Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

The subtitle of Sadie Rose Weilerstein’s K’Tonton in the Circus, a Hanukkah Adventure is slightly misleading. Only 8 of the book’s 85 pages are centered on Hanukkah. But that section is well integrated into the rest of the story that details Ktonton’s, a 4 inch tall boy’s adventures, when he was taken to a traveling circus. If you haven’t read any K’tonton book you are in for a treat. Weilerstein teaches Judaism, by intertwining Torah, haggadah, midrash, and even halakhah with other subjects, in this case the life of a circus. The reader learns about both, through the perspective of the boy who keeps kosher, says his prayers and even manages to celeberate Hanukkah with his newfound friends as the first Jewish person amongst them. There is even a reasonable (and Jewish) explanation why he seems so content and not missing his parents terribly. For a while.

A small line drawing of a circus animal by Marilyn Hirsh’s starts off the chapters and she did a half or full page illustration for each of the 15 chapters. The book is not just educational in both areas (Judaism and circus life), but also a great and fun read. Enlightened readers might object to the living conditions and exploitation of the circus animals (and performers for that matter), but you might view the subject matter differently if you remember that it was written almost 30 years ago.

As I mentioned Friday I spent the weekend in San Jose at the annual conference of the California Library Association. If I manage to find the time I plan to write up my impressions and insights on my personal blog. Here I would like to cover only those points that relate to Judaica one way or another.

First of all the keynote speakers for the opening general session were Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. (See my picture of them below.) As you know Chabon is the Pulitzer Prize winning of author of many novels including “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” and “The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay“. (We just added the latter to our collection.) What you may not know that his wife Ayelet Waldman is an author on her own right, having written 9 novels so far. Together on stage they talked about on what it means and how it works for them on being married to a writer. I admit they didn’t touch on any specifically Jewish topic, but as some of their work relates to it I found worthwhile to mention how delightful their conversation with each other was. They seemed passionate, knowledgeable and likable people. For those of you who liked The Yiddish Policemen’s Union I have good news: The Coen brothers are planning turning it into a movie.

One of the sessions I visited was titled “Cultural Diversity on the Shelves: Authors’ Perspectives on Blending Latinos, Asians, and Others into Children’s Literature.” The panel consisted of five authors, who wrote children books with multicultural characters, plots and/or locations. I went there primarily to listen to the Jewish participant, Susan Goldman Rubin , the one on the right the picture below. She authored many books for young people on arts and artists, such as Matisse, Warhol, Thiebaud, Hopper and Degas. She also wrote six books related to Jewish themes. I purchased one of them for the library and asked her to sign it. “Fireflies in the Dark: The Story of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and the Children of Terezin” is a book about the Holocaust for children that is not as terrifying visually as most books with pictures on this topic. The book won eleven prizes including AJL’s “Honor Book in the 2000 Sydney Taylor Book Award for Older Readers.” I am hoping that this book will be borrowed by the children who visit our library.

Ms. Goldman Rubin’s other books include “Searching for Anne Frank: Letters from Amsterdam to Iowa,” L’Chaim! To Jewish Life in America! Celebrating from 1654 until Today,” ” The Flag With Fifty-Six Stars: A Gift From The Survivors of Mauthausen,” “The Cat with the Yellow Star: Coming of Age in Terezin,” “Haym Salomon: American Patriot.” One of her upcoming books, “The Anne Frank Case: Simon Wiesenthal’s Search for the Truth” is about Simon Wiesenthal’s (successful) search for the Nazi officer responsible arresting Anne Frank. Currently she is working on a book about Mengele.

During her 15 minute talk I learned about how she grew up in the Bronx, where she thought that being Jewish is nothing spectacular, but later in life she learned to appreciate the uniqueness of her culture and background. She also shared the organic process how she got involved in writing about Jewish topics. She spoke about the importance of teaching the Holocaust to the younger generations, who have less and less chance to talk to survivors themselves.

