Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

After returning home from last night’s Seder at the synagogue I felt inspired to sit down and read a book about what happens after a miraculous escape. Margarita Engle‘s “Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba” provided me with that kind of narrative and more. It even had a Pesach reference on page 99 that talked to me:

I was taught that there are four
kinds of people in the world –
wise, wicked, simple,
and those who do not yet know
how to ask questions

I was taught that questions
are just as important as answers

I was a child when I learned these things,
Now I am old, but I still know
that life’s questions
outnumber life’s answers.

As you can guess from the subtitle of the book it follows the fears and quest of a new life of a Holocaust refugee. Daniel was barely bar-mitzvah-ed in 1939 when his parents purchased a ticket (using up all their money) for ship to New York. But the ship was not allowed to port in Canada or in New York, so it ended up in Cuba. There Daniel befriended a local girl of the same age, Paloma and an older Jewish man, who himself escaped from pogrom in Ukraine years ago. The book centers about their problems, perspectives and mutual support for each other.

It is made up of mostly one page long poems, most of them are internal monologues. The lines of the poems are short and the rhymes are varying. This combination makes the whole book with its staccato rhythm enjoyable. As you are reading the book tell your eyes to not to skip the very first line of the pages, which are differently typeset. That’s where we learn whose voice we read on the particular page, thus it is an important, integral part of the book.

The personal histories of these three characters reflect a part of history that most people didn’t know about: how successful the Third Reich’s spies, whom they sent to Cuba to incite anti-semitic feelings, were. How only the shock of Pearl Harbor turned the country against the Nazis. Another tragic tidbit of history of the island was how in their neophyte zeal they turned against Germany to such an extent that they had put every Germans, who were not Jews, onto a camp on a remote island. The book shows one fictional couple’s story, who have been married for 60 years, but as one of them was not Jewish they would have been separated by this short-lived law.

The book’s target audience is teenagers and it won the 2010 Sydney Taylor Book Award for the teen category. However everybody would enjoy it who is interested in history, life, big questions and enjoys poetry. I purchased it for our library with the hope that many of us will pick it up. I read it in an hour, but thought about it all day afterward. It is a well-crafted work in a nice presentation.

The book @ Amazon.com

We recently added  aslim short story collection to our library.  One of the many Jonathan Tel‘s talents is that he can use different voices. Every single one of the 17 short stories, none of them longer than ten pages, in “Arafat’s Elephant” is written from a different perspectives and covers a different area of life than then others. I have to admit I haven’t been reading many short stories recently for two reasons. One of them was, because coming from a single author the stories often were to similar to each other. This book proved that they don’t have to be. The other reason for me not reading much short fiction was that I want to avoid disappointment. If I like a character or a story I want to enjoy them for the length of a book. I was afraid that short stories would rob me from this satisfaction. (And if I don’t like them, than why bother?).

Tel’s stories however were rich enough not necessarily wanting more. They all told an interesting story AND they had something to think about too. I will list below all the stories with a short summary. I will not share the ending or the secret in them, so I would not fully spoil your appetite for this book. But I will put down in a few words what I think the worthy idea was in them. If you think it might ruin enjoying the book for you stop reading now.

• A story about a bomb – about a story written from the perspective of a suicide bomber – question of responsibility in literature
• Ibrahim Kuttan is innocent – about a Jewish boy who pretends to be an Arab to avoid the draft – a question of identity
• Beautiful, strong, and modest – a young orthodox woman walks to the first date with her future, arranged husband – the definition of shame
• I may be a ghost but I’m not a slut – a woman wants a paramedic sitting in a cafe to deliver her suicide note – recognition of desperation
• Alte zakhen – a woman attends a Saturday afternoon ball in a hotel in Jerusalem in June 1948 – looks can be deceiving
• Her hero – a woman travels around the world to find the man she served with in the army and who is supposed to be dead – the idea of a hero lives in us and not outside
• Hatikvah – two Jewish youth from different part of the world meet in Israel but then their paths diverge – how the national anthem is a connection in world Jewry
• Mr. Fig and Mr. Pinapple – a man regularly buys fruits from a grocer and has a female shopping buddy – innocence is in the eye of the beholder
• Love and coffee – tracking down the woman who works in the factory that supplies coffee for the army, because she puts short poems in the coffee boxes – the world’s response to you depends on how you approach the world
• The chair at the edge of the desert – a man takes care of two old women, the only people left at an abandoned kibbutz – people’s motivations are mysterious and ever changing
• Shabah – a man working at a warehouse that gives chairs to new immigrants tells the story of how a torturer buys a chair – sometimes a chair is more than a chair
• The camel-hair-coat – two guys who are in the army reserve are called back for duty soon after one of them became and internet millionaire – easy come, easy go
• Spleen; or, the goy’s tale – an orthodox man buys some treif (non-kosher) meet when he learns that according to halacha (Jewish religious law) he is not Jewish – friendships can be found at unorthodox places
• Did Moshe Dayan have a galls eye? – a treatise made up mostly of testimonies about the existence, nature, color and other attributes of the glass eye that might have been behind Dayan’s eye-patch – the authority of some sources is questionable
• Shaking hands with Theodor Herzl – Herzel stays with a family in Israel and every member of the family has an agenda with him – famous people can have private life too
• A tooth for a tooth – dentist tells the story while treating a patient on how and why he extracted the healthy teeth of a Moroccan Jew – strict interpretation of biblical commandments does not always coincide with everybody’s common sense
• Arafat’s elephant – a wealthy Palestinian tells the story of how his ancestors took care of the Sultan’s elephant – the futility of self-sacrifice

I enjoyed the variety of these stories. These little nuggets didn’t paint a comprehensive picture of life in Israel, but they sure covered enough territory and lifestyles to get a sense of it.

