MAXIMUM EXPOSURE FOR
UFOLOGISTS, GIVEN BY "BIOGRAPHICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PEOPLE IN UFOLOGY AND
SCIENTIFIC EXTRATERRESTRIAL RESEARCH."
By David Blum
 Now
you can find them in a serious encyclopedia. Before, they were scattered in
websites articles. Not even the yellow pages grouped them in a category. I am
talking about ufologists, and alien abduction specialists and therapists.
Ufology? You bet! It is not a science yet, but this could change in the
forthcoming years. More TV coverage and news reporting on UFOs are entering
our living room. But the biggest boost came from the most unexpected source;
it came from Maximillien de Lafayette, the world famous art critic and
historian of ancient civilizations and medieval philosophy. De Lafayette's
biggest surprise was the publication of his academic-biographical encyclopedia
of contemporary ufology.
De Lafayette's "Biographical
Encyclopedia of People in Ufology and Scientific Extraterrestrial Research"
has been published this week by Times Square Press and Amazon.com Publishing
Company. This unusual, unique book, creates a place where the great minds,
many of whom extremely well-known and highly respected for the various fields
they were associated with before they got involved with ufology, can finally
be grouped.
 Photo:
Ellie Crystal, a psychic and author received a glowing write-up in the
encyclopedia.
The interested reader can find
them, and best of all, they can find each other since the book lists e-mail
addresses and websites. This group includes many Jewish scholars of various
fields, surprisingly, even rabbis. Though why should it be surprising? After
all, there is no conflict between religion and science, even according to the
greatest scientists and theologians of our time. If the Big Bang can
correspond to Genesis, and if Monsignor
Corrado Balducci,
can say that God could very likely create life on
any planet, why not open our minds, read this book with care, and learn
something. Among the most famous Jewish scholars and researchers in Ufology
who took the lead in the encyclopedia are Zecharia Sitchin, Stanton
Friedman, Ellie Crystal, and SETI's Baruch Blumberg.
Zecharia Sitchin conversing with Vatican's
Monsignor Corrado Balducci, about extraterrestrials in Rome, Italy. Both men
are written up in De Lafayette's Encyclopedia.
 Stanton
Friedman, highly regarded by the editors of the encyclopedia.
Other important UFOs books by
Maximillien de Lafayette that are opening new windows on these strange
phenomena are "FROM ZETA RETICULI TO EARTH," "THE ANUNNAKI'S GENETIC CREATION
OF THE HUMAN RACE," and "EXTRATERRESTRIALS US GOVERNMENT TREATY AND
AGREEMENTS", all published this year.
I am wondering why no one has
ever thought about writing such an encyclopedia, especially where many of
these ufologists are noted authors themselves and were on the New York best
selling author list. This is extremely timely and a much needed book. I highly
recommend this encyclopedia to anyone possessing an interest in our universe.-
David Blum
_____________________________________________________________________
A HUNDRED YEARS, A MILLION LAUGHS" BY BARRY
DOUGHERTY.
Friars Club History a Perfect
Father’s Day Gift
 Photo:
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 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.
“Doo Wop: The
Music, The Times, The Era”: A masterpiece! A gem!
“Cousin Brucie”
Morrow’s and Rich Maloof’s most recent book Doo Wop: The Music, The Times,
The Era, will have an enormous effect and a major impact on music lovers,
music historians and the conscience of American heritage chronicles at many
levels, and for ad infinitum reasons.
The Visual Effect:
The book is a delightful visual panorama
of the life, the times and pioneers of America’s most distinctive and
meaningful musical era; the Doo Wop! The pagination is effective, the layout
is spectacular and the artistic design of the book is magnetizing. From the
front cover to the back cover, and from the inside front cover to the jacket
of the book, rainbows of colors, superb half tone, full tone, duotone, color
hue, multi-variations of photos coloration of every known color in the
universe, rich and diverse fonts, headlines stylings, eye-catching montage of
texts and superposed art on large pages, most unusual backgrounds flirting
with bubbly and lively scripts and cleverly retouched vintage photos transmute
this book into an oasis of photography splendors and a world-class book
design. Grosso modo, artistically, Doo Wop: The Music, The Times, The Era
is a gem. The book designers, David Perry and Jason Cring delivered a
first rate, 5 star design/layout rarely witnessed, nowadays! They did a
magnificent job!
 The Content:
On page 19, “Cousin Brucie” Morrow
stated: “Unlike an encyclopedia, a music guide or a traditional account of
history, this is a record of emotions and experiences.” This statement is
accurate to a certain degree, because the book is more than a “record of
emotions and experiences”, for, it is a visual, illustrative, rich
mini-thematic and biographical encyclopedia of the most important cultural,
social, artistic, and musical times in America. The book does not exclusively
retrace the multiple facets and aspects of Doo Wop, as its title might
suggest. Indeed, the book shed light on the persona, the aura, the known and
unknown, the nostalgia, the origin of American music, important
social-political events of the era (McCarthy saga on page 51), fashion (Page
302), the civil rights movement (Page 308), automat meals, Salisbury steak and
carrots, and America’s true beginning of fast food (Page 43), cars and Detroit
goes Rock ”N’ Roll, and how young Americans felt that “cruising became a part
of the American dream.”, Morrow wrote: “And cruise we did, with high tailfins
that made us look like a school of sharks patrolling the boulevard.” (Page
126), America’s early child care revolution (Page 46), the golden age of
television (Page 48), America’s early children’s television programs (Page
63), cartoons and comics and the comic codes (Page 68), the sitcoms after
World War II (Page 72), America’s early days of TV dinners with gravy, mashed
potatoes and peas (Page 81, the authors referred to this phenomenon as “TV
Dinner; a star was born), most sparkling divas and legends of the screen;
Marilyn Monroe (Page 83); France’s great Brigitte Bardot
(Page 212); Marlon Brando, the rebel and the wild one (Page 102); James
Dean’s true personality and probing the reasons women “fell head over heels
for him” (Page 116), the delicate subject of “color barrier” of the era and
Alan Freed’s saga (Page 94), the invention of broadcast television news with
Edward R. Murrow (Page 111), the domination of America’s lifestyles of the
masses and new face of popular culture (Page 113), the nostalgic days of the
drive-in, and how true is what the authors wrote “What a thrill, what a simple
pleasure it was to go to a drive-in movie! The experience brought together so
many rare and cherished opportunities: to be in the car, to be entertained, to
have a private place.” (Page 118), a feeling for American justice, strength
and honor comes to life on page 140, when the authors discussed the Davy
Crockett Craze…Even, Mattel’s Barbie Doll debut is in the book (Page 193), and
the race for space, and Russian Sputnik satellite is flying on page 196. And
to add an academico-scholastic touch to the book, the authors included a Doo
Wop Dictionary (Pages 327-331). And needless to say, Bruce Morrow‘s list of
Top 140 Groups was needed and had to appear in the book (Pages 332-339).
Worth mentioning, the heart-felt
introduction by the legendary Neil Sedaka who acknowledged the enormous
contributions of Mr. Bruce Morrow to the world of music. Maestro Sedaka wrote:
“…Brucie was wholesome, honest and almost childlike in his enthusiasm for the
business…We eventually ended up living in the same apartment complex on Ocean
Parkway for a period, taking our kids to the rides at Coney Island and for hot
dogs at Nathan’s. In all my travels, one thing remains true: No matter where
you go, Brooklyn stays with you.” In another paragraph, the great Neil Sedaka
added: “I can think of no better music industry icon to bring Doo Wop to life
for readers of this book than Cousin Bruce Morrow. He was there at the
beginning as an innovator, started many young artists on their careers, and to
this day is a consummate communicator.”
In 352 pages, Morrow
with the collaboration of Maloof brilliantly succeeded in illustrating and
candidly explaining the American psyche, culture, music, trends, celebrities,
lifestyles, social events and one zillion aspects of what constituted the
soul, fabric and essence of America’s yesteryears. This is a fabulous book,
rich in content and art, abundant with facts, memorable stories, data, lists
of lists, illustrative history of the most cherished and nostalgic American
musical era, lessons to learn from, and above all the message it conveys to
contemporary generation. Doo Wop: The Music, The Times, The Era is one
of the 10 best books of the year. Rating: 5 stars. Grab a copy. Perhaps two
copies if you have a good friend who deserves a lovely gift. You will treasure
this book for years to come.
Reviewer MDL. Reprinted
from the International Herald Daily News. Weekend Edition.
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.
 
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?
"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. 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.
"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.
 Photo:
Cover of the book "LEARNING FROM TANYA".
Learning from the Tanya offers a key for
unlocking the mysteries of one of the most extraordinary books of
moral teachings ever written. A seminal document in the study of
Kabbalah, the Tanya explores and solves the dilemmas of the human
soul by arriving at the root causes of its struggles. Though it is a
classic Jewish spiritual text, the Tanya and its commentary take a
broad and comprehensive approach that is neither specific to Judaism
nor tied to a particular personality type or time or point of view.
(384 Pages)
In
LEARNING FROM THE TANYA, Steinsaltz speaks to readers on all levels
of familiarity with Kabbalah and provides an eye-opening and easily
comprehensible line-by-line commentary on chapters 13-26 of the
Tanya, a seminal work of Hasidic thought. Throughout his commentary,
Steinsaltz offers many insights into basic concepts in Jewish
mysticism through the use of metaphors, parables, and real-life
stories of the Hasidic masters, helping him to transform an often
cryptic source text into applicable life lessons and a formula for
spiritual growth. In line with the goal of the Tanya itself, Rabbi
Steinsaltz aims to reveal the root causes of human failings and to
devise comprehensive solutions," thus directing readers in their
quest for self-improvement and achieving closeness to God.
