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I FRONT PAGE I  JEWISH SOCIETY & STYLE SECTION 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10  I  JEWISH ARTS, STARS & ENTERTAINMENT SECTION 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10   I JEWISH & ISRAEL POLITIC HEADLINES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10  I  NEWS & GOSSIPS FROM AROUND THE WORLD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10  I  FANCY LIVING MAGAZINE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10  11 12 I  LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10  I CONTACT US  I ARCHIVES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 I

 

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We are not only news, commentary, and politics! You come to us because we are also culture, books, and style. And now we are taking it one step further. We want to encourage and sponsor good, interesting, and exciting writers, and we know that such writers exist among our readers in large numbers! We want YOUR short story!

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INDEX OF BOOKS REVIEWS SECTION

battered Judaica bindingsBOOKS REVIEWS BY                      

P. DAVID  Hornik

The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People under Siege. Author:  Kenneth Levin, Smith and Kraus Global 599pp., $35  Reviewed by P. David Hornik

Kenneth Levin, an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a Princeton-trained historian, has written a definitive, magisterial book about what went wrong during the Oslo era. The malaise, Levin argues, was not just an Israeli one but a Jewish one, typical of both Diaspora and Zionist history in the modern era. It was strikingly evident among pre-Holocaust German Jewry, many of whom attempted to win the favor of the surrounding anti-Semitic society via self-reform, and among American Jewry during the Holocaust, many of whom did not seek to aid their European brethren out of fear that such "nationalism" would offend Americans. This Jewish pathology, in Levin's view, resembles the psychology of abused children who seek to propitiate the abuser by becoming "good" and purging themselves of their supposed failings. The syndrome often entails a "delusional grandiosity"—the idea that one can control one's environment by appeasing the aggressor. Surveying the history of the pre-modern Jewish Diaspora to find out why it was immune to this self-abasing syndrome, Levin finds the answer in the strong communal institutions that reinforced identity and pride despite hostile environments. Even among parts of Spanish Jewry that had secular educations and relatively high access to the surrounding society, the sturdy communal scaffolding prevented wide-scale defection. Similarly, much of East European Jewry showed resilience in the modern era even when religious institutions eroded, by replacing these with secular ones like Jewish labor unions and political parties. Among the Jews who led the Zionist movement, however, there were many who were scarred by Diaspora anti-Semitism and for whom Zionism meant, in part, purifying Jews of their alleged defects. Socialist Zionism sought to create a "new Jew"—a sunburned, virile laborer cleansed of the religious and bourgeois corruptions of the Diaspora. The circle of German Jewish academics surrounding Hebrew University's Martin Buber and Judah Magnes fervently opposed statehood and insisted that Judaism was strictly an ethical, universalizing mission that would win the Arabs' affection if so presented. A countervailing force was David Ben-Gurion, an energetic realist who was able to synthesize modern secularism with healthy pride in Jewish peoplehood, land and tradition. If this affirmative Ben-Gurionist nationalism basically prevailed in the first three decades of Israel's existence, there were two factors, Levin contends, that partially unraveled it. One was the persistence of the Arab siege, even after the victory of the Six Day War that to many, at the time, seemed decisive and final. The other was the triumph of Menachem Begin's Likud Party in the 1977 elections, which finally gave much of the Labor and Left sector a Jewish bête noire—in the shape of Begin's largely religious and traditional constituency—analogous to the "primitive" East European Jews whom an anxious German Jewry had once reviled and blamed for its woes. In the decade and a half leading up to Oslo, the self-blaming mentality quickly gathered steam among the sector susceptible to it.

 

 
 
 
 

 

Largely offspring of Zionist pioneers whose own Jewishness was wounded and ambivalent, lacking inner resources to cope with persistent Arab hatred and aggression, they now had the despised “Other Israel” of the Right on which to project the bewildered self-indictment that the Arab siege induced in them. As the more assertive, Ben-Gurionist trend within Labor Zionism was increasingly conflated with the Right, a school of New Historians arose who reinterpreted Zionist history to show the Jews as colonialist aggressors and the Arabs as passive victims suing for peace. Writers and artists increasingly expressed alienation and even loathing toward the Jewish state. Post-Zionist educators stripped curricula of Jewish content in hopes of producing deracinated, “universalist” Israelis whom no one would perceive as objectionable. Most significantly, and unlike in other democracies, the anti-nationalism of the elites found a wide resonance in the populace. Many Israelis, worn out by the siege, were eager to believe the peace camp's promises of an end to conflict achieved via self-reform—meaning, in this case, the relinquishment of all territorial claims, the suppression of specific Jewish-Zionist values, and the creation of a Palestinian state in whatever borders were demanded. They were enticed by the view that Arab hostility was a function of Israel's misbehavior, and thus within Israel's power to palliate.

 Although the Labor Party, in winning the 1992 elections, still made the traditional Labor Zionist concerns about land and security a centerpiece of its campaign, this quickly emerged as political cynicism when Prime Minister Rabin—who had been portrayed as a holdover of the old, centrist realism—embraced the Oslo program of superdoves Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin, and their comrades. The rest of the history is painful and familiar as Yasser Arafat and the PLO, perennial terrorists brought to the territories in the name of peace and reconciliation, lost no time turning them into staging grounds for brutal attacks while the Oslo camp blindly persisted in its delusions in the face of all evidence. It is a history, however, that Levin, with his consummate grasp of both the political and psychological dimensions and their interaction, traces with great eloquence and brilliance. Although not exactly picking up his earlier theme of the importance of strong communal institutions, Levin in his last chapter makes the related argument that, along with political pragmatism, the main remedy to the Oslo syndrome—the proneness to internalize the indictments of enemies and seek to prove one’s “goodness”—lies in imparting a stronger Jewish background to Israeli young people. This means “educat[ing them] in Jewish history, Jewish faith, Jewish ethics . . . , Jewish culture. . . . Educating the young in their intellectual and spiritual heritage can go far to inoculating them against the depredations of the ‘post-Zionist’ institutions they encounter as adults.” Such education should not, Levin clarifies, be “comprehended in chauvinistic terms, nor [promote] a particular strain of Jewish religious practice.” This basically sound position does not, however, anticipate two possible problems: how an adult elite that is itself infected with post-Zionism could be gotten to institute such a program; and whether it could be successfully implemented in a society that categorizes its non-Orthodox majority as “secular” and hence to some degree separate from Jewish tradition.  If somewhat open-ended, Levin’s last chapter is still a thoughtful culmination of a great, indispensable book.

 

 

BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY A JEWISH AUTHOR

 

SILENT LIES BY M.L. MALCOLM

ONE OF THE BEST NOVELS AND DRAMA EVER WRITTEN SINCE THE 10 COMMANDMENTS

Photo: M.L., author of "SILENT LIES".

I just finished reading M.L. Malcolm's novel "Silent Lies". I paused for a while, took a deep breath,  and decided to go back to Shanghai, perhaps, for a short moment, I would slip under the coat of an intoxicating night mist and get lost on the bridge joining Buda and Pest, or perhaps, just perhaps,  ask Aristide Bruant, Mistinguette and Charles Boyer if they would  join me at Le Chat Noire for an Armagnac,  and see if Leo and M.L. Malcolm are around. This is  what I felt, this is what I experienced, and this is what I wanted to do, after having read M.L. Malcolm's masterpiece "SILENT LIES". To Europeans and world troubadours-adventurers, nothing is new in Malcolm bigger than life fictional story. But to Americans and those who were not born at the other edge or fence of East Europe, Les Annees Folles, Montmartre,  Paris-Canaille 1912, The Prussian Empire and neighboring joints of Shanghai piers, Malcolm's novel is an Ali Baba film noire episode... A perfect stage set for Bogart, George Raft, Clark Gable and Eddie Constantin. "SILENT LIES" does not tell lies. Au contraire, it describes life or maybe lives and events which crafted, joined and separated the very fabric of a world that vanished at the shadows of the roaring wheels of modern technology.  I am referring to the nostalgic and lyrically turbulent years of the early twenty centuries, where "Dames" spied on emperors and cabaret coquettes helped elect presidents,  an era when and where Leo, the  novel's hero of Malcolm could enter China without visa and without passport. A world, where a face, your face could tell everything about you. A world of enigmatic existence of quasi mythical adventurers, spies, hustlers wearing fur and Estragon and dining Chez Babette...