The book at Amazon.com

A few months ago our books discussion group read Paul Auster‘s “The Brooklyn Follies”. It  has a photo of Brooklyn street corner, where every person is looking to the side, nobody facing the photographer/reader or even each other. There is one exception, the central figure, who looks like he could be the central character of the novel itself too. He is looking down into a plastic bag, surveying its content.

On one hand this scene depicts quite well what’s happening in the book, despite that the people on the cover do not directly correspond to the people between the covers. But for the most part it seems that they pass each other without really caring or even noting. The book is a rollercoaster ride, where so many things are happening to so may people, that you may get dizzy. On the other hand if you think that the main character is looking for depths you would be mistaken. The shopping bag is more of a symbol that the author went to the writers’ supermarket and bought a lot of techniques, characters and trick and through them together in the attempt of trying to make a single book. While I enjoyed the ride, but won’t remember much o iit later as there is not much to remember beyond the events.

However that maybe the point of the book. On page 158 he writes, “Why do I linger over these trivial details? Because the truth of the story lies in the details, and I have no choice but to tell the story exactly as it happened.” It seems that Auster’s intention is to comply with post-modernist ideals and grab the surface of events before they disappear. Then on page 303 we found these lines,

“Most lives vanish. A person dies and little by little all traces of that life disappear… My idea was this: to form a company that would publish books about the forgotten ones, to rescue the stories and facts and documents before they disappeared—and shape them into a continuous narrative, the narrative of life.”

I love the idea and would love to be involved in such a process. (For example at the book club where we discussed the book we remembered and read the obituary of a former book club member, whose life covered a multitude of countries, languages and eras. The little I know about her makes me think that her life story would have been fascinating to read.) The problem is that Auster’s novel is not a real life story but a segment of his imagination. I haven’t read any of this other books, but I’ve been told this fast-paced novel full of comic elements is not his usual style. Maybe he should return to his more solemn prose.

P.s. A quick summary of the story: Nathan Glass, a life-insurance salesman, retires to Brooklyn after he divorced and got terminal cancer. There he encounters Tom Wood, his lost cousin, who works in a used books tore, owned by a(n ex-?)criminal who got out of prison for forgery. Nathan gets entangled with with characters of his neighborhood and his family members in other parts of the country, this his idea of dying peacefully gets dissolved in the lives of others. As a result he gets a new life through the lives of others and eventually of his own.

Isaacs, Ron. Have a Good Laugh: Jokes for the Jewish Soul. Illus. by Franklin Feldman. Jersey City , NJ : Ktav, 2009. 185 p. Paperbound. (ISBN-978-1602801301).

In seven chapters the author groups jokes by subject: Israel , Theology and God, Family, Bible, Rabbis, Humor from Chelm, and last but longest, Potpourri of Jewish humor. Though many of the jokes are well-worn and familiar to older readers, there is always a new generation to entertain and surprise. When you sit in your armchair all by yourself and read funny stories, they may not seem so funny, but if you are a good story-teller, you may add some of these to your repertoire and use them at an appropriate moment in a social setting or to enliven an otherwise serious speech. Illustrations are few but inject sparkle into this volume.

Recommended for collections in need of more anthologies of jokes.

Susanne M. Batzdorff, Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library, Congregation Beth Ami, Santa Rosa , CA .

Kaplan-Mayer, Gabrielle. The Creative Jewish Wedding Book. 2d ed.; a Hands-on Guide to New and Old Traditions, Ceremonies & Celebrations. Woodstock , VT : Jewish Lights,
2009. paperbound. 261p., illus. $19.99 (ISBN-13: 978-1580233989).

This is a very complete overview of the many varieties of Jewish weddings, from orthodox to barely religious, from traditionally Jewish to marriage of two people belonging to different faiths, but also not shying away from marriage between two persons of the same sex. Traditions and customs are explained, writing your own texts for wedding rituals is encouraged.  Altogether the author empowers the marrying couple to decide what style of wedding is best for them and their family situation. A step-by-step plan facilitates what could be a daunting process. Choice of foods, music, chuppah, decorations are discussed in detail, with many suggestions included. Besides the general index, the book includes a14 page list of websites and (how old-fashioned!) a 4 page bibliography for further study. This title should be a welcome addition to your collection as a very practical and up-to-date guide to this important life-cycle event.

Susanne M. Batzdorff, Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library, Congregation Beth Ami, Santa Rosa , CA