Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

Al Batzdorff sent me a link a few days ago to an amazing site: panoplanet.net/synagogues (Click on each synagogue to open it to the full screen. Click and move cursor around to get panoramic view. Right-click and move cursor to go up and down. )

It reminded me of the book the Batzdorffs donated to the library a few months ago. It is titled “The architecture of the European synagogue,” by Rachel Wischnitzer. The website above is a true multimedia experience on the diversity of the synagogues around the world. The book is a different kind of experience with its black and white blueprints, drawings and photographs (See one below from Budapest). But the book also gives you a lot of background information in hundreds of synagogues in the Old World. I for one enjoy the touch, look-and-feel, end smell of old books, like this one that was published 44 years ago. I think most of you would also appreciate what you can learn about not just architecture, but the history of European Jewry from this book.

As a person, whose relatives passed in front of Mengele in a concentration camp I have a hard time reading this article, in which a retired Israeli Mossad officer in his eighties, recounts how they had a chance to capture Mengele, but opted not to do so. On one hand, I can understand his reasoning that it would have jeopardized taking Adolf Eichmann, who was personally responsible for the execution of the “final solution”. On the other hand, my emotional side cannot get over the fact that there was a chance to capture, set trial for and punish Mengele, the infamous, sadist “doctor.” I cannot imagine appropriate punishment for him, but I still think he should not have let go.

To learn more about Mengele’s antics I recommend today 80629: A Mengele experiment by Gene Church. There are two other reasons for recommending this book. First it is well written. Second , it is triumphant.

This is the true story of Jack Oran, who survived the inhuman experimental surgeries of Dr. Josef Mengele, Auschwitz’ infamous Doctor of Death. It was a cold December morning in 1942 when Jack, then known a Yakoff Skurnik, and his family were loaded onto a “resettlement train,” in Mlawa, Poland. When the train stopped, Jack found himself at Auschwitz. For an interminable time, he survived the horrors of the camp. Using his wits, cunning, and inordinate will to live, he escaped from the Nazis during the Auschwitz death march in which the Nazis marched 58,000 prisoners from the camp before its liberation by the Russians on January 27, 1945. Overcoming incredible odds, Jack built himself a new life filled with success and accomplishment. This is the story of a man who is living proof that with persistence, determination, and belief in oneself, all things are possible.

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.

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.

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?

Francine Klagsbrun did for Jewish ethics what Arthur Hertzberg did for Judaism: compiled the definitive and authoritative compilation of writings. The full title of Hertzberg’s book is Judaism: The key spiritual writings of the Jewish tradition and it contains an introduction and integrated short quotes of the most important sources on people, G-d, Torah, holidays, land, doctrine and prayer. Klagsbrun’s compilation is titled Voices of Wisdom: Jewish ideals and ethics for everyday living. It covers

• You and yourself
• Relating to others
• Love, sex and marriage
• Family relationships
• Health and medicine
• Study, scholarship and superstition
• Work wealth, and philanthropy
• Government, law and authority
• Faith and freedom
• The value of life
• Death and the world to come

The main differences between Hertzberg’s and Klagsbrun’s volume beside their subject is their approach. Hertzberg integrated the quotes into one flowing coherent narrative, while Klagsbrun limited herself to short introduction for the book and each of its topics, followed by a cornucopia of quotes with exact citations. Each of the 11 many topics listed above is divided into dozens of subtopics. A detailed index helps to find relevant quotes on any subjects.

On hand the majority of the quotes are coming from a relatively limited set of sources: Tanakh, Mishnah, Talmud, and Responsa. On the other hand these sources put together would fill tens of thousand of pages. Klagsbrun did a great service to all of us by distilling these into a size that is easy to read and follow. Voices should be used a as reference book for any occasion when ethical considerations are part of a problem or conversation.

The library had two biographies of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. One of them was published in 1955 (Halasz‘ Captain Dreyfus; The story of a mass hysteria) and the other in 1973 (Lewis‘ Prisoners of honor; the Dreyfus affair). We recently received Michael Burns‘ Dreyfus; A family affair, 1789-1945, published in 1991 by HarperCollins. You might question why we need three books on the same, relatively narrow topic. The answer has two aspects. First, the “Dreyfus Affair” as his legal troubles between 1894 and 1906 are known is an important turning point both in the history of modern anti-Semitism and the fight against it. Second these books show different sides of the story.