M.L. Malcolm wrote about a Hungarian boy who was born poor, somewhere in Magyar (Hungary). He was fluent in foreign languages. Not very ethical, nor brave,  but charming and unusual.

  

Leo would use anything, including his charming tactic in talking with others, to fulfill his dreams, protect his wife and daughter. But Leo is also a thief and an adventurer by raison d'etre. A real character with prefabricated charisma and sweet-agitated charm. He traveled to Shanghai taking with him a stolen diamond necklace, his one way ticket to prosperity, financial security and possibly his death. Would his spirit of adventure...would his savvy and charming European style in flirting with women...would the bizarre and treacherous characters waiting for him on the road of the unknown...would Shanghai open doors for him or decimate his dreams? Malcolm wrote about so many things in her fabulous novel: Payoffs, peasants, hustlers, Chinese Mafia, diamonds, long journeys, cargos, horns and bells of ships, human drama, beggars, passion, adventures, a bizarre Astor House Hotel,  glamorous Club Casanova,  scandals, the Lido, women, schemes, defensive anger, charm, complicated transactions, deals on the wheels...in brief, about Real Life with its ups and downs...

The author is a fabulous writer with an astonishing romantic clarity and captivating narrative style. The ambiance, atmosphere, setting, feeling and style of the book are out of this world. A world far from the ordinary and the banal. The book is a masterpiece. Add it to your collection of treasures. Rating: 5 stars out of five. "SILENT LIES" is one of the 10 best books of the year. Published in the United States by Longstreet Press. ISBN: 1-56352-750-2.

London, 25, May, 2005
2nd Review of "SILENT LIES" By Maximillien de Lafayette (Courtesy of the International Herald Daily News http://www.internationalheralddailynews.org ) 

M.L. MALCOLM'S "SILENT LIES": A TRIUMPH! A MASTERPIECE!

Anchor this in your mind: Silent Lies, a novel by M.L. Malcolm is a masterpiece. And let's find out why?

Photo: Jacket/cover of "SILENT LIES", by Burtch Hunter Design LLC.

Malcolm in a captivating story-telling style a la  Paris-Berlin-Mata Hari 1912 and  Charles Boyer  told us and wrote the melodramatic story of  LEO, a Hungarian boy who lived in a world of suspense, drama, adventures, mesmerizing sequences and avalanches of events of a world that no longer exists...a modern time romantico-existentialistic-adventurer-go getter young man who mingled with the powerful, the rich, the famous, the infamous, the dangerous, characters of the night, adventurers and threatening figures under the fog of Shanghai...a modern Victor Hugo miserable who reinvented himself with style and unusual persona, who on his first, second or third date asks the woman who  met: "Delighted to make your acquaintance. Shall we live in Budapest when we get married?" Quite a character...a human face from a different world. Yet, that mystique world did exist some 70 or 80 years ago in Europe. With a magical narrative style, Malcolm brought back to life, this vanished, mysterious, nostalgic world...along with the intrigues, schemes, adventures, conspiracies, dazzling tableaux of real life, passion, love, mysteries and beyond. It is a fascinating story which enrobes so many facets and aspects of the human spirit, the glitzy and esthetically frightening world of the early 20th century...

The book is written in a very unorthodox and hypnotically, mesmerizing beautiful style. Part, brief human chronicle, part, melodramatic fresco of events in the life of a man facing the world, alone and crossing the frontiers of odds and challenges in un-chartered territories, part,  painfully rejoicing tableaux of human drama which is incomprehensible to those who shop a Wall Mart, part, analysis of a man's social, ethical-political priorities and choices, and part, the biggest image of REAL LIFE!                                      

The cradle, tie, drama, metamorphosis and the stunning magic of the book rotate, evolve and burst around  a boy born into an absolute poverty in Hungary, who uses his linguistic abilities to create for himself a new world with a better future, a world with new possibilities, new choices and unknown frontiers. The Hungarian visionary boy is caught up  in a series of events which he is unable to control. He leaves Hungary and heads toward Shanghai, hiding a stolen diamond necklace. That necklace could be  his new passport to a world of salvation, fortune, or perhaps, fatal destiny!? Malcolm, so admirably in a very intriguing descriptive style ties together all what surrounds the life of this young man. Ernst Hemingway, Emile Zola and Victor Hugo would have loved the narrative style of Malcolm and her human tableaux. For, Malcolm's writing style, compositional structure, narrative sequences, choice of titles for each separate chapter,  warmth and substantial depth in the dialogues between LEO and the people, the men and the women he encounters  and the delightfully confusing, romantic, fragile, promising and deceitful  passages on the road of his life, transport you to an era, to a universe, to  suspended moments in time and space, where only giants of the novel like Hugo, Tolstoy, Proust and Zola can forge and throw on the human landscape. Malcolm did just that! Malcolm, despite her relatively new "grand entrance" to the world of novels, would and could rival the best writers and story-tellers of our generation. In addition to the romantic and lyrical aura projected and imbibed by and from the milieus and  life stage of Leo, Malcolm succeeded in flirting with the struggles and reconciliations Leo faced, including  his own nonreligious Jewish heritage amid  the persecution of the Jews in Hungary  during and after the first world war and  particularly  during Nazi Germany. Malcolm, the magician story-teller and writer talked about various events and stories that  influenced her and caused major impact on her novel. One of them is the story of her  husband's great Aunt Melitta who was an artist. "She used her skill to forge a Siamese (Thai) transit visa for herself and her family, and they escaped the Nazis by fleeing to Shanghai. Melitta and her husband evaded confinement in the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai, because, like Leo, they invented new identities for themselves. They lived in the French Concession for the duration of the war." said M.L. Malcolm.

Photo: Author M.L. Malcom, the creator of a new literary masterpiece.

Malcolm continues: "Hearing Litty's story began my fascination with Shanghai. I was intrigued by the idea that, for over fifty years, it was the only place in the civilized world where you could just show up, without a passport or visa, and begin a new life. The stories of the people who made--and lost--fortunes there were absolutely captivating. I was particularly interested in the period between the two World Wars, because it was a time of such dramatic societal change all over the Western world. At some point I came across a story about a notorious Shanghai gangster, the head of one of the Chinese Triads (which were like the Mafia families, only worse). He supported Chiang Kai-shek's revolution in rather nefarious ways, and that became the genesis for part of Leo's story. In fact all of the events—the fall of Budapest, the Hungarian counterfeiting scandal, the bombing of Shanghai—actually happened the way I describe them. I just inserted a fictional character." The author was asked this question: "In many ways Leo is not at all heroic. Why did you make him the main character?" and Malcolm replied: "For the same reason Margaret Mitchell made Scarlett O'Hara the heroine of Gone with the Wind. To misquote Faulkner, "sin and redemption" make for the most interesting stories. Leo doesn't have a lot of moral guidance growing up. Most of what he does as an adult is motivated by his desire to protect his wife and daughter. Like Scarlett, Leo is a survivor who has to pay a very high price to learn that deception, especially self-deception, often has unintended consequences." And hear this..."Another interesting parallel is the development of the intelligence community. I discuss the development of the Office of Secret Service, the precursor to the CIA. There was a huge amount of disorganization prior to World War II, which the OSS was created to solve. After the war, Congress split the jurisdiction of the CIA and the FBI in ways that didn't make a whole lot of sense, and here we are, fifty years later, trying to figure out how to do it better." This what Malcolm replied to the question "Do you think there are any lessons to be learned from the historical events you write about?"

SILENT LIES is pure magic. A triumph. A masterpiece. Your  new passport to the enchanting, nostalgic, sinfully beautiful and melodramatically frightening  world that was tailored-made to figures and characters, heroes and villains, lovers and dreamers, people larger than life  who came back from Homer's' Iliad to talk to M.L. Malcolm. Get a copy of the book. Get two copies if you have two good friends.

REVIEWS OF M.L. MALCOLM's "SILENT LIES"

" One of the best novels and human drama ever written since the Ten Commandments..." The International Herald Daily News. http://www.internationalheralddailynews.org/books.htm

"Mesmerizing...avalanches of magnificent black and white frames of a macabre and heart-felt film noire. Almost perfect and delightfully frightening in its beauty, dramatic setting and vanished world. Two thumbs up. A total literary triumph..."London Monthly Herald.

"Hand-made for the screen and for you, when you are ready to challenge life and mock its ups and downs...Powerful, pulverizing, dangerously captivating...One of the 10 best novels of the year..."World Art Celebrities Journal.

"With deft strokes, M.L. Malcolm transports the reader around the world and across time through four turbulent decades in a sweeping saga reminiscent of Jeffrey Archer and Susan Howatch. Silent Lies is brilliantly researched and beautifully written. I could not put this book down." Karen White, author, "The Color of Light"

 

SILENT LIES: Distributed by National Book Network. Publication date: June 2005. 336 pages. Hardcover: 6x9. $24.95.  ISBN: 1-56352-750-2. LONGSTREET PRESS, Athens, Georgia, USA. www.longstreet.net  325 Milledge Avenue, Athens, Georgia 30601, USA.

 

A HUNDRED YEARS, A MILLION LAUGHS" BY BARRY DOUGHERTY.

Friars Club History a Perfect Father’s Day Gift

Barry DoughertyPhoto: Author Barry Dougherty.

The world-famous Friars Club thrives as one of the most beloved and exclusive entertainment organizations in the world. In celebration of the Friars Club's centennial anniversary, A HUNDRED YEARS, A MILLION LAUGHS (Emmis Books, $30.00, June 2004) flings open the doors to the famously secretive organization's "monastery" in midtown Manhattan and offers a front-row seat at legendary Friars Club Roasts, testimonials, Frolics, and  other history-making antics. This hardcover coffee-table book by official Friars Club author Barry Dougherty tells the story of the organization through interviews, timeless Al Hirschfeld caricatures, and nearly 200 photos, many released to the public for the first time in this book. The wry, self-deprecating foreword by Richard  Lewis sets the tone. Starting with the club's humble beginnings in 1904, Dougherty reveals the group's ups and downs through the '30s and '40s, its golden age in the '50s and '60s, and its importance today to a new generation of comics and entertainers. A roll call of Friars Club membership reads like a who's who of American entertainment in the twentieth century: George M. Cohan,  Enrico Caruso, Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Carol Burnett, Robin Williams, Barbara Walters, Billy Crystal, Drew Carey, Joy Behar. A HUNDRED YEARS, A MILLION LAUGHS captures many of the world's favorite comedians in rare form as they perform for their peers. From ribald comedy to musical merrymaking, show biz giants come clean with behind-the-scenes tales of what happens behind closed doors.

A Hundred Years, a Million Laughs BookA HUNDRED YEARS, A MILLION LAUGHS is a must-have for fans of twentieth century American humor, show biz, and pop culture history, and a perfect father's day gift, sure to bring back fond memories of favorite entertainers. Barry Dougherty is the editor of the Friars Club magazine, The Epistle. He has written and edited a number of books including How to Do It Standing Up and The Friars Club Book of Roasts and has written articles that have appeared in the New York Times and Newsday. He lives in New York City.

Barry Dougherty is the author of How To Do It Standing Up, The Friars Club's Guide To Being A Comic, A Cut-Up, A Card, Or A Clown (Black Dog & Leventhal, October 2002) which explains how to be a stand-up comic with insight from comedians themselves. Culled from his interviews with thirty five comedians and comedy club owners/managers such as Lily Tomlin, Howie Mandel, David Brenner, Phyllis Diller, Joy Behar, and Shecky Greene, Barry allows them to tell their owns tales--their first time, their worst time, how they put their acts together and, best of all, tips for the up-and-comer. He is also the author of New York Friars Club Book of Roasts: The Wittiest, Most Hilarious, and Most Unprintable Moments From The Friars Club (M. Evans, October 2000). The book is a hysterical composite of the famous Friars Club's devilish Dinners and ribald Roasts. Sifting through the Club's private archives; along with his interviews with such celebrities as Jason Alexander, Milton Berle, Red Buttons, Carol Burnett, Dick Cavett, Alan King, Ed McMahon, David Hyde Pierce, Freddie Roman, and Jerry Stiller-Barry put together a hysterical historical compendium of one of the premier entertainment organizations in the world. Barry wrote and edited the popular The Friars Club Bible of Jokes, Pokes, Roasts, And Toasts and edited The Friars Club Encyclopedia of Jokes (both Black Dog & Leventhal). Barry is the Editor of the Friars Club's magazine, the Epistle. Since 1991 he has been covering the Friars events-from Roasts and Dinners to in-house activities and Friars Frolics. Along with his reporting on Club events he has also profiled Friar celebrities Ernest Borgnine, Bob Costas, Michael Feinstein, Steve Lawrence, Jerry Orbach, Sally Jessy Raphael, Rob Reiner, Geraldo Rivera, and Joan Rivers, to name a few. Other miscellaneous articles in the Epistle include a story on Barbara Walters' ABC morning show, The View, as well as his investigative first-hand experiences of being an extra on television shows. During his tenure at the Friars Club Barry has also written jokes for Roasts and speeches for Testimonial Dinners. He has produced several events for the Friars, some of which include author book signing parties, movie screenings, and a huge party to celebrate the final episode of Seinfeld-the party was covered in Variety. A former television news reporter for Cablevision Systems, Barry has also written numerous humor articles for various magazines and newspapers such as Update magazine, Newsday, and The New York Times.

 
 


A HUNDRED YEARS, A MILLION LAUGHS: A Centennial Celebration of the Friars Club by Barry Dougherty, Emmis Books * $30.00 * Hardcover . 176 pages * ISBN 1-57860-161-4

ILIL ARBEL'S "THE LEMON TREE"

As soon as you begin to read Ilil Arbel's masterpiece, "The Lemon Tree", you start to feel the presence of a superb writer who has unveiled the intimate secrets of conversing with the depth of the soul and the warmth of a parallel world of beauty and love  which dissipated in joyfully morose and cherished memories. Arbel's tender, heart felt and nostalgic style echoes the drama of Tolstoy and charming eloquence of Victor Hugo. The inner world of Tolstoy bursts in war and peace. The external world of Hugo explodes within fragile tableaux of human drama, romantic visions and half human, half divine lyricism. In her book, Arbel blends both, the human lava of Tolstoy and the enchanting world of the family, the loved ones, the painful memory of  a lost child, the shadow of a hard destiny which still haunts  those who survived tyranny and horror, and perhaps, just perhaps the sadness they feel, for they are unable now to share moments of joy and peace with the loved ones who are no longer around...This was the world of the man who wrote "Les Miserables", and Hugo's world takes form and place in the writings of Arbel.

The past is romantic, but no one wants to live it again. In Arbel's book, the past continues on a different path. It is a joyful one, a hopeful road of life, despite the hard time, the suffering, the constant threat of typhoid fever and horrible deceases without cure,  facing arrest at Port Said, the fear of being shot by Manchurian officials for smuggling "a few necessities of life", and desperately chasing runway trains, her parents went through, suffered from and barely made it to the promised land. Arbel wrote about all these unpleasant and  horrifying events her parents experienced and suffered from. However, the sweetness and lyrical warmth of her style, the way she described how Marusia, Ilil family's nanny was concerned about Ida,  (Ilil's mother)  frozen nose, because Siberia's icy weather, where Ilil's parent previously lived, had no mercy on humans, and how papa used to rub her frozen nose with snow and goose fat, while hugging her. You will be touched by the simplistic, yet majestically eloquent and descriptive style of Arbel which brought back the memories of taking trips to the woods to collect bluebells and wild berries, skating on the Siberian ice,  building huge snowmen with coal eyes, traveling in troikas,  pushing their "child-size sleds",  running madly with exuberant joy and innocence, jumping to lie on them and " traveling for unbelievable distances on the uninterrupted sheets of ice, feeling as if they were flying."

"THE LEMON TREE": A TRIUMPH OF THE PEN AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT!

Photo: Ida Rosenfeld, Ilil's Mama and co-author of the magnificent book "THE LEMON TREE". A great woman with a heart bigger than the world we live in. Photo taken in Nancy, France.

In a heart-felt style and with an honest beauty, Arbel wrote: "Under the dining room window stood  a tropical jungle. Mama could raise any plant, anywhere, even in the arctic weather of Siberia...Mama had a special piece of furniture built for the houseplants, shaped like wooden stairs, stained dark brown, and hand rubbed with oil to a high gloss. Diverse plants stood on the stairs, arranged according to height. The rich, dark green leaves moved slightly in the air currents created by the ever-present heat from the giant stove and the occasional drafts when the door was opened. The intricate greenery looked magical against the white world outside." Another passage from "The Lemon Tree" touched my heart and my very soul. It goes like this "The next day I woke up early, remembering that this was Sasha's tenth birthday.

 

 

 

ILIL ARBEL'S "THE LEMON TREE"

      Photos from left to right: #1. Sasha, Ida and Feera. #2. Dr. Ilil Arbel, the author of "THE LEMON TREE". Truly, this woman is one of the greatest writers of our time.

 

I knew a big secret-the nature of the best present- and was terribly excited. It was still dark and bitterly cold, despite the stove in every room, and I hurriedly put on my wooly blue dressing gown and furry slippers before running downstairs to the warm kitchen. It smelled of cinnamon and cloves, since Mama was already creating the birthday cake, her arms deep into flour and sugar. No one could make and decorate cakes like her. Later in Israel, during a desperate shortage of eggs, butter, and sugar, she made cakes from powdered eggs, coarse flour and imitation margarine, and they were still the best cakes I ever ate. I remember her melting raw brown sugar with a tiny birthday candle to create decorations on those cakes, and I still firmly believe that if necessary, she could conjure perfectly good food from virtually thin air." This is how Arbel brought to life the fond memories of her parents, her mama, her grandmother, the aroma that floated in their warm kitchen,  the  loving, cozy and affectionate warmth which surrounded her parents in Siberia. But the tour de force is  how she described the atrocious trip her parents took from Siberia to Israel. And the piece de resistance which will melt the ice in your heart and paint rainbows of one million splashes of rays, lights and mesmerizing tenderness is Arbel's depiction of a tiny potted lemon tree which traveled with the family on a yearlong hard journey. Arbel tells us that "Sasha, their son and brother, raised the lemon tree from a seed that floated in his tea. Dying at age ten, his last request was that the lemon tree would be planted in an orchard in Israel. Nothing would deter the family from fulfilling Sasha's dream." They barely escaped from  being shot in Manchuria for smuggling the very few necessities they needed to survive. They chased and chased and chased trains, almost arrested at each port, threatened by illness and feared catching diseases and typhoid fever. Could they survive? Could the small lemon tree in a pot survive the unmerciful cold, the hard, hard and long journey?

 

ILIL ARBEL'S "THE LEMON TREE"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo: Ilil Arbel's parents; Ida (Mother), Leibek (Father) and their son in Tel Aviv, Israel.

"THE LEMON TREE" IS MORE THAN A BOOK OR A DIARY. IT IS A SYMBOL. THE SYMBOL OF SURVIVAL, FAMILY VALUES, THE GOODNESS OF THE EARTH AND THE NOBLE SOUL OF ALL THOSE WHO SPREAD LOVE AND BEAUTY AROUND US...

One could say, what is so special about a lemon tree story? A cold nose in Siberia? Or a tough trip to Israel? The answer is not as easy as the questions, for the message of "THE LEMON TREE" is bigger than life and larger than the immensity of the beauty and decadence of the human race! Yes, it is the chronicle of an ordinary Jewish Russian family who emigrated to Israel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos from left to right: #1.Hadassa (Ilil Arbel's Grandmother) as a young woman in Siberia, Russia, frequently referred to her in "THE LEMON TREE" as Mama by Ida Rosenfeld, Ilil's mother. #2. Ida in her thirties in Israel.

Yes, it is true, you will be reading about an ordinary and loving Siberian family who lost their child and promised to keep his soul alive through an ordinary lemon tree, should they succeed to plant it in an orchard in Israel. I would give my life for a lemon tree, for a cactus tree, even for the hell tree, if that tree would keep alive the soul, the fragile whispers, the bleeding memory, the loving face of a child I lost and loved so much! This tree is not a plant. In Arbel's book, as well as on the roads of life, Sasha's tree becomes a citadel, a temple, a cathedral, a shrine, a human chronicle, perhaps a human drama, and perhaps too, a guiding light...a strong shoulder...and the reflection of myriads of hope, perhaps? Thanks to the magnificent artistry of Ilil Arbel, the whispers of Ida, the jokes and stories of Papa, the silly but tasty cakes of Mama,  we learned that the very simple day by day experience of ordinary but "real" people, the songs they sang, the stories they heard and told, the family bond that ties together, mother, father, grand mother, children and grandchildren, naive but funny jokes are more significant, meaningful , tender and mightier than all the swords of the Iliad and Herculean exploits. Get a copy of the book. Get more copies, if you have real friends. "THE LEMON TREE" is a masterpiece. One of the 10 best books of the year. A triumph of the pen and the human spirit. Two thumbs up.

THE LEMON TREE: Publication date: February 2005. Price: $11.95. Size: 6x9. ISBN: 0-595-33982-4. Pages: 104. Illustrated. Available from Ingram Book Group, Baker & Taylor, iUniverse, Inc., Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.

 

 

 

LEEWAY COTTAGE by BETH GUTCHEON

To novelist Beth Gutcheon, the rescue of Denmark's Jews during the Nazi occupation more than 60 years ago was an inspiring but little-known story

Photo: Writer Beth Gutcheon poses outside her home in East Blue Hill, Maine, July 8, 2005.

BLUE HILL, Maine, USA- To novelist Beth Gutcheon, the rescue of Denmark's Jews during the Nazi occupation more than 60 years ago was an inspiring but little-known story that demanded to be told. Gutcheon was astonished that so few Americans were aware that the citizens of that small country spontaneously rallied in the autumn of 1943 to hide nearly all of its 7,000 Jews and then shuttled them clandestinely to safety in Sweden. She decided to relate that story by weaving it into a novel. "I'm not a non-fiction writer," she said. "I'm not trained as a reporter or a historian, and I have spent my whole adult life becoming a storyteller. So for me that was going to be the only option." Denmark's profile in courage is the centrepiece of her latest novel, Leeway Cottage, a family saga of four generations that is set in large part at their summer colony in the fictitious town of Dundee, along the Maine coast. The story revolves around Sydney Brant, an unhappy young woman born to wealth and privilege who moves to New York to pursue a singing career and get away from her hostile and overbearing mother. She falls in love with Laurus Moss, a gifted Danish pianist. The two marry as war clouds envelop Europe. When the Second World War breaks out and the Nazis invade Denmark, Laurus' concerns about his country and his family - his mother is Jewish - lead him to England, where he helps to build a Danish Resistance movement. In her quest for historical accuracy, Gutcheon combed books and documents and spoke with Danes who experienced the occupation or had relatives in the Resistance. She spent about a week visiting the places in Denmark that she describes in the book, even though she had a familiarity with the country after working there as an au pair when she was 18. What Gutcheon discovered led her to expand her focus beyond the rescue operation to the work of the Resistance, which blew up railroad tracks, sabotaged factories helping the German war effort and smuggled downed Allied airmen to safety. "I realized that the real untold story was that the Danish Jews were all saved, but the young Danish partisans suffered by the thousands, and they suffered terribly," she said. Among them is Laurus' sister, Nina, whose capture leads to a horrific confinement in Ravensbruck, a Nazi concentration camp for women that was infamous for gruesome medical experiments conducted by the SS.

Leeway Cottage Beth GutcheonLaurus' work with the Resistance and his siblings' experiences under the occupation lead to a psychological gulf that develops in his marriage after the war when he returns home to Sydney and their first child, born while he was in London. Sydney, a woman of enormous needs and marked limitations, shows little interest in her husband's wartime activities and displays scant sympathy for Nina, whom she finds cold. Laurus, who values peace and contentment, understands Sydney's good qualities and tunes out the others. While their differences might drive them apart, their love for each other is genuine and the marriage - like that of many like-minded couples of that era - endures. Gutcheon first learned of the Danes' rescue of the Jews when she was 10 and watched Danish-born pianist and humorist Victor Borge relating on television how King Christian X told Adolf Hitler that if he ordered Jews to wear yellow armbands, he would put on one, too, and all other Danes would follow suit. That story, although untrue, was widely accepted, Gutcheon said, because it spoke to the character of Denmark's people and their deep belief that all Danes should be treated equally. "It has its power as a story because it really is essentially true," she said. What led the Danes to take a stance unlike that of any other nation under Nazi occupation is a question that Gutcheon has pondered. "The story about what happened in Denmark is a mystery about character, and the mystery of the character of an entire country," she said. She cites the influence of N.F.S. Grundtvig, a remarkable 19th-century minister, academic and philosopher who is best known as the father of folk high schools and a pioneer in adult education. He believed that an essential part of being Danish is that all Danes are valued equally. "He established that every Dane is as valuable as every other Dane," Gutcheon said, a belief that was absorbed by Danes in the same way Americans were shaped by the Declaration of Independence and the Bill or Rights. So when Danes are reminded about the heroism of their countrymen, they tend to dismiss it as nothing out of the ordinary. Although Laurus and Sydney spent most of the year in New York, and later Connecticut, most of the narrative of Leeway Cottage takes place in Dundee, a setting similar to where the author spends her summers and where her own extended family has deep roots. Gutcheon's father first vacationed there in 1911. The author, who grew up in western Pennsylvania and has lived for decades in New York City's Soho neighbourhood, said the beauty of coastal Maine is energizing for a writer who spends much of her creative time alone. "Here, looking out the window is enough. It just feeds you," said Gutcheon, a tall woman with salt-pepper hair whose presence and intellect reflect her prep school and Harvard University background. Her postmodern shingle-style home, designed by her ex-husband, Jeffrey, who studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, mirrors the vernacular architecture of the area and echoes design elements of the house in which she grew up. Surrounded by woods and a meadow strewn with wildflowers, it sits near a saltwater cove on a hilly, forested peninsula frequented by artists and writers who occasionally rub shoulders with local farmers and fishermen. Leeway Cottage is the second novel that Gutcheon set in Dundee. The first, More Than You Know, was a critically acclaimed ghost tale melded with a love story. Her next book, which she'll start writing in September, is a sequel to Leeway Cottage and explores what happens to Sydney and Laurus' children.

Photo: Writer Beth Gutcheon.

Novelist Ben Cheever, a fan of Gutcheon, said Leeway Cottage is her best work, one that has the makings of a classic and is reminiscent of William Thackeray's Vanity Fair. "There's this tremendous depth," Cheever said. "The characters are all complicated and unpredictable." Even though he knew through Danish friends of what the Danes had done during the war, Cheever said he was deeply moved by Gutcheon's account. One of those whom Gutcheon drew upon for advice was former soap opera star Alexandra Moltke Isles, whose father served as a courier to the Resistance. Isles, who produced and directed the 1995 documentary film, The Power of Conscience: The Danish Resistance and the Rescue of the Jews, said she was amazed at the depth of Gutcheon's research. "The details are so on target," she said. "And there were things I hadn't known." Gutcheon's earlier novels include Still Missing, which was made into the 1983 movie, and Without a Trace, about a mother's desperate search for her six-year-old son. Gutcheon wrote the screenplay. Before she became a novelist, Gutcheon was an acclaimed fibre artist who wrote successful books on quilting. While she enjoyed quilting and teaching, she tired of the travelling involved and thought she might try her hand at fiction. Her first book, The New Girls, about five young prep-school women in the 1960s, was published in 1979.

Beth Gutcheon grew up in western Pennsylvania. She attended the Sewickley Academy, Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut and Harvard College where she took an honors BA in English literature. She has spent most of her adult life in New York City, except for sojourns in San Francisco and on the coast of Maine. In 1978, she wrote the narration for a feature-length documentary on the Kirov ballet school, The Children of Theatre Street, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and she has made her living fulltime as a storyteller (novelist and sometime screenwriter) since then. Her novels have been translated into fourteen languages, if you count the pirate Chinese edition of Still Missing, plus large print and audio format. Still Missing was made into a feature film called Without a Trace, and also published in a Reader’s Digest Condensed version which particularly pleased her mother. By Jerry Karkawi.

How to Be Bad
By David Bowker (St. Martin's Griffin)

It's the rare book that the reader puts down simply because, like a favourite dessert, it's so enjoyable he wants to save some for later. Such a book is British author David Bowker's How to Be Bad, a mystery in the weird tradition of Carl Hiaasen, full of colourful characters and crackling dialogue. From page 1, Bowker plunges the reader into a zany world when mild-mannered Mark Madden, owner of a bookstore, is approached by a man who asks to see his "most horrible book." From there, Mark enters into a sort of twilight zone. He is madly in love with Caro Sewell. They were a couple when he was 18, but she dumped him for a teacher. Caro promises to rekindle her passion for Mark in return for a favour. Knowing Mark's habit of writing lists, she gives him one with the names of the people she wants killed: her father, and two former lovers, one of whom is the bully who asked to see Mark's "most horrible" book. When corpses start piling up, Caro does again fall in love with Mark. She thinks he is a killing machine eager to please her, but that isn't quite the case. The reader will discover how chance plays with the characters in How To Be Bad. Bowker has a wonderful imagination and the ability to draw characters who start as stereotypes but end as human beings. This applies to Mark, although he should have been at least 10 years older (he's in his 20s) to be more plausible; and to Caro, who, after killing a woman, informs Mark that she is pregnant but didn't tell him sooner because she was "waiting for a special occasion." The story even has a happy ending of sorts. Caro and Mark take shelter in Switzerland, "the traditional refuge for rich scoundrels with ugly secrets." And while Caro seems to be in love with Mark, his interest in her has waned. As Mark explains, "You don't chase possessions when you're self-possessed." In the end, Mark, who has been the casual observer of murders, accidents and suicides, has learned only one thing from the experience: "I derive deep and lasting satisfaction from the deaths of people I don't like." By Mario Schizman.

 

End of an Exile: Israel, The Jews and The Gentile World

By James Parkes

 

Review by Chaim Chertok, Professor of English at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva and author of the forthcoming book, He Also Spoke As A Jew: The Life of James Parkes, to be published by Vallentine Mitchell Publishers.

 

James Parkes, 1896-1981, is the British historian and Anglican theologian whose more than 20 books and many essays broke essential ground in the begetting of a new, positive Christian approach toward the Jewish people. As early as The Conflict Between the Church and the Synagogue (1934), decades ahead of the present tide of Christian revisionism, Parkes not only located the evil of anti-Semitism in the maw of the Gospels and the Church Fathers but denounced it not as an error but as a sin that had to be uprooted. Indeed, even earlier, Parkes was warning a complacent world about Hitler and, until he himself was almost assassinated, was active in spiriting Jewish refugees across the Continent. Years ahead of the curve and acting mostly alone, this maverick clergyman confronted the powerful missionary block with the Anglican establishment, arguing imperturbably that God did not desire the conversion of the Jews, that Judaism had never been superseded, that the age-old charge of deicide was a calumny which had no basis whatsoever, and that the teaching of contempt for God’s people was a sin again God.  Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that the Jewish people have ever had a better or better informed friend than James Parkes.

 

A new edition of End of an Exile: Israel, The Jews and The Gentile World is cause for celebration. Written more than 50 years ago, its argument for the justice and necessity for the return of the Jews to their homeland is as germane today as ever. It serves as a powerful corrective from within the Christian camp to so-called “liberation theology” espoused by trendy Protestant theologians who refuse to acknowledge that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism, and argue that the very existence of the Jewish State is the root of evil in the Middle East that needs to be effaced. Parkes was nothing if not a meticulous historian. In justifying the Jewish re-entry to a land that contained an Arab majority, for example, he demonstrates that Arab claims based upon historical continuity are spurious. As for Jews, however, if over the millennia their numbers in the Middle East have “constantly varied, is has been because of circumstances outside Jewish control, and not because Jews had themselves lost interest in living in their ‘promised land’. On the whole, it may be said that it [the Jewish presence] was always as large as possible in view of conditions existing at any one time.”  Thus, End of an Exile is an elegant justification of classical Zionism. While strongly advocating a Jewish return to Zion, however, Parkes did not neglect simultaneously to caution Israel about her obligations: “One day she will recognize that it is wrong to evolve far-fetched arguments to deny any Arab rights in the land they had inhabited so long or to rest their case on the legality of the Balfour Declaration. She was allowed to override normal rights because she had unique claims. But the mission involved a deep debt of honour to those who lost by her gain.” Parkes’ comprehensive store of Jewish history enables him again and again to draw original, apposite comparisons. He points out, for example, how the 19th century resembles the Roman period. In both eras, Jews “could move freely in a civilization which exercised a powerful attraction for them.” If the former situation gave birth to a new religion, in the 19th century it was no ethical monotheism but the passion for social justice which provided the spark.  “Consequently, the result was not a new religion, but the new political creed of socialism.” Similar stimulating, lively analyses may be found on almost every page. The editors Korn and Kalechofsky have not re-released Parkes’ writing, but have garnished the test with a rich array of essays. With two biographies soon to be released and this highly welcome reissue of this relevant Parkes text, 2005 gives every indication of being the year of Parkes.

 

End of an Exile: Israel, The Jews and The Gentile World by James Parkes, Edited and Introduced by Eugene B. Korn and Roberta Kalechofsky. Appendix Essays by Reinhold Niebuhr, A. Roy Eckhardt and Eight Others. Marblehead MA: Micah, 2004, 378 pp. $22.95

 

 

 
battered Judaica bindingsBOOKS REVIEWS

 

The Weekly Dvar: Torah Wisdom for Today

By Rabbi Shlomo Ressler, Regional Director, WestRiver NCSY & JSU resslers@ou.org

 

 

 

 Every year book publishers spend millions of dollars on marketing their new books — employing the latest “viral” marketing strategies created by their marketing department’s “best and brightest.”   Yet this month, with the release of The Weekly Dvar: Torah Wisdom for Today (Targum Press/Feldheim Publishers), author and Jewish educator Shlomo Ressler has proven once again that no marketing tool is as powerful, or as successful, as the oldest “viral” marketing method — word-of-mouth.

 
 
 
 

 

 

Photo: Rabbi Shlomo Ressler.

 

In fact, that’s what his book is all about: giving over an inspiring “dvar,” which in Hebrew means “word.”  Ressler’s “dvar” started out as a few words of inspiration on the weekly Torah portion for a synagogue bulletin in Los Angeles. Those “words” soon took off, and have now snowballed into a successful opt-in weekly e-mail newsletter with over 19,000 subscribers, and growing. Inspired by and following his rabbi — Rabbi Yochanan Zweig of the Talmudic University of Florida — and his unique teaching methods, Ressler has cultivated his own style of teaching through his weekly newsletters and his website: www.weeklydvar.com.Now, for the first time, those lessons for living (or as Ressler calls them: power tools for self-improvement) are finally available in book form. In The Weekly Dvar, Ressler shows us the wisdom of each Parsha, and helps us find lessons for living in the eternal words of the Torah. After having developed a loyal e-mail readership, the author now brings his unique talent to communicate profound Torah concepts to a wider audience in a way that is practical and meaningful. In his book, the author’s refreshing outlook, inspiring words of wisdom, and love of Torah and the Jewish people is evident — and infectious. That’s why this book, just like his newsletters, promises to be popular, and a top-seller in the bookstores this spring.  In a world where everyone is searching for meaning and self-improvement, Shlomo Ressler, who is only thirty-two years old, and not affiliated or backed by any organization, may have stumbled upon the latest “word” in Jewish publishing, and possibly the last word in self-help.

 

 

BOOKS. OUR CHOICE OF THE MONTH

 

See review. The Weekly Dvar
Torah Wisdom for Today
by Rabbi Shlomo Ressler


"Authoritative, concise, informative and  abundant with practical, and relevant divrei Torah on the weekly Parsha.  Highly recommended."- World Jewish News Agency.

 

(153 Pages). Publisher: Targum/Feldheim, 2005.

Gutnick Edition Chumash - Bamidbar-Numbers -
Commentary by the Lubavitcher Rebbe

"Beautifully designed, rich with splendid features on every single page. This is a very concise and clear modern English translation of the Torah according to Rashi. Accompanied with traditional commentary by authoritative Rabbinic commentators, and scholars of Midrash and Talmud. This remarkable publication is one of the "Essentials".- World Jewish News Agency.

The book includes: A full Hebrew text of Rashi and Onkelos; Separate running commentary based on the Rebbe's sichos at the level of Pshuto shel mikra; Explanation of the name of each Parsha according to the Rebbe's sichos; Summary of Mitzvos found in each Parsha according to Sefer haChinnuch; Full text of Haftaros according to Minhag Chabad, with English Translation according to Metzudos. Ideal for all those wishing to study Chumash seriously, including: Those wishing to Study classic commentaries to the Chumash in English and Shluchim and Rabbonim seeking material for Shiurim and Lectures. (321 Pages). Publisher: Kol Menachem, 2005
 

 

 
 
 
 

 

 

Fall of the Sun God
by Henye Meyer

"Brilliantly crafted into a captivating tale."- World Jewish News Agency.


Ages 12+ Set against the background of the First Crusade, the novel follows the development of Martin as he learns to navigate the treacherous highways and byways of ancient Constantinople, the seat of Christianity in the Middle Ages. After Martin’s parents are killed by bandits, he gives up his Judaism and goes on a pilgrimage to find himself. Ultimately, as Martin evolves, he finds a place for himself, a place he never thought existed, a place that holds an age-old message: The Torah is the ultimate shield and sword in a world filled with barbarism; it is the lamp and the staff that leads every Jew to his people.(336 Pages). Publisher: Pitspopany, 2005.

 

JEWISH HERITAGE AND CULTURE                                                          
 

 

THE SCHOCKEN BOOK OF MODERN SEPHARDIC LITERATURE

Photos from L to R: #1.Ilan Stavans, a  descendant of Eastern European Jews who settled in Mexico. Stavans has been called by the New York Times “the czar of Latino culture in the United States.". #2. André Aciman, author and thinker,  was born in Alexandria, Egypt into a Sephardic family.