The conference had not other Jewish themed panel, but on the exhibition floor I found a few items. There were several companies offering books on CD, tapes or MP3. But only one of them displayed any item of interest for us. Blackstone Audio Inc, has Geraldine Brooks‘ “People of the book“, which is on our discussion group’s schedule. It is a bit pricey, so I haven’t decided whether to purchase it or not. Finally “I’d Bark But You Never Listen: An Illustrated Guide to the Jewish Dog” by Harold Kimmel looked funny.

Living in sunny California it is easy to forget what real winter is about. In this situation Diana Cohen Conway’s Northern Lights: A Hanukkah Story can come to the rescue. In it a Jewish girl is stranded for Hanuakkah in Alaska by the weather and is hosted by an Inuit family. There real cultural exchange happens as she tells them the story of Hanukkah and they share with her bits of their culture, both material and literary. Meanwhile on every page we encounter stunning watercolor paintings by Shelly O. Haas, mostly in light blues and yellows, showing not just the two young girls developing friendship, but attempting to capture the atmosphere of northern lights. It is a simple story, for simple times with simple lesson about the value of multicultural sharing and discovering our similarities.

The Jewish Early Childhood Educators’ Exchange’s discussion and activity suggestion related to this book is below:

This story is a terrific provocation to a discussion and activities about winter nights, light and shadows. Sara tells her friend the story of Chanukah by candlelight using her hands’ shadows as the storytelling tools. Set up an overhead projector in your classroom and encourage the children to experiment with shadows. Use various types of “screens-” the wall, a sheet, butcher paper, etc…. You may also give children different sizes and strengths of flashlights. After children have made discoveries with the flashlights, place different colors of cellophane with the flashlights. See if children create their own Northern lights! See where the children’s excitement leads!

I admit I could barely focus on the narrative of Fran Manushkin’s Latkes and Applesauce: A Hanukkah Story, because the illustrations (by Robin Spowart) were so gorgeous that they grabbed my attention. See the first one below. Even showing a blizzard it using such soft tones and shapes that you can imagine (or not) how warm they are later, when depicting the family around candlelight. After I went through the whole book and admired every one of the paintings I went back and read the story. That is equally beautiful. It is about a poor family, who barely has enough to eat and cannot get out procuring more food, because of the snowstorm. But their generosity extends to a stray cat and dog wondering in to their house. Their good deeds and hearts are rewarded by the end, of course. Suggested age group is 4-8 year olds.

The author explains how she wrote this book on her home page in these words:

Years ago, I came upon a wonderful essay by Cynthia Ozick about the importance of the holiday of Hanukkah. Her excitement inspired me to try writing about the holiday too. Until then, I’d never written any story about Jewish life; I was too intimidated. I had very little Jewish education as a girl, and I thought I needed to be a sage with a long, white beard to contribute to our literature. Happily, doing research about the holiday and reading a lot of Yiddish stories calmed me down and gave me more confidence. I was particularly fascinated by the rabbinic injunction that on Hanukkah we must not mourn or fast. This is what gave me the Judaic theme of the story; my love for cats and dogs and latkes helped me do the rest! In writing LATKES AND APPLESAUCE I discovered my Jewish “voice” for the first time. It is highly influenced by Sholem Aleichem, whose stories I treasure. The character of Mr. Menashe was inspired by a tailor named Shmuel, who appears in one of my favorite books, NUMBER OUR DAYS, by Barbara Meyerhoff.

Louis D. Brandeis was born 152 years ago today, on November 13, 1856. Here is his very short biography from the “This day … in Jewish history” blog,

Southern born, Harvard educated; Brandeis pursued a successful legal career as a champion of the underdog. He was an ally and confidant of President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson appointed Brandeis to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1916. This was a milestone in American history and Jewish history. Brandeis was the first Jew named to the high court. He was also the first of whole group of minorities who would eventually take their place on the court including African-American and women. The Brandeis nomination was contested by anti-Semites and the American business community. Brandeis served on the bench until 1939. Brandeis was also a committed Zionist and a leader of the movement in the United States. He passed away in 1941.

For further reading I would like to refer to the two books we have on this man pivotal to American Jewry’s history.

