Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

Last time I visited Budapest, my home town, I learned that there is an old velodrome, stadium for bicycle races, just a few blocks from the bus stop where I got off from the bus when I went to high school. I never knew of its existence. It opened I 1896, but has been unused for decades. (Now it functions again.) Similarly I didn’t know anything about the Velodrome d’Hiver in Paris. Tatiana de Rosnay‘s book “Sarah’s Key” brought its dark historical legacy to the foreground. Now the building would stand as a memorial to the French Jewry and as a reminder of how French policeman-not German invaders-evacuted Jews and sent them to deathcamps. But the building no longer exists.

A movie about this episode of the Holocaust premiered in France last month, titled La Rafle (The Roundup) Although that movie is based on a different book, but I thought you might enjoy its trailer:

Rosnay’s book initially runs on two threads, but they meet in the book’s middle. In our discussion group some found the two thread approach confusing, others enjoyed the intermixing of the two eras, stories. One thread was about an America journalist who lives in Paris with her French husband and pre-teen daughter. She digs herself into the story of the roundup of 28,000 Jews on July 16, 1942. Many of those who were rounded up were stationed in inhuman condition in the aforementioned velodrome for eight days and many of them were women and children. Vast majority of them were killed in Auschwitz after they stopped over in an internment camp Drancy. The other leg of the story follows one such family, more specifically Sarah, the daughter. The journalist gets obsessed with her fate and eventually tracks down that she survived the Shoah. Telling more of the story would be cheating you out of the joy or learning for yourself what happened to the protagonist and what was the secret of the key. I cannot guarantee you though that it will be a joyous discovery though.

After the two threads met in the middle the book flattened. The excitement of the anticipation of what’s going to happen was mostly gone for me, although I faithfully read the book till the end. The personal dramas covered in the second half didn’t compare to the historic ones in the first. The ending was particularly disappointing for some in our group. Nevertheless the book was educational for all us, uncovering a forgotten part of the Shoah.

The book @ Amazon.com.

The third winner of the Sydney Taylor Book Award we purchased recently was “New Year at the pier: a Rosh Hashanah story,” by April Halprin Wayland. Ms Wayland wrote the book but when you open the book you will also be amazed by Stephane Jorisch‘s illustrations. They are lively, colorful and have a classy feeling as if they were drawn the 1920′s or 30′s of the last century. They evoke that old world charm we feel when paging through children’s books of that ear, yet at the same time they are multiethnic and clearly showing the New World.

The story is sweet and educational too. It explains from the perspective of Izzy, a young child what Tashlich is about and what he seeks forgiveness for . It teaches how hard it can be to gain it, but also how rewarding to give it. Instead of writing more about the story I would like to show its book-trailer. (A book-trailer is a like a movie trailer but for books.)

P.s. If you read this blog entry via email, you may not be able to see the video above. In that case just lick the title if the email “Wayland: New Year at the pier (2009)” and you browser will take you to the page where you can watch the short clip.

Two weeks ago I wrote about Tropical secrets, one of the books that won the Sydney Taylor Book Awards and we bought it for the library in memory of Anne Feld. That book was written for elder teenagers. Robin Friedman‘s “The importance of wings” also won the award but for younger teens. As such, I, being couple of decades over my teen years wasn’t part of the target audience. Therefore my initial reactions, when I was reading the book may not be entirely counted upon when judging the book. Nevertheless I was wondering whether it was a good idea to set a book for 14 year olds in the 1980s. It is full of cultural references, mostly TV show reruns, that are not on the daily/weekly rotation any more, thus today’s teens have little connections to them. Wonder women and the Brady Bunch as cultural reference points are nearly not as universal any more as they were 20-30 years ago. The author was aware of these possible objections as on the very last pages she explains her reasoning for the setting the book in this era. That includes personal (she grew up then) and two kinds of nostalgia for simplicity: technical, the simpler times before internet and texting and political, the pre 9/11 era, when the Middle East situation seemed simpler. These are valid reasons, but I still wonder whether the setting will be an obstacle for the book becoming wildly successful.

I ask this, because otherwise it has the potential to be a hit. It is an inspirational story from going a couch potato with low self-esteem and worrying about unimportant things, to being an active person who stands up for herself and focuses on more important things, while having fun too. In the center of the story is an Isreali girl, who lives with his sister and overworking father in the US, while the mom is back in Israel taking care of her sister. The girls’ life is filled with eating junk food, watching TV and trying to look cool in other people’s eyes. All this changes when a girl moves with her colorful family to the neighboring house. She is a very different kind of Israeli, who instead of trying to fit in, does what she wants, while staying respectful and strong. She becomes the role model that makes our heroines reevaluate what’s important: wings of hair or being honest to themselves and others.

That’s the story’s essence, but of course many more activities are happening on the book’s 170 pages. One of the funniest and most funny aspect of the book is the short lists the protagonist reverts to every time she has to make a decision or take stock of her own feelings. These lists are set in a different typography than the rest of the book and pop out from the rest of the text as testaments of the heroine’s thoughts.

Despite the reservation I mentioned above I like this book and can recommend it. I think it can be of great help for young girls and can teach a few things about themselves and Israel too.

One of the more popular section of our collection is the cookbooks. Knowing this I was happy to integrate five plus one cookbooks somebody donated to us last week. The “plus one” is a bilingual booklet titled “Tempting kosher dishes, prepared from world famous Manischewitz Matzo products.” As you can guess it was published by Manischewitz company and our (the sixth) edition is from 1949. If you open the booklet form the left you will find recipes on 40 pages in English. If you open it from the other end you can read the same recipes in Yiddish, also on 40 pages. And in the center there is a photo/graphic spread with Manischewitz products. The recipes are short and simple and each of them contains at least one Manischewitz product, although some of them are no longer produced.

The other five cookbooks are all spiral bound volumes; three of them were produced by a sisterhood of a synagogue (Keneseth Israel in Louisville, KY; Adath Israel Synagogue in Cincinnati, OH; Temple Israel in Dayton, OH) and two by women of other type of communities: East Brunswick (NJ) Hadassah and Hillel Academy of Dayton, OH. Their publishing date ranges from 1946 to 1979 and their scope from 96 pages to 347 pages. They are all organized the traditional way following the order of the types of dishes one can make and serve. The condition of these cookbooks are all good, although it shows that every single one of them was used. In my view that just adds to the value of these books, because it proves that they were and are worthy to cook from. I hope you will come and pick up one or two to learn recipes from women of other communities.

Tomorrow, Wednesday at 10 AM our books discussion group will meet again and talk about Sarah’s Key by Tatiana De Rosnay. You are welcome to join us even if you didn’t read the book. Here is a short interview with the author where she talks about what the book is about: