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:
From the rise of Nazism to postwar efforts to establish the modern Jewish state
The proclamation of the Jewish state and its upbuilding
Seismic changes
New realities
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.
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.
70 years ago today a significant shift happened in Nazi Germany’s persecution of the Jews. By the end of the night of November 9 thirty thousand people were arrested and sent to concentration camps, thousands of synagogues and business destroyed. Consequently this night of terror is known as Kristallnacht. The library has three books, listed below with their official description.
The Ninth of November is the story of the warm and happy childhood of a small girl and her sister, growing up in the Germany of the 1930s in a liberal Jewish family that had for generations been integrated into German provincial life. Hannele Zurndorfer recalls a time when it was still possible, for a child, to be ignorant of the coming dangers of National Socialism. The 9 November 1938 brought home the realization and proof of those very dangers. Kristallnacht, the ‘night of broken glass’ shattered her childhood and the lives of Jews allover Germany, for ever. Hannele Zurndorfer’s lyrical memory and elegant prose present a filigree history of her life before this darkly significant date, tracing her gradual awareness of tension and menace, to her assimilation in England. This book provides a vivid documentary account of the situation of the time; a gallery of memories, poignantly and sympathetically evoked. Her faithfulness to her childhood experiences, which she recounts without retroactive insights from maturity, makes her story so compelling and remarkable. This is one of those rare personal books which have something to say to everyone.
Early in November 1938 Herschel Grynszpan, a young German Jew of Polish origin living in Paris, learned that his family had been expelled by the Nazis from their home in Germany and, with thousands of other Polish-born Jews, deported to Poland. Moved by anguish at the plight of his family and race, Grynszpan walked into the German Embassy on 7 November and shot the Third Secretary, Ernst vom Rath, who died two days later. Using the murder as a pretext, Hitler ordered the SS and SA, with the connivance of the police and fire Services, to launch the first nation-wide pogrom against the Jews in Germany on the night of 9-10 November (since known as `Crystal Night`, on account of the quantity of shattered glass found in city streets in the morning). Synagogues were burned down, Jewish shops were wrecked and looted, many Jews were beaten up, others were murdered, and some 30,000 of the men (aged between sixteen and eighty) were sent for a period to concentration camps, where many died. The authors of this book are historians who have drawn extensively on German, French, British, American and Israeli sources, including government papers, proceedings of the Nurnberg trials, newspaper articles, Speeches by politicians, Nazi official memoranda and survivors` reports. Beginning in 1933, they describe the increasingly ferocious measures taken by the Nazis against the Jews in the years that followed, leading up to a climax with the assassination of vom Rath, the terror of `Crystal Night`, and its after-math. They then show how the countries (including Britain and the United States) which looked on at the events of November 1938, and neither intervened nor waived their restrictions on the immigration of Jewish refugees, cannot escape a large share of the blame for the tragedy which followed.
An acclaimed Churchill biographer and Holocaust scholar, Gilbert makes a strong case in this elegant volume that Kristallnacht was the watershed moment that laid the groundwork for the Holocaust. Known as “the Night of Broken Glass,” the “coordinated, comprehensive rampage” that began on the night of November 9, 1938, saw Nazi-inspired thugs ransack synagogues and Jewish-owned property across Germany and Austria. Gilbert maintains a tight focus on the individual experiences of Jewish men, women and children during the 24-hour spree of destruction, as well as on Germans and Austrians who rioted, opposed the riot or simply looked the other way. The book begins with a harrowing account of that night’s events, using accounts from news sources of the day: ” ‘Terrified children were turned sobbing out of their beds, which were then smashed to pieces.’” Gilbert devotes a chapter each to eyewitness accounts from Berlin and Vienna, where some of the worst destruction occurred. As Felix Rinde, then an Austrian-Jewish teenager, later wrote, “Jewish life in Vienna came to a virtual end.” A third chapter offers similar accounts from other cities. Gilbert’s commanding account then traces the origins of Kristallnacht in the years of mounting Jewish discrimination that began when Hitler came to power in 1933, and shows how Kristallnacht pointed the way toward the events to come. 8 pages of b&w photos; maps.
We also have a VHS tape of the 1988 Kristallnacht commemoration, held in the Faith Lutheran Church in Santa Rosa.
