Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

If Sherwin B. Nuland, in his Nextbook/Schocken book titled Maimonides, would only have given a detail picture of 12th century history of the Mediterranean region, including the various rulers’ rise and fall, characteristics of their empire, extending it both in space (covering Africa and Europe) and time (earlier and later centuries) … it would have been enough.

If the book would only have analyzed why so many Jews became doctors from the earliest of times, listing such reasons as medical knowledge being portable, when Jews were forced to move often; or the fact that the minds honed on Talmudic debates could easily use the same techniques for scientific/medical argumentation and produce better results, than other healers’, who were often uneducated … it would have been enough.

If Nuland would only have covered Rambam’s biography, including his travels and the reasons behind them, his relationships to his father, brother, students and women as much as possible; talked about his studies, positions, correspondence, alliances, and enemies … it would have been enough.

If the book would only have introduced Rambam’s major works, putting them in the context of their origin, including how the “Commentary on the Mishnah” with its combination of Greek philosophy and Rabbinic commentary manages to balance and keep scientific approach and unbending faith at their places; how the Rambam spent ten years on writing the “Mishneh Torah”‘s fourteen volumes to create a reduction of Talmudic law, making its decrees available for the less educated mind; and how “The Guide for the Perplexed” created divisions between those who understood it, those who did not and those who thought they did… it would have been enough.

If Nuland, as a medical doctor and historian himself, would only have evaluated Maimonides reputation as a medical luminary, pointing out how much of his writings and practice depended on Hippocrates, Galen, Arabic and Christian sources, how Maimonides cannot be really considered an original thinker in terms of medical science, but more of a re-interpreter, similar to all of his contemporaries, but nevertheless not belittling his mental powers… it would have been enough.

If the book would only have pointed out why Rambam viewed health important (so people could devote more time to the most important duty of attaining knowledge of G-d) … it would have been enough.

But, the author also pointed out on page 190,

“The real reason that Maimonides has been an ageless icon to Jews everywhere […is the] memory of a man whose life was devoted to the continuity of the Jewish people.”

(Some of you might have recognized that the “it would have been enough” phrase is from a Pesach song. I wrote this review following that pattern in honor of the Rambam/Maimonides, who was born on the first night of Pesach in 1135.)

The last few weeks of my life were louder than usual, thanks to the blessed noises and cries of our newborn. Agnon‘s book was the perfect retreat to at least inner quietness. Whenever I read any of his books, the near-Biblical language he is using and the pace of his books always provide the calmness I seek from them. I was not disappointed this time either; I could transfer myself to mellower times by reading In the Heart of the Seas. The constant reference to the heroes as “our men of good heart” greatly contributed to the pleasant atmosphere the book emanated.

The plot of the story sounds simple; a group of Hasidim make aliyah, emigrate to Israel. On one hand this does not sound too exciting; after all, nowadays lots of people travel, emigrate or even make aliyah. On the other hand we have to consider that these travelers made their journey back in the day, when traveling was a much more arduous process. Furthermore, making aliyah is not just any journey, but THE journey for a devout Jews of the 19th or any century, it requires as much spiritual preparation, strength and persistence as physical. Agnon’s story draws a clear parallel between the physical, spiritual and lifelong journey. By the last I mean that it is possible to read the book at a deeper level as a metaphor for life journey. We start out somewhere low and as we aspire to higher ground, we do everything we can to get there. What we strive for more of is not material wealth, but getting closer to G-d. This is Agnon’s main point in my reading.

Another focus is that the journey cannot be done alone. The value of community is essential for our travelers. They would not be able to survive alone. They value each other and each others’ differences. The group develops from a band of travelers to a close-knit congregation through their tribulations.

There are two literary connections I could not escape noticing. Joseph Campbell described the monomyth, aka the hero’s journey, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces as a tri-stage process,

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

In this case (most of) our heroes do not return, but they definitely follow the rest of the pattern Campbell recognized. In this sense Agnon’s book is a typical monomyth.

The other famous book where ten people travel together and tell stories to each other is Boccaccio‘s Decameron. It is mostly known for its erotic and tragic content, but that too deserves more attention. There the characters escape from the Black Death. Here they are not escaping from death but going towards fulfillment of their lifelong dream. There Lady Fortune, aka fate, is the decisive factor of what happens. Here divine authority saves or condemns people, who have the power through their actions and prayers to influence their life. Rather different outlooks, wouldn’t you say?

Just last week I wrote that I like reading fiction books for their plot and character development. I forgot to mention that I enjoy descriptive just as much. Shmuel Yosef Agnon is a master of that. (I spelled out his first and middle name on purpose, because almost all the time he is referred to only as S. Y. Agnon. He deserves his full name to be known. And not just because the Nobel Prize for Literature he won in 1966.) Here is the very opening of the book, setting the tone for the rest,

Just before the first of the Hasidim went up to the Land of Israel, a certain man named Hananiah found his way to their House of Study. His clothes were torn, rags were wound around his legs, and he wore no boots on his feet; his hair ad beard were covered with th dust of the roads, and all his worldly goods were tied up in a little bundle which he carried with him in his kerchief.

I cannot omit mentioning the work of I. M. Lask, who magnificently translated the book from Hebrew to English. T. Herzl Rome illustrated the book with nine pictures. His style of drawing with simple, yet powerful lines fit well the book’s theme. Here is Hananiah himself,

I am a pretty fast reader, albeit I do not do speed reading. Nevertheless I like to plough through books for different reasons. In the case of (good) fiction I am curious about the plot and character development to turn the pages fast. When I am reading non-fiction I want to learn as much as I can as fast as I can, along with trying to figure out the main point(s) of the book.

Reading, however Toby Knobel Fluek‘s “Memories of my life in a Polish village, 1930-1949” I had to slow down. In order to get the most out of this book I had to savor each page as long as it took to sink in me. There are several reasons for my recommendation for you to do the same. Each page has a reprint of one of the author’s paintings or drawings. You have to take your time to explore the images in order to fully “get” them. Not to mention that the pictures in the first half of the book are fun to look at and explore. Part of the fun was the nostalgic atmosphere they emanated of the old world. By “old world” I refer to both Poland, part of Europe, and also “old” in the sense that these depict pre-Shoah scenes. The text accompanying each picture gives us the memories that inspired the artist to create them. They are written in a simple style using short sentences and not too many, carefully selected adjectives. This style amplifies the longing feeling one gets reading these passages for a simpler times.

In the first four chapters Fluek shows her family, Sabbath preparations, how they celebrated holidays and her family’s neighbors. The second half of the book details the Russian and consequent German occupation and the eventual liberation. In the years covered here Fluek suffered from hunger, cold, loneliness, fear and by the end of the war she lost most of her family. The style of writing and painting did not change form the first half, thus the dissimilarity of the subject matter is providing sharp contrast. If you are ready to encounter the author’s personal recollection of the Shoah do not skip the second half of the book. But, if you only want to submerge to Jewish life in a small Polish village life I recommend reading and looking through the first half. For example here is the painting from page five titled Our Kitchen along with the description.

In this room my mother cooked the meals and baked the bread, and the washwoman did the laundry here. Mother baked the bread for a whole week at a time. The kneading of the dough took a lot of elbow grease; it was done in a large wooden tub. There were two wood-burning stoves for cooking and an oven for baking. Every farmhouse had similar stoves. The poor lived in only one large room like this one, with a bed in the corner.

I always appreciate when I learn something that helps me imagine life before I was born. I read a fair amount about the Shoah and World War II, but almost all of it was written after the war. “Address unknown” first appeared in 1938 and is set 1932-34. It gives such a different perspective than the books written with hindsight knowledge. It shows the process as it happened, how intelligent and decent people were swept away by the Nazi ideology in Germany in the 1930′s. Through a series of letters we get acquainted with a Jewish art dealer in San Francisco and his long-time friend and business partner. The latter was of German origin whose move back to Germany in 1932 gave an opportunity to revive their correspondence. Step-by-step the German businessman becomes engrossed by local politics and the prevalent ideals of his country, to the point… No, I will not post spoilers here to what extremes he changes, you just need to find it out for yourself, from this short, 64 page long book.

The foreword is also worth reading. That’s where I learned that the story was first published in Story magazine, but it was thought to be too strong coming from a woman, so it was published under the “Kressmann Taylor” name, Kressmann being the author’s maiden last name and Taylor her husband’s. The history of the piece includes being published in Reader’s Digest, despite their policy of not publishing fiction and gaining popularity throughout the US. It had no chance of getting known in Europe because shortly after its original publication the Nazis occupied most of Europe and banned the book, along with many other.

For a chilling effect, read through the letters and meditate with me how deep mass psychosis, desperation, need for self-esteem can drive people.

I have to admit that I did not read all the books from beginning to end I write about in this blog. Most of the time I spend half an hour with getting familiar with it, by browsing it through, reading a few page here and there and checking reviews. This time however I did read Edeet Ravel‘s novel, “Ten thousand lovers” from cover to cover. I had an easy job, because it was fascinating on several levels.

I was surprised how well the author integrated explanations of origins and analysis of words from modern Israeli vocabulary into the novel. Not speaking Ivrit, but having been to Israel and having some knowledge of Hebrew this was most educational for me. On every tenth page or so Ravel devoted half a page or so to introducing a new word or a whole phrase. She explained the connection to Biblical Hebrew and how the contemporary meaning of the word came about. The connections, the logic behind the transformation of the meaning was fascinating and revealing.

I also enjoyed the frame of the novel, from where the protagonist flashed back to tell the main story. The framing narrative is set in today’s London, where the protagonist hosts her daughter, in her twenties, and her boyfriend, both dancers, for a visit. We mostly learn about the mother’s feelings and musing about their relationship as she think through how the daughter came to this world. But we also get acquainted a little bit with the daughter’s struggles.