LEARNING FROM THE TANYA seeks to explain the role of humanity in the
world and their place vis-à-vis God. To that end, Steinsaltz boldly
addresses fundamental questions of spiritual existence, such as:
* What is the meaning of truth?
* How can one understand the nature of human experience?
* How does one grow closer to God when He feels so far away?
* What does it mean to serve God?
* Can one approach God without love in his/her heart?
* How does God sustain the existence of the physical world?
 Photo:
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz (right) and Ichil Pogranichniy, a Shargorod
Jew, converse in Yiddish, as Pogranichniy shows the Jerusalem rabbi
some of the Jewish parts of his native town.
The Tanya was written
in 1797 by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, one of the most influential
leaders and scholars in the Hasidic community of White Russia (now
Belarus). Steinsaltz calls Tanya, so named for the Hebrew word meaning
"it has been taught," a "lucid and systematic articulation of the
fundamentals of Hasidic teaching." LEARNING FROM THE TANYA,
along with its predecessor Opening the Tanya, is Steinsaltz's response
to a concern that much of modern society is unprepared to tackle
difficult source texts on spirituality like the Tanya. He endeavors to
bring the universal ideas of the Tanya to a level which every human
being can grasp and bring into his/her own life. The Tanya's
significance in Jewish philosophy can be primarily attributed to its
main character - the intermediate man, or beinoni. "The aim of the
mussar (moral teaching) books, and the ideal to which they strive to
elevate the human being, is the ideal of the tzaddik, 'the perfectly
righteous individual,'" he writes. "In contrast, Tanya was written for
intermediates...Not everyone can achieve [being a tzaddik], and not
everyone is expected to. Instead, the beinoni is presented as the
ideal that everyone can and must attain." It is the Tanya's realistic
approach to character growth and its recognition of natural human
shortcomings that gives it the universal appeal Steinsaltz builds upon
in his commentary.
 Photo
:Opening the Tanya: Discovering the Moral
and Mystical Teachings of a Classic Work of Kabbalah
Scholar, teacher, mystic,
scientist, and social critic, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz is regarded as one
of the greatest rabbis of this century and hailed by Time as a
"once-in-a-millennium scholar." In the United States, he is best known
for his monumental translation and commentary on the Talmud. He has been
a resident scholar at Yale University, the Institute for Advanced
Studies at Princeton, and the Woodrow Wilson Institute in Washington,
D.C. Rabbi Steinsaltz has founded a network of educational institutions
and outreach programs in the United States, Israel, Great Britain,
Australia, and the former Soviet Union. He is the author of hundreds of
articles and more than 60 books, including We Jews: Who Are We and What
Should We Do?, which was issued by Jossey-Bass earlier this year. He has
been featured on Good Morning America and National Public Radio, and in
publications such as People and Newsweek. This fall, Rabbi Steinsaltz
will embark on a U.S. book tour to promote LEARNING FROM THE TANYA,
including public appearances in New York City, Atlanta, and Miami (dates
and additional locations to be announced).
Data. Source: By Amara
Levine-Reich
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.
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Waintrup's "It's Not My Fault"
An intelligently hilarious and
refreshing bouquet of passages of life of a Jewish tennis celebrity,
cultivated and well depicted in a book written by a son of a rabbi,
an entrepreneur and talented story-teller. Although, the book is a
rainbow of jokes, its author tenderly imbibed it with wit,
tragicomic wisdom and heart felt expressions. Most certainly,
country clubs members, tennis players and Waintrup's father enjoyed
the stories told in the book and Waintrup's entertaining style. But
this is the beginning of the enjoyment, for the "humanistic" humour,
and delightful narrative style of "It's Not My Fault" will appeal to
a wider and multi-layered audience, Jews and non-Jews, tennis lovers
and Mercedes owners, martini mixers, Bernard Shaw's fanatics and
Donald Trump's groupies. "It's Not My Fault" is fun, fun, fun....and
entertainingly informative. The book is an umbrella for a stormy
weather and a rod in an arid Sahara. It encompasses various and
unexpected portraiture of life, usually un-depicted on the tennis
court, such as growing up in a rabbi's house, getting paid to play
tennis, celebrity correspondence, mingling with pretty girls on" the
set", the ex-wife who begs to differ, how old pros never die,
instead, they go to business school, a shrink's book and notebook,
the art of winning, justice or lack of justice in the world. You
name it and you will find it in Waintrup's tragicomic book. Of
course, you will see the world according to Waintrup.
Waintrup has a lot of
imagination. But he candidly admits that thousands of unique, often
crazy students and friends provided him with "the inspiration for
much of the material" of his book. This is a plus. For certainly,
unique and crazy enthusiasts who believed in Waintrup could and
would add an extra mile of laughter and excitement to this most
wonderful "crazy and captivating" book. Waintrup's book is a
monumental accomplishment. Get a copy or two, if you have two good
friends.
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.
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WORLD JEWISH NEWS AGENCY