Case in point, Burns–having written a book earlier about the Dreyfus Affair’s societal implications in Rural Society and French Politics: Boulangism and the Dreyfus Affair, 1886-1900–turns his attention to the Dreyfus’ background: his family. This richly documented and indexed 576 page volume starts of with the story of Dreyfus’ great-grandfather and ends with his grandchildren’s involvement in the French Resistance during World War II. The book’s twenty five chapters are divided into four parts, out of which only one (the third) is dealing with the Dreyfus Affair. Even there the focus is on the Captian himself and his family’s reactions and fight. This approach is different from the rest of the literature dealing with the Dreyfus affair, because they tend to treat Dreyfus as an accidental victim, who is not even important from a larger point of view of the story.

The book is not a novel, but its narrative does recall the grandiose family dramas of an earlier age. If you disregard for a second that the subject is the Dreyfus family, it could be the story of any European Jewish family with its up and downs throughout the centuries. It is a fascinating read as a historical document.

Rabbi Dr. Michael J. Shire had put together a daring, beautiful and inspiring book titled “The Jewish Prophet: Visionary Words from Moses and Miriam to Henrietta Szold and A.J. Heschel”. It is daring because it extended the concept of prophets and prophecies from the traditional biblical period throughout history, to our days. The first of the three main parts of his books introduces eight prophets from the Tanakh, but also three post-canon sages: Hillel, Yohanan ben Zakai and Akiva. The second section covers 9 individuals in the period between the 11th and the 19th century. The third part lists 10 people whose active period was in the 20th century. On page 11 Shire justifies his choice to name prophets those who traditionally are not considered such,

“Each of the men and women in this book has been described as a prophet by biographers or by the historians of their own time. Some may perceive this as a controversial appellation but I believe it has been used for these individuals because of the special category of holiness and direct actions that they demonstrated.”

The book is also daring to include women amongst prophets. According to the Talmud (Tractate Megillah) seven prophetesses preached to Israel… Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Huldah, Esther. Shire includes only Miriam from these seven and two more women for each of the other two parts of his book. I, with my egalitarian views, was happy to see these inclusions; particularly that I was not aware of the activities of these wise women.

The book is beautifully designed, printed on high quality paper that is a joy to look at. Almost every page includes an illustration taken from the manuscripts and early prints of the Hebrew Section of the British Library, selected by the collection’s curator, Ilana Tahan. At the end of the book there is a detailed list of the illustrations and their sources. I think that these images are so rich and remarkable that could stand on their own as the basis for an art book.

But all of these were only about the structure and the design of the book. The essential content is about the life and words of the prophets from various ages of human/ Jewish history. Fore each of the 30 prophets we are given their names, a single phrase conveying their significance (e.g. Barukh Spinoza as the “defender of truth”), the period they lived in, a short quote from/of them, a few biographical pages with description of their thinking and activities as well. Furthermore there are 3-4 extensive quotes from their works, or in the rare cases, when they themselves did not leave much written material behind then about them. These were remarkably inspiring people. Having read the whole book in one sitting from beginning to end I am inspired by them. Such a wide range of circumstances they lived in, but how uniformly passionate reactions they produced. They were all passionate I their quest for justice and morality. I recommend this book to anybody who needs a motivation in any area.

Here is the full list of prophets covered in this book:

• IN THE BEGINNING: Moses, Miriam, Samuel, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Hillel, Yohanan ben Zakkai, Akiva
• FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION: Solomon ibn Gabirol, Bachya ibn Pakuda, Moses Maimonides, Isaac Abravanel, Dona Gracia Mendes, Manasseh ben Israel, Barukh Spinoza, Baal Shem Tov, Hannah Werbermacher
• EVEN IN OUR OWN TIME: Theodor Herzl, Henrietta Szold, Rav Kook, Leo Baeck, Lily Montagu, Stephen S. Wise, Martin Buber, Janusz Korczak, David Ben-Gurion, Abraham Joshua Heschel

Please allow me a personal note. In the early 1990’s I attended the Leo Baeck College in London for one year. Rabbi Shire was teaching there at the time, but I did not have a chance to take any of his classes. I only listened to a few of his shiurim. My recollection is that I was impressed not just by the depth of his knowledge, but also his friendliness to the audience. He had a direct and warm presence. Some time since I was studying there he deservedly became the College’s vice principle.