 The American Sephardi Federation with Sephardic House at the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York City, will present a book signing and lively discussion of The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature with its editor Ilan Stavans and contributing author André Aciman on Thursday, May 12, 2005 at 7:00 pm. Books are available at the event for purchase and signing.  Reservations are suggested. The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans, is an extraordinary, never-before collected anthology of fiction, memoir, essay, and poetry from 28 writers in 18 countries spanning a period of more than 150 years. The various works deal with issues that resonate within any contemporary multicultural society: the status of minorities within the larger society, the opposing forces of religion and secularism, the tension between a civil, democratic tradition and the anti-Semitism ready to undermine it, and the opposing forces of religion and secularism.

The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 led to a growth in number of rich, thriving Sephardic sub-cultures in the Diaspora of the Balkans, North Africa, Asia Minor, Europe, South America and eventually North America. The works in this anthology celebrate the diverse literary and artistic forms that grew out of the melding of Sephardim’s Judeo-Spanish legacy with the cultures of their host countries, a process that continues today. While this melding of influences resulted in rich and varied stories and opportunities, the process has not been without its difficulties, and the pieces collected here resonate with the opportunities and challenges experienced by the Sephardic Jews in their travels. In addition to the excerpt The Last Seder, by André Aciman, this collection includes works from American poet Emma Lazarus; Bulgarian Nobel laureate Elias Canetti; Italians Natalia Ginsburg and Primo Levi; memoirists Victor Perera from Guatemala and Gini Alhadeff from Egypt; Israelis A.B. Yehoshua and Yehudi Burla; Danilo Ki¹ from Yugoslavia, and many more.  Admission: $10.00/$5.00 for American Sephardi Federation with Sephardic House members. Box Office: 917-606-8200.

 Ilan Stavans, is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. A descendant of Eastern European Jews who settled in Mexico, Stavans has been called by the New York Times “the czar of Latino culture in the United States,” while The Forward portrays him as “a virtuoso critic with an exuberant, encyclopedic, restless mind.” His best-selling books include The Hispanic Condition (1995), On Borrowed Words (2001), and Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language (2003), and he is the editor of The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories (1998), The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (2003), and the 3-volume set of Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories (2004). Stavans is the recipient of numerous awards, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Latino Literature Prize.

André Aciman was born in Alexandria, Egypt into a Sephardic family that arrived there from Italy, via Turkey. Aciman and his family left Egypt in 1965 as anti-Semitic harassment intensified after the Israeli-Arab conflicts of 1948 and 1956. Traveling to Rome, then Paris, before finally settling in New York, the predominant themes in Aciman’s work are exile and displacement. He is the author of Out of Egypt: A Memoir (1994), and editor of Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language and Loss (2002), as well as the acclaimed Proust Project (2004). Aciman lives in New York City, and teaches at the CUNY Graduate Center. About the American Sephardi Federation with Sephardic House: The American Sephardi Federation with Sephardic House is a national organization dedicated to strengthening and unifying the American Sephardic community and promoting its history, cultural and social traditions.  Since its arrival at the Center, ASF’s archival holdings and library have been enriched with valuable records of personal and community history. Sephardic House celebrates the uniqueness of the Sephardic culture through its annual International Film Festival, publications and exhibition. About the Center for Jewish History:  In 2000, the Center for Jewish History, located in the heart of the historic Chelsea district, became the home of five distinguished partner institutions-the American Jewish Historical Society, the American Sephardi Federation, the Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.  Sharing a common vision of preserving and presenting Jewish culture and history, the five partner institutions in coming together, have created a meeting place where intellectual inquiries are exchanged and freely explored, and where the general public can find cultural programs devoted to a wide variety of themes and concerns. The combined holdings of the Center’s partners include over 100 million documents, books, art, artifact, photos, and other materials, making the Center the largest repository of Jewish history and culture outside the State of Israel. Other features of the building include a 250-seat auditorium, a gift shop, and the glatt kosher Date Palm Café.  For current information and a schedule of programs visit www.cjh.org.

 

 

YIVO EXIBIT ON EAST EUROPEAN & AMERICAN JEWRY                       “Triumphs & Treasures” Highlights Institute’s Library & Archives

 

“Triumphs & Treasures” is one of the most illustrative and heart felt Jewish culture and heritage events of all time. From a floral-embossed, leather-bound 18th century Talmudic tractate to a 1950s advertisement for Jenny Grossinger’s Jewish rye bread, East European Jewish life and its influence on American culture will go on display April 6 at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. “YIVO at 80: Triumphs and Treasures” showcases the vast holdings of the archives and library of the YIVO Institute for Research, which is housed in the Center. “The exhibit represents the spiritual, artistic, political, economic, tragic, comic and mundane aspects of East European and American Jewish life,” explained YIVO Executive Director Dr. Carl J. Rheins.  One of the rarest items in the exhibit is the 1566 book Hatsa’ah ‘al odot ha-get (An Account of the Bill of Divorce Given by Samuel Vintoroso), published in Venice. It relates the story of Tamar, daughter of Dr. Joseph Tamari of Venice, who was jilted by her betrothed. Tamar’s father asked the city’s rabbinate to excommunicate the bridegroom unless he went through with the nuptials. The hundreds of other items on display include: letters to Jewish leaders from Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, pennant from the 1936 Convention of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. 19th-century photo of Warsaw’s chief cantor, Moshe Koussevitzky, singing while standing on a railroad track, photo of Jewish immigrants waving American flags as they gathered on the steps of the Hebrew Immigrant Society office on East Broadway in 1916. “This is not a cohesive story of Jewish life,” said Krysia Fisher, the exhibit’s curator and archivist of YIVO’s iconographic collections. “Rather, we are making the public aware of the breadth and depth of YIVO’s holdings, and of the priceless resource these materials represent to the Jewish people.” The YIVO library has more than 360,000 volumes and its archives hold 23 million items. Each year, those holdings are accessed by thousands of writers, researchers, students, filmmakers, genealogists, musicians and members of the general public at the YIVO reading room or via e-mail, fax, telephone or the YIVO website at www.yivo.org. Founded in Vilna, Poland, in 1925 and based in Manhattan since 1940, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is the preeminent institution for the study of East European Jewish history and culture; Yiddish language, literature and folklore; and the American Jewish experience.  "Triumphs & Treasures" will be shown at the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York City, in the Batkin Mezzanine and Constantiner Galleries. Admission is free. Hours will be: Monday to Thursday, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Friday 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, please contact the Box Office (917) 606-8200. <<Shylok Poster - Poland.jpg>>. Media Contacts: Linda Harris,Telephone: 212 246 6080 ext. 6108. Fax: 212 292 1893. lharris@yivo.cjh.org, Jerry Cheslow, jcheslow@yivo.cjh.org

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF JEWS IN EASTERN EUROPE

How did the different dialects of Yiddish develop? What made Eastern European Jews so susceptible to messianic movements? What does the term “Klezmer” really mean? These are just a few of the questions that are being answered in the YIVO Encyclopedia of the Jews in Eastern Europe, a two-tome work that is in progress at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in Lower Manhattan. The preparation of the profusely illustrated two-million-word encyclopedia, which began in 2000, has passed the halfway point. It is to be published by YIVO and Yale University Press in 2008. “We commissioned 1,800 articles, most of which have already been submitted,” said Encyclopedia Editor-in-Chief Professor Gershon David Hundert, who also chairs the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University in Montreal. “It is an unprecedented attempt to recover and present Eastern European Jewish Civilization that ceased to exists in World War II.” The project taps 400 contributors and 30 editors from 15 countries. Each contributor is an acknowledged expert in the field about which his/her article is being written. Following submission, each article is checked for accuracy by at least two experts then edited by Professor Hundert and his staff. Besides dealing with weighty issues such as shtetl life, the Holocaust and Jewish life-cycle events, the encyclopedia will also focus on popular culture, with articles on riddles, cinema, folk songs, marriage customs and Klezmer music—the term “Klezmer” is derived from the Hebrew words Klei Zemer, which translates as “vessels of song,” an Eastern European Jewish way of referring to musicians.  The projected cost of the project is $4 million, which is being provided in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, The Righteous Persons Foundation, the Charles H. Revson Foundation and private contributors. The encyclopedia will be issued in print format and will also be freely available on the Internet.  Professor Hundert predicts that the encyclopedia will be enormously popular. “It is about the ancestors of the vast majority of the Jews in the United States and about half of those in Israel. And, unless you have Yiddish, most of the information is inaccessible to you.”  The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is the preeminent institution for the study of East European Jewish and Yiddish language, literature and folklore. Contacts: Linda Harris, lharris@yivo.cjh.org, Telephone: 212 246 6080 ext. 6108