Alfred Lief wrote “Brandeis; the personal history of an American ideal” in 1936, five years before Brandeis passed away. Its 500 pages contain these chapters:

Before the curtain
The beginnings of a lawyer
Conservatism and first doubts
Public works
The tactics of attack
His “greatest achievement ”
Enemies are born, not made
Free to fight the new haven
The tilt with Taft
A national figure in 1910
Girding against the trusts
Politics: La Follette and Wilson
Preoccupations of a publicist
Washington and the house of Morgan
Liberal or conservative
Zionism … and new work
The nomination fight (1)
The nomination fight (2)
First years on the bench
The states, the nation, and depression
Experiments toward the future

Philippa Strum’s “Louis D. Brandeis, justice for the people” was published in 1984. The publisher, Harvard University Press, described the book with these words,

This lively account of Brandeis’s life and legacy, based on ten years of research in sources not available to previous biographers, reveals much that is new and gives fuller context to personal and historical events. The most significant revelations have to do with his intellectual development. That Brandeis opposed political and economic “bigness” and excessive concentration of wealth is well known. What was not known prior to Strum’s research is how far Brandeis carried his beliefs, becoming committed to the goals of worker participation–the sharing of profits and decision making by workers in “manageable”-sized firms. So it happened that the man who was sometimes dismissed as an outmoded horse-and-buggy liberal championed a cause too radical even for the New Deal braintrusters who were quick to follow his advice in other areas

Strum charts Brandeis’s development as a kind of industrial-era Jeffersonian deeply influenced by the classical ideals of Periclean Athens. She shows that this was the source not only of his vision of a democracy based on a human-scaled polis, but also of his sudden emergence, in his late fifties, as the leading American Zionist: he had come to regard Palestine as the locus of a new Athens. And later, on the Supreme Court, this Athenian conception of human potential took justice Brandeis beyond even Justice Holmes in the determined use of judicial power to protect civil liberties and democracy in an industrialized society.

The wackiest Hanukkah story I read is Brian P. Cleary’s Eight Wild Nights: A Family Hanukkah Tale. The rhymes it is written in, the characters depicted both in words and pictures and the story are all off-beat in a good way. On every page it introduces one or more new family members (in one case 17) as they enter the host family’s little world. They are all loud and all sorts of wild, but children appropriate, events are happening. Don’t despair though, in the midst of the great cavalcade the usual Hanukkah staples are eaten, games are played, ceremonies observed. By the end you are also treated to a genuine miracle that anyone can appreciate.

Without David Udovic’s witty illustrations the book would be less than half the fun. They cover the whole pages and the 4-6 lines of text on each page are inserted into the pictures. This and the chaotic nature of the story make the book appealing beyond the 4-8 year olds it is created for

The Jewish Film Festival’s next film, titled Souvenirs will be showing today and tomorrow. See details below

The winner of the Israeli Academy Award for Best Documentary, Souvenirs is a charming, funny and touching father-son journey in search of the ’souvenirs’ the father may have left with two Dutch women during his service in the Jewish Brigade while stationed in Amsterdam during World War II. With humor and compassion, Souvenirs exposes a complex father-son relationship and raises universal questions about the myth of bravery and the gap between memory and historical truth. 75 minutes, in Hebrew with English subtitles.
Wed., Nov. 12, 7:15 p.m., Boulevard Cinemas, Petaluma
Thu., November 13, 1:00 p.m. & 7:15 p.m., Rialto Cinemas Lakeside, Santa Rosa

Speaking of The Netherlands, if you ever plan to visit I recommend to check out A guide to Jewish Amsterdam by Jan Stoutenbeek and Paul Vigieveno. Its 156 pages are filled with hundreds of pictures and informative text about its history, architecture, language, customs… The book covers nine walks in the city and two excursions outside of it. The index and series of maps will help you navigate through Amsterdam. I wish I had this book when I visited the city 2 years ago. I only managed to the Frank house (as in Anne Frank) and the synagogue complex of the High German community, containing the smaller Grote Shul and the larger Neie Shul. Now I know that there is so much more in the city’s Jewish history to visit. Maybe next time.

