Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

Deborah Uchill Miller‘s Modi’in Motel, an idol tale for Chanukah combines two places and time periods. On one hand an adult is reading, making up and playing out a story with children at Chanukah in a modern room. On the other hand the children and the readers are transferred back in the days of the Maccabean revolt near Jerusalem. There, in order to support the Jewish soldiers’ fight against the Greek army, they use their wits to disarm and humiliate them. By setting up a “motel” with the sole purpose of making the Greeks uncomfortable, making their horses drunk and via other mischievous deeds they accomplish their goal. While the children have their fun as well.

The pencil drawings by Karen Ostrove are hilarious. I particularly enjoyed looking through each image carefully to find a hidden message. Almost every page has a little note integrated into it, providing additional inside jokes. Because of this I would estimate that this books is best suited for children between the age of 7 and 9. For those of you who are wondering about the title and did not know, the first page explains that the Maccabees came from the village of Modi’in and, yes, some idol smashing happens as well.

The penultimate meeting in SSU’s Jewish Literature Reading and Discussion Series will be this Thursday, November 13. Allegra Goodman‘s Kaaterskill Falls will provide the basis for the lecture and discussion. The book’s jacket describes the work like this:

Kaaterskill is the tiny town in upstate New York where Orthodox summer people and Yankee year-rounders live side by side from June through August. It is the summer of 1976, and Elizabeth Shulman, a devout follower of Rav Elijah Kirshner and the mother of five daughters, is restless. Across the street, Andras Melish is drawn to Kaaterskill by his adoring older sisters, the only members of his family to survive the Holocaust. Comforted, yet crippled by his sisters’ love, Andras cannot overcome the ambivalence he feels toward his own children and his beautiful young wife. At the top of the hill, Rav Kirshner is coming to the end of his life, and he struggles to decide which of his sons should succeed him: the pious but stolid Isaiah or the brilliant but worldly Jeremy. Behind the scenes, alarmed as his beloved Kaaterskill is overdeveloped by Michael King, the local real estate broker, Judge Miles Taylor keeps an old secret in check, biding his time…

I haven’t read the book itself, but read several reviews. Let me share them with you

• At Salon.com Laura Green, an assistant professor of English at Yale ends her analytical summary with these words, “Goodman acknowledges the demands and rigidities of the Orthodox world, but “Kaaterskill Falls” celebrates the safety, comfort and quiet beauty of a community bound by tradition.”
• At the Yiddish Book Center, Judy Bolton-Fasman states that it “is a robust novel with nineteenth-century roots and late-twentieth-century sensibilities.” Besides a very short excerpt, you can find 10 questions there to ponder upon
• Peter Ritter at CityPage think of the book as “a window into the nuanced world of these “summer people,” a group caught between orthodox Judaism and the allure of modern America.“
• Finally, I recommend the publisher’s, Random House site, because you can read a short bio of the author and a longer (but narrowly formatted excerpt from the book there.

70 years ago today a significant shift happened in Nazi Germany’s persecution of the Jews. By the end of the night of November 9 thirty thousand people were arrested and sent to concentration camps, thousands of synagogues and business destroyed. Consequently this night of terror is known as Kristallnacht. The library has three books, listed below with their official description.

Hannele Zurndorfer: The ninth of November

The Ninth of November is the story of the warm and happy childhood of a small girl and her sister, growing up in the Germany of the 1930s in a liberal Jewish family that had for generations been integrated into German provincial life. Hannele Zurndorfer recalls a time when it was still possible, for a child, to be ignorant of the coming dangers of National Socialism. The 9 November 1938 brought home the realization and proof of those very dangers. Kristallnacht, the ‘night of broken glass’ shattered her childhood and the lives of Jews allover Germany, for ever. Hannele Zurndorfer’s lyrical memory and elegant prose present a filigree history of her life before this darkly significant date, tracing her gradual awareness of tension and menace, to her assimilation in England. This book provides a vivid documentary account of the situation of the time; a gallery of memories, poignantly and sympathetically evoked. Her faithfulness to her childhood experiences, which she recounts without retroactive insights from maturity, makes her story so compelling and remarkable. This is one of those rare personal books which have something to say to everyone.