 

 

EDUCATION AND LEARNING                                                                            

Direct Descendant of Legendary Jewish Figures Achieves Unique Entrepreneurial Success

Photo: Renee Mazer’s CD Booklet: SAT tutor for over 15 years and founder of High Score, a test prep company, Wharton Law School graduate Renee Mazer creates the highly awarded Not Too Scary Vocabulary! For the SAT & Other Standardized Tests And Success in Life - Great for Adults Too! An outrageously wild, funny guide for improving your chances in the word game - replete with wacky songs and poems!  Renee Mazer, a Mensa member, has been an SAT tutor for 15 years.  She is a graduate of the University of  Pennsylvania’s Wharton and Law Schools and founder of High Score, a test prep company.  She was also an attorney for the EPA, a college admissions counselor, and a college professor.  She resides with her sons in the Philadelphia area.  Not Too Scary Vocabulary is available at all Barnes & Noble stores, and at online bookselling sites.

Renee Mazer is simply “GENIUS”. Should we call her the prophetess of vocabulary? You bet!. This is what Mazer said about her most innovative and brilliant technique. "Teens have a pretty short attention span these days," says Mazer. "They see more action in two minutes of video games than two hours of school. You better hold their interest and speak their language. I talk to teens in teen-speak about the real subjects on their mind: sex, dating, music, relationships, and celebrities. I capitalize on kids' interest, while engaging scientifically based memory mechanisms: linking, mnemonics, alliteration and rhyme." What did she invent? What did she develop? The answer is not so easy, for it encompasses invention, linguistic virtuosity, pragmatism and vocabulary enhancement. Mazer came up with a remarkable educational, cultural and vocabulary product-tool: A 7 CD Booklet set called “Not Too Scary Vocabulary”. This outstanding learning and training gadget-stimulus will make you change the way you used to utilize to understand and explore the frightening world of SAT and scared standardized tests. It is fun, refreshing, practical, informative and very very effective.

 

Photo: Dr. Renee Mazer.

Renee Mazer, the developer of a wildly popular vocabulary enhancement and SAT prep tool, has a lineage which includes some of the most revered Jewish figures in history.  Her Not Too Scary Vocabulary CD SAT test prep and vocabulary-building product is unique, and this, combined with her fascinating background make for a unique entrepreneurial or feature story. Mazer is a direct descendant of Rabbi Leib Sarah's, who was held in high esteem by the Baal Shem Tov. One of the "hidden tzaddikim," he spent his life wandering from place to place to raise money for the ransoming of imprisoned Jews and the support of other hidden tzaddikim. Mazer is also a direct descendant of Levi Yitzhak, one of the most famous personalities of the third generation of hasidim. A disciple of Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezhirech, Levi Yitzchak brought hasidism to Poland and was a major figure in the debates and power struggles between the hasidim and their opponents, the mitnagdim. Mazer, her background and product could make for an interesting story for your readers.  Her product has sold thousands of copies, and her intelligence, personality and engaging style have made a popular talk show guest.  What high school kid gets excited to delve into a giant SAT review book?  With mp3s, portable CD players, or I-Pods competing for their attention, there’s virtually no chance of winning the attention span battle. Quite frankly, preparing for standardized tests is boring– just ask the kid – then ask the experts.  But what happens when you hand teens a CD with catchy tunes, wacky poems, and off color anecdotes designed to expand vocabulary?  One test prep expert says the answer is clear: They learn … and remember. Renee Mazer, a test prep expert with more than 17 years of tutoring experience, is the creator of a CD collection that helps students prepare for the SAT’s, GRE’s and other standardized tests, and enables anyone to expand their vocabulary.  The Not Too Scary Vocabulary is a series of seven CDs with a 36 page companion booklet filled with amusing examples, original poems and songs to help students remember more than 500 words most often on standardized tests. Mazer’s teaching method may be scientifically-based, but it’s also premised on the fact that meaningful, relevant, and contextual examples are the best way to enhance memory.  In the case of teenagers, this means situational examples and ‘real life’ scenarios to which they can relate. “The problem is that kids just don’t want to study vocabulary; they find it boring,” says Mazer.  “I bring the vocabulary to them in a friendly, familiar way. If it makes them laugh and smile, the chances they’ll remember it increases exponentially.” “Studies have proven that mnemonic methods, such as music jingles, rhymes and associative techniques are much more effective than rote memorization,” adds Mazer. “Some of the material in Not Too Scary is corny and irreverent, but it keeps the kids interested, and more importantly, it makes them remember.” Mazer’s poems and songs include talk of typical high school angst, problematic dating and striving for popularity. “It’s all about bringing learning and memory into their world,” notes Mazer, “not forcing them to learn in a sterile, inanimate way.” Mazer got the idea for the program when a student was taking a trip and asked her to record her vocabulary tutoring lesson so she and a friend could listen to it as they visited colleges. Mazer introduced the CD’s through High Score, the test prep company she founded in 2001, and has updated the set for the much-talked-about “new SAT.”  Since the launch, Mazer has been inundated with emails from happy students, who have seen their verbal scores jump 70 to 150 points after utilizing the CD set.  Not To Too Scary Vocabulary has received rave reviews from parents – along with a few who were shocked at some content --  and Media & Methods Magazine -- which is referenced by 60,000 key educators, decision makers and buyers in K-12 nationwide -- gave it the Innovative Test Prep kit award.  Mike Szymanski wrote: It's truly not too scary to start learning more words and adding them to your vocabulary. And, it doesn't matter if you're an elementary school student, a high school student studying for the SATs, a college student or an old seasoned journalist, there's no doubt you'll learn something in the CD set of "Not Too Scary Vocabulary!" by Renee Mazer

 

"Learning From the Tanya":
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, prominent authority on Jewish mysticism, offers authentic look at classic work of Kabbalah

By Amara Levine-Reich

Photo: Rabbi Adin Even Israel Steinsaltz is a recipient of Israel's highest civilian honor, the Israel Prize. "If the Bible is the cornerstone of Judaism, then the Talmud is the central pillar, soaring up from the foundations and supporting the entire spiritual and intellectual edifice. In many ways the Talmud is the most important book in Jewish culture, the backbone of creativity and of national life."

Amid a frenzy of New Age and pop-culture spirituality symbolized by red strings and bottled water with magical healing powers, renowned scholar, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz offers an authentic look at the ancient wisdom of the Kabbalah in his latest book, LEARNING FROM THE TANYA: Volume Two in the Definitive Commentary on the Moral and Mystical Teachings of a Classic Work of Kabbalah (Jossey-Bass: A Wiley Imprint, August 2005, $24.95 cloth, 384 pages, ISBN 0-7879-7892-2). Rabbi Steinsaltz is the author of numerous books on mysticism and Kabbalah, including the critically acclaimed Opening the Tanya, the first volume in his series of companion guides to the Tanya, and the modern classic The Thirteen Petalled Rose.