All of the above serve as backdrop only in retelling the main line of events. Our heroine is a university student in the 1970′s Israel. She gets to know, fall in love and eventually bear the child of Ami, an intriguing man who works as an interrogator for the army. Herein originates the ethical dilemma. Ami was depicted as a decent man, who does not select his friends base don race or religion. He is also a man of high moral standards. For example in the course of his work he helps the prisoners to recover from previous abuses, never hurts them physically, his method of inquiry is simply to conduct a verbal conversation. But how can one do this kind of work and keep one’s sanity? The other question the novel works around is how she can accept him and his job as an integral part of his being. There is no simple answer for these questions; they are the problem the book returns again and again. That is why I liked this book. It did not take the easy way out of taking either side of the conflict. I rarely saw this kind of honesty. The book just described the human struggle of the people who live in the midst of this.

Here is an excerpt from Ami’s monolog, from page 241, that sheds light on part of his stance:

This idea that we’re the good guys, we’re the nice ones, beleaguered, long-suffering, misunderstood–it’s ingrained. We’re the ones who are advanced, bringing light wherever we go. Ad for a while there was at least something to hold on to, some good intentions, some sort of real struggle. And whatever didn’t fit into that view of ourselves, we ignored. We focused on the good things and we believed we were better than everyone else. Good guys surrounded by bad guys. Well, the occupation finally leaves us without a way out. It proves we’re exactly the same as everyone else. Capable of everything and anything.

In 1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer received the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life.” Farrar, Straus, and Giroux published a beautifully designed bilingual, English and Yiddish, edition of the address Singer gave upon accepting the prize. Pick it up if you want to spend a few minutes appreciating the humor and intellect of a man, deeply troubled by the problems of his era. I was not exaggerating when I said “few minutes”: the whole address is 6 pages long. The little book also contains an analysis of his work and a statement titled “Why I write for children.” This is so delightful that I want to share with all of you even if you do not manage to get the book:

There are five hundred reasons why I began to write for children, but to save time I will mention only ten of them.

Number 1: Children read books, not reviews. They don’t give a hoot about the critics.

Number 2: Children don’t read to find their identity.

Number 3: They don’t read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation.

Number 4: They have no use for psychology.

Number 5: They detest sociology.

Number 6: They don’t try to understand Kafka or Finnegans Wake.

Number 7: They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.

Number 8: They love interesting stories, not commentary, guides, or footnotes.

Number 9: When a book is boring, they yawn openly, without any shame or fear of authority.

Number 10: They don’t expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.

The library received in February the guide for the Sephardi Museum in Toledo, Spain. This is a high quality publication both in its form and content. It is printed in heavy glossy paper, so the hundred or so pictures look great. The 80 page softcover book can also be read as a primer on Jewish history, lifecycle, festivals and the Sephardic aspects of all of the above. The descriptions of the 5 rooms and the courtyard of the building/museum cover these topics. The text reads like a smart introduction to these themes. There are two major signs that you are not just reading a generic book on Judaism. First the pictures do pop up, create an enjoyable experience making you want to see the objects in person. Second, every third paragraph or so ends with a sentence like this, “and we have ceramics, textiles, books … from this era.” The connection between the images and the texts is sometimes only indirect though.

I have only two reservations about the book. First the translation from Spanish to English is occasionally chunky. That would not be a problem, but the fact that Biblical and historical dates were referred to as “BC” (Before Christ) and not as “BCE” (Before Common Era) were a bit insensitive, considering the topic. I encountered another problem when I was trying to catalog the book. The title is a bit ambiguous for me. The book’s spine and cover says it is “Museo Sefardi Toldeo. The inside page says “Guide: Sephardi Museum, Toledo.” The next inside page bears the title “The Synagogue of El Transito.” OCLC (The biggest catalog in the world) list it as “Sephardi Museum, Toledo. Guide.” It was all too much for me, so I just opted for this last variation. But this is just a librarian’s dilemma, the book is thoroughly enjoyable.

The most interesting thing I learned was about the Sephardic language. When I first read it I corrected it in my mind, thinking that they surely meant Ladino. But then I learned that:

[Sephardic language is] usually known by philologists as Judeao-Spanish, it has also been called Jidio, Judesmo, or Espanol in the east and Jaquetia in the area around the Strait of Gibraltar. It is sometimes called Ladino, the term used in Hebrew spoken in Israel. However strictly speaking Ladino is a specific mode of the Sephardic language used in traditional teaching and in the liturgy for translating the sacred texts from Hebrew and Aramaic. This Ladino is characterized by remaining extremely close to these original texts, which in turn has led to the sacred language translated being projected onto Sephardic. (Page 72)

Mrs. Katz and Tush
by Patricia Polacco
Reviewed by Susan Miller

You may know this sweet story with a friendship between a sweet elderly lady Mrs. Katz and her neighbor Larnel. Mrs. Katz mourns her husband, having no children to celebrate the holidays with. Larnel and his mom spend holidays with their dear neighbor and her new pet kitten. Mrs. Katz named her pet, the Yiddish name Tush. The author introduces Yiddish terms like Bubeleh, Kattieleh and chuppa. The water color drawings will hold the attention of young readers as does the story.