As you may know Jehon Grist, Ph.D., the Executive Director of Lehrhaus Judaica, will give a two part lecture series this Wednesday and Thursday, titled Understanding Israel: Connecting the Biblical and Modern Land. If you were not aware of this you can read the details of the event at the end of this post.

The library has, of course, a cornucopia of books both on Biblical and modern Israel. I would like to draw your attention to one in each category. Harry Meyer Orlinsky’s Ancient Israel was written in 1954, but remained popular, because it is concisely organized and engagingly written. The library recently received a copy of the books second edition’ 18th printing from 1996, in brand new condition. As often the case, the table of contents gives you a good overview of what the book is about.

• Foreword, by Edward Whiting Fox
• Introduction
• The Fertile Crescent: Hebrew Origins
• Bondage, Exodus, and the National Covenant
• Israel in Canaan: The Period of the Judges
• The Israelite Empire under David and Solomon
• The Divided Kingdom: Israel and Judah
• The Babylonian Exile and the Restoration of Judah
• The Hebraic Spirit: The Prophetic Movement and
• Social Justice
• Chronological Summary
• Suggestions for Further Reading
• Index

I also offer an excerpt from a review of the book as an appetizer

“Professor Orlinsky has here given us a lucid and excellent account of the history of ancient Israel from its earliest beginnings to the establishment of post-exilic Judaism subsequent to the work of Nehemiah and Ezra. Orlinsky’s book is stimulating; its presentation is delightfully clear; and even when the reader disagrees, he finds himself endorsing to the full the major emphasis and outlook. It is a book to be heartily welcomed.”

The most recent and representative book we have on modern Israel is the work of Deborah Hart and Gerald S. Strober: Israel at sixty: an oral history of a nation reborn. This beautifully edited 300 page book combines black and white photographs with transcripts and summaries of hundreds of interviews. The five major parts of the book are:

1. From the rise of Nazism to postwar efforts to establish the modern Jewish state
2. The proclamation of the Jewish state and its upbuilding
3. Seismic changes
4. New realities
5. Can Israel survive?

The official description follows:

Based on extensive interviews, Israel at Sixty presents a balanced, comprehensive account of this complex and amazing land. It re-creates historic events from the actions of Israel’s founding visionaries through the ravages of six wars with its Arab neighbors to its growing strength and international stature and efforts to make permanent peace with its adversaries. Complete with more than fifty previously unpublished photos, Israel at Sixty is a beautiful keepsake for anyone who loves, respects, and supports the Jewish state.

I hope you will attend the lectures described below or if you miss them check out the books I mentioned above or find one you are more interested in our library.

LEHRHAUS JUDAICA CLASSES in Santa Rosa
Understanding Israel: Connecting the Biblical and Modern Land

Course Code: H170-JCA

To understand Israel’s present and future, you need to start with its past. This course explores Israel’s two histories, Biblical and modern, to discover and document the unbroken links of our people to the land. In the first session, students will travel on a visually rich virtual guided tour of Biblical Israel (1200-400 BCE). In the second session, we’ll introduce the brief, but dramatic history of modern Israel to date, touching on the central achievements and conflicts of the Jewish State. In the process, we will also explore the connections between the two Israelis, past and present.

The first session will meet on Wed., Nov. 12 from 7:30-9 p.m. at Congregation Shomrei Torah.

The second session will meet on Thu., Nov. 13 from 7:30-9 p.m. at Congregation Beth Ami.

To Register: log on to www.lehrhaus.org to register and pay by credit card. Questions? Call 510/845-6420 x10 (you may also register at 1st session).

Tuition: $18; $10/members of Sonoma co-sponsors

JEHON GRIST , Ph.D., is Executive Director of Lehrhaus Judaica. He earned his doctorate in Near Eastern Studies from UC Berkeley, where he was a Regents’ Fellow. He has conducted field research in Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the Valley of the Queens in southern Egypt.

Co-sponsored by Congregations Beth Ami and Shomrei Torah, and the JCC, Sonoma County.
Israel Past and Present programs are made possible through the generous support of the Laszlo N. Tauber Family Foundation, Inc.

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.