Rita Thalmann and Emmanuel Feinermann: Crystal night; 9-10 November, 1938

Early in November 1938 Herschel Grynszpan, a young German Jew of Polish origin living in Paris, learned that his family had been expelled by the Nazis from their home in Germany and, with thousands of other Polish-born Jews, deported to Poland. Moved by anguish at the plight of his family and race, Grynszpan walked into the German Embassy on 7 November and shot the Third Secretary, Ernst vom Rath, who died two days later. Using the murder as a pretext, Hitler ordered the SS and SA, with the connivance of the police and fire Services, to launch the first nation-wide pogrom against the Jews in Germany on the night of 9-10 November (since known as `Crystal Night`, on account of the quantity of shattered glass found in city streets in the morning). Synagogues were burned down, Jewish shops were wrecked and looted, many Jews were beaten up, others were murdered, and some 30,000 of the men (aged between sixteen and eighty) were sent for a period to concentration camps, where many died. The authors of this book are historians who have drawn extensively on German, French, British, American and Israeli sources, including government papers, proceedings of the Nurnberg trials, newspaper articles, Speeches by politicians, Nazi official memoranda and survivors` reports. Beginning in 1933, they describe the increasingly ferocious measures taken by the Nazis against the Jews in the years that followed, leading up to a climax with the assassination of vom Rath, the terror of `Crystal Night`, and its after-math. They then show how the countries (including Britain and the United States) which looked on at the events of November 1938, and neither intervened nor waived their restrictions on the immigration of Jewish refugees, cannot escape a large share of the blame for the tragedy which followed.

Martin Gilbert: Kristallnacht; Prelude to destruction

An acclaimed Churchill biographer and Holocaust scholar, Gilbert makes a strong case in this elegant volume that Kristallnacht was the watershed moment that laid the groundwork for the Holocaust. Known as “the Night of Broken Glass,” the “coordinated, comprehensive rampage” that began on the night of November 9, 1938, saw Nazi-inspired thugs ransack synagogues and Jewish-owned property across Germany and Austria. Gilbert maintains a tight focus on the individual experiences of Jewish men, women and children during the 24-hour spree of destruction, as well as on Germans and Austrians who rioted, opposed the riot or simply looked the other way. The book begins with a harrowing account of that night’s events, using accounts from news sources of the day: ” ‘Terrified children were turned sobbing out of their beds, which were then smashed to pieces.’” Gilbert devotes a chapter each to eyewitness accounts from Berlin and Vienna, where some of the worst destruction occurred. As Felix Rinde, then an Austrian-Jewish teenager, later wrote, “Jewish life in Vienna came to a virtual end.” A third chapter offers similar accounts from other cities. Gilbert’s commanding account then traces the origins of Kristallnacht in the years of mounting Jewish discrimination that began when Hitler came to power in 1933, and shows how Kristallnacht pointed the way toward the events to come. 8 pages of b&w photos; maps.

We also have a VHS tape of the 1988 Kristallnacht commemoration, held in the Faith Lutheran Church in Santa Rosa.

The word “shtetl” doesn’t appear in Marilyn Hirsh‘s Potato pancakes all around, a Hanukkah tale, but the plot is obviously set in that world. The central figure is Samuel the peddler, who arrives on the first night of Hanukkah to a small and happy village, where the children are playing outside. He is welcome in the first house he knocks the door on and even accepted as the person to make the traditional Hanukkah latke, while the others argue about which recipe is the best to use. His way of cooking it is communal; he lets everyone suggest to add an ingredient, so by the end they have pretty rich latkes.

The book’s appendices include a one page description of Hanukkah and a recipe attributed to the grandmothers in the story. I enjoyed the sepia illustration drawn by the author and printed in brown, grey and yellow. The peddler looks like a bit the archetypal, patriarchal G-d image. His jolly manners and integrative method make the story fun to read as well. It is cheerful book, not just for 4-8 year old children, for whom it is written for.

Please join Beth Ami in recognizing and honoring
the wonderful teachers and families
who have brought us to our 30th anniversary.

Saturday,
November 8th
7 p.m.
Friedman Center

We have over a dozen books on Hanukkah for children. In the next few weeks I plan to review them all, so by the time Hanukkah starts on December 21 I could easily recommend any one of them to our young patrons.

