda and her fellow prisoners were liberated by the Americans. When GI Kurt Klein approached her, Gerda led him to the others who lay sick and dying in the bunks, and quoted Goethe: “Noble be man, merciful and good.” And a great love had begun and then forged through a year of letterwriting leading up to their wedding on June 18, 1946.

Their letters, collected in THE HOURS AFTER, Letters of Love and Longing in War’s Aftermath, show the redemptive power of love in the face of tragedy and loss. They reveal a time when the world was beginning again and two young people — made old by the horrors of war — reclaim their youth and discover love.

THE HOURS AFTER is not a book about the horrors of the Holocaust but rather an honest unfolding of passion and vitality. In the shadow of a devasted world, Gerda and Kurt fell in love through their words. THE HOURS AFTER proclaims the beauty and power of letters, made all the more poignant now when the art of letter writing is fading from contemporary society.

I respect the Kleins for their attitude and their work. Through their foundation, “they have created the opportunity for young people to understand the world and translate that understanding into positive actions. The Foundation, which became operational in 1998, promotes tolerance for differences, respect for others and the empowerment of students through education and community service.” I recommend reading their blossoming story through their letters to get an understanding how you can develop a similarly positive outlook of life.

When we think of Yiddish literature most of us recall folktales, stories, novels or poems. We tend to forget the scholarly, religious and political non-fiction literature. This void is filled by the new (for the library) anthology titled Great Yiddish writers of the twentieth century. Its content was selected and translated by Joseph Leftwich in 1969 and we have a later edition from 1987. The thick volume’s 838 pages are filled with 136 essays by over 100 authors. Instead of attempting to cover this vast collection in vain let me just pick one extended quote from Abraham Koralnik’s essay on Jewish humor (page 766)

Jews are a paradoxical people. One would think no other people on earth had suffered so tragically, yet Jews bubble with humor. Everybody knows about the Jewish joke, the Jewish bon mot, Jewish wit, the characteristic Jewish sally. The Russians have great satirists, like Gogol. But when a Russian wants to tell a funny story he brings out a Jewish or an Armenian joke. People laugh at the Armenian joke because it’s so silly. They laugh at the Jewish joke because it’s so intelligent. Both have one feature in common, the point of the story, its unexpected end. Take two typical jokes, an Armenian and a Jewish-both widely known. What, asks the Armenian, is green, hangs on the wall, and sings? The answer, he tells you, is a herring. Why green? Because he painted it green. Why does it hang on the wall? Because he hung it there. And how does it sing? Oh, he put that in only to make it more difficult. You laugh at the absurdity of it. The Jewish story is about a man who had no meat for the Sabbath. But he had a cock and a hen, and he didn’t know which to kill - if he killed the cock the hen would be angry. If he killed the hen the cock would be angry. Well, the Jew decides, what does it matter whether the cock or the hen are angry?