The word “shtetl” doesn’t appear in Marilyn Hirsh’s Potato pancakes all around, a Hanukkah tale, but the plot is obviously set in that world. The central figure is Samuel the peddler, who arrives on the first night of Hanukkah to a small and happy village, where the children are playing outside. He is welcome in the first house he knocks the door on and even accepted as the person to make the traditional Hanukkah latke, while the others argue about which recipe is the best to use. His way of cooking it is communal; he lets everyone suggest to add an ingredient, so by the end they have pretty rich latkes.
The book’s appendices include a one page description of Hanukkah and a recipe attributed to the grandmothers in the story. I enjoyed the sepia illustration drawn by the author and printed in brown, grey and yellow. The peddler looks like a bit the archetypal, patriarchal G-d image. His jolly manners and integrative method make the story fun to read as well. It is cheerful book, not just for 4-8 year old children, for whom it is written for.
We have over a dozen books on Hanukkah for children. In the next few weeks I plan to review them all, so by the time Hanukkah starts on December 21 I could easily recommend any one of them to our young patrons.
The first one is A turn for Noah: A Hanukkah Story written by Susan Remick Topek and illustrated by Sally Springer. The story covers all eight days of Hanukkah, during which poor Noah is not only overlooked from the children who wanted to light the candles, but all sorts of other mishaps happen to him. All of those, however, manage to show an aspect or tradition of the holiday, the most important one being the ability of spinning the dreidel. I can let you in on the secret, that by the end all will be well.
The Jewish Multiracial Network lists the books on its booklist, because one of the 7 children shown on several of its 24 pages is of African origin.
The book is ideal for ages 4 to 8. I am a bit beyond that, thus I found the images, drawing a bit too static for my taste. As if none of the people actually are capable of movement and they all seem to smile the same way on every page. Other than that this is a completely sweet little educational story. Topek and Springer created three other books about the same child, Noah: A Holiday for Noah, A Taste for Noah, and A Costume for Noah.
Yesterday was the first time I ever participated in a book club discussion group. It was a great experience. The thirteen of us started off with toasting (with apple-cider) the newly elected president-elect, Barack Obama, whose book, Dreams from my father, a story of race and inheritance we discussed. In the excited and elevated atmosphere it was impossible to disassociate the book from its context. Therefore we mixed personal reflections on the book and its author with political observations.
As we went around the circle every one of us had something to say, what touched them personally in the book. Unfortunately I did not make notes, thus I cannot recall most of what was said. I was impressed though with the attention every reader devoted to the work and the variety of astute observations they made in the circle. I also felt honored sitting at such a historic moment in the midst of elders whose rich history included being a civil rights activists, having grown up in an area covered in the book, or having lived in the neighborhood where Mr. Obama lives now. It truly made the day more historic for me.
I appreciated Sylvia Sucher’s facilitation of the discussion, research and reading of reviews at the end of our meeting.
Looking forward to our next gathering on December 3 about Meir Shalev’s A Pigeon and a Boy.
The last few weeks several people recommended to me Aaron Lansky’s Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books. They told me that it is funny and covers and amazing story. I still haven’t read it (so right now you can still borrow it), but wanted to share this recommendation with all of you. “[It is] about Aaron Lansky’s travels as he and a team of volunteers crisscrossed America, retrieving Yiddish books from dusty attics, crumbling basements, and dumpsters.” His (and his colleagues’) efforts led to the foundation of the National Yiddish Book Center. The book itself won numerous prizes and its author also received a MacArthur “genius” fellowship. Instead of trying to convince you that you should read it, why don’t you listen to chapter 20, titled Kaddish, read by the author himself. (It is 21 minutes long) Click the play button below or download the 4.7 MB MP3 file for later listening.
As I mentioned last week the library could use a pickup truck without its shell for an hour to deliver a new DVD shelves. I bought one of these for our house on Sunday. As I live 3-4 blocks from the video rental place that was selling it I just dollied it home. You can see below how that went. But using a dolly for 6-8 miles to get the other shelves to the library is beyond my physical capacity and bravery. If you have the time and a truck, don’t hesitate to let us know.
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.
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:
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…
The first one is 