The first one is A turn for Noah: A Hanukkah Story written by Susan Remick Topek and illustrated by Sally Springer. The story covers all eight days of Hanukkah, during which poor Noah is not only overlooked from the children who wanted to light the candles, but all sorts of other mishaps happen to him. All of those, however, manage to show an aspect or tradition of the holiday, the most important one being the ability of spinning the dreidel. I can let you in on the secret, that by the end all will be well.

The Jewish Multiracial Network lists the books on its booklist, because one of the 7 children shown on several of its 24 pages is of African origin.

The book is ideal for ages 4 to 8. I am a bit beyond that, thus I found the images, drawing a bit too static for my taste. As if none of the people actually are capable of movement and they all seem to smile the same way on every page. Other than that this is a completely sweet little educational story. Topek and Springer created three other books about the same child, Noah: A Holiday for Noah, A Taste for Noah, and A Costume for Noah.

Yesterday was the first time I ever participated in a book club discussion group. It was a great experience. The thirteen of us started off with toasting (with apple-cider) the newly elected president-elect, Barack Obama, whose book, Dreams from my father, a story of race and inheritance we discussed. In the excited and elevated atmosphere it was impossible to disassociate the book from its context. Therefore we mixed personal reflections on the book and its author with political observations.

As we went around the circle every one of us had something to say, what touched them personally in the book. Unfortunately I did not make notes, thus I cannot recall most of what was said. I was impressed though with the attention every reader devoted to the work and the variety of astute observations they made in the circle. I also felt honored sitting at such a historic moment in the midst of elders whose rich history included being a civil rights activists, having grown up in an area covered in the book, or having lived in the neighborhood where Mr. Obama lives now. It truly made the day more historic for me.

I appreciated Sylvia Sucher’s facilitation of the discussion, research and reading of reviews at the end of our meeting.

Looking forward to our next gathering on December 3 about Meir Shalev‘s A Pigeon and a Boy.

The last few weeks several people recommended to me Aaron Lansky‘s Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books. They told me that it is funny and covers and amazing story. I still haven’t read it (so right now you can still borrow it), but wanted to share this recommendation with all of you. “[It is] about Aaron Lansky’s travels as he and a team of volunteers crisscrossed America, retrieving Yiddish books from dusty attics, crumbling basements, and dumpsters.” His (and his colleagues’) efforts led to the foundation of the National Yiddish Book Center. The book itself won numerous prizes and its author also received a MacArthur “genius” fellowship. Instead of trying to convince you that you should read it, why don’t you listen to chapter 20, titled Kaddish, read by the author himself. (It is 21 minutes long) Click the play button below or download the 4.7 MB MP3 file for later listening.

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As I mentioned last week the library could use a pickup truck without its shell for an hour to deliver a new DVD shelves. I bought one of these for our house on Sunday. As I live 3-4 blocks from the video rental place that was selling it I just dollied it home. You can see below how that went. But using a dolly for 6-8 miles to get the other shelves to the library is beyond my physical capacity and bravery. If you have the time and a truck, don’t hesitate to let us know.

SephardicMusic.org is a brand new website, created by Joel Bresler, chronicling the first 100 years of commercial Sephardic recordings. It includes survey articles on the 78 and modern eras, a comprehensive discography of Sephardic 78s, and a sample of what a proposed discography of modern-era recordings could look like. I encourage you to explore this site’s resources, including its list of labels, songs, and artists and the sample MP3 files.

One of the singers featured on the site is Yehoram Gaon. Our library has one audio tape by him, titled Shabbath Songs–in the Sephardic tradition. At the website dedicated to Gaon you can listen in to 40 of his hits. Our tape, see the cover below, contains these 14 songs:

1. L’cha Dodee
2. D’ror Yikra
3. Hashkiveynu
4. Azamer Beshvachin
5. Mizmor l”David
6. Eyn Ke’Elokeyno
7. Yigdal
8. Yah Reebon
9. Adon Olam
10. Nakdishach
11. Tsur Mishelo
12. Eli-Eliyahu
13. El Dio Alto
14. Hamavdil