Book Review: Lot Six by David Adjmi

I am for a long time very conflicted about when exactly someone may consider his or her life experience rich enough for writing a memoir. I am not radically opposed to the idea that someone before the retirement age has a life eventful enough to turn it into a 1 person personal story, but given the amount of such accounts I came across in the last years and months, I will be very cautious in considering that all those experiences are worth writing about and nevertheless reading them.

After such a skeptical, arrogant even start, let´s talk the book. Lot Six by David Adjmi is a finely written account of the author´s struggle in and out the very conservative - not necessarily strictly religious in the classical Orthodox sense of the world - Syrian-Jewish community in NYC. In my experience, the Syrians are one of the most insular Jewish communities, with a very different and highly exclusivistic attitude towards other Jews, for historical and sociological reasons that I will maby discuss on another occasion.  

The book is not one of those Off-the Derech books, about an Orthodox Jew that left the fold for becoming an atheist, opposed to his previous community. Instead, it is an account of a process of coming at terms with an identity, sexual as well, reinventing a new destiny, but without necessarily opposing the old world. From this perspective, the story appeals too much to audiences that are ready for this kind of accounts, without a dramatic ending - he still stays in contact with his family, although he is dismissed and run away himself from the yeshivish world. 

Adjmi remains connected to his disfunctional family which struggles with money. His family is broken way before the official separation of his parents: his father is a con, he and his siblings are struggling with depression and his mother is rather psychologically absent. ´People in my family talk about killing themselves all the time´. 

Although the family is not strictly religious, rather normally Jewish, they sent him to a yeshiva, where his religious experiences are rather peculiar. There is anything special about his Jewish heritage that remains his background story because, as we many of us know, you cannot divorce it easily, if ever.

Personally, I´ve found the part dedicated to the search for his own literary voice more interesting and revelatory. It made me curious to read some of his plays that are inspired by his personal encounters and life experiences. But as much as I consider it is important to share a personal experience and story of reinvention and transformation, eventually helping other people going through similar experiences to raise and find their voices, sometimes I felt that all the information was enough for a long article at the first person, but definitely too long for a full book. As I had access to the book in audiobook format, I´ve found the book experience even longer...

Rating: 3 stars

Some Details about Operation EXODUS

There are some murky details of how Jews from the Middle East - Arab lands and Iran - were took out of their countries through non-Israeli projects. From the Jews in Yemen that were brought to America by the Satmer and the Iranian Jews by the Chabad, there are some details that are not always too kind with the individuals that were the subject of attention. But more about this maybe on another occasion.

Escape from Iran is a book by Sholem Ber Hecht, emisary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, about the details of Operation EXODUS, aimed to help Jews from Iran escape the Islamic Republic. Hecht, at the time of the operation (1979-1980) rabbi of the Sephardic Congregation of Queens in Forest Hills visited Iran at the beginning of the Islamic Revolution. 

There, he got to know the situation of the Jews there, that, as any other religious communities during the Shah, were under the pressure of secularization. A network of Jewish schools were operating in Tehran and Shiraz, among others, through the ETEHAD, created by the Alliance Israelite Universelle who was active in the Middle East and Northern Africa and Turkey, as a Zionist, not religious, French-speaking educational project. Another Jewish education project was developed through the Otzar HaTorah network funded by Rabbi Isaac Meir Levi, familiar with the Jewish refugee from Poland that were hosted in Iran during WWII.

Chabad helped around 1,800 Jews from Iran, mostly young people, to escape to America - until the embassy was still open. They got the I-20 visas - student visas - and were further directed to various Chabad religious institutions and yeshivot. Those young people were becoming part of the religious sect outreach.

The author mentions briefly a short conflict between Chabad and Agudah Israel - which reunites the the orthodox denominations - on this topic, but what exactly happened is not openly disclosed. Agudah Israel had and has its own policies regarding the Iranian Jews.

Escape from Iran is an interesting account for someone looking to find out more about the story of Jews in this country, but must be considered as part of a specific context and tailored religious projects. Escaping a religious dictatorship that puts spiritual and physical lives in danger is an outstanding gift, but there nothing such a free lunch.

Rating: 3 stars

The Rabbi of 84th Street

´All creatures - high and low - get equal treatment´.

How mentally reconforting is to read stories of personalities impressive by their modesty and sense of measure. Once upon a time, such behaviors where was really worth talking and writing about, not the extreme and the exageration and the lack of middle way.

The Rabbi of 84th Street written by the journalist Warren Kozak is the animated biography of a real ben Torah, Rabbi Haskel Besser. An extraordinary life of an astonishing modest person. Astonishing for us, in our times, the 2020s. But when Rabbi Besser lived - he died in 2010 - his way of being was so typical of the old countries those outstanding Jews were coming from. 

Rabbi Besser was born in Poland, but extensively travel and learned through Europe, particularly Berlin. With part of his family, he luckily escaped to Israel where he settled for a while before moving to NYC where he spent the rest of his life. It was a personal decision based on his needs and personal considerations: ´His heart was in Israel, but there was also a lack of personal space there that did not fit his personality. In New York, one again, he found the best of both world. He could be as Jewish as he wished, and he could also embrace the freedom of America along with the culture of this great metropolis´.

Strong on his belief and opinions, he opened his heart and house to Jews of all denominations and orientations. Elie Wiesel or Adin Steinsaltz shared Shabbes meals with him and his family and he influenced Ronald Lauder, whom he met when he was ambassador to Austria, to get more involved in Jewish projects and education. Being in contact with non-religious topics and people, as well as with non-Jews were not considered a threat rather an opportunity to discover more about the world that Gd has created. ´We found out that you could be dressed in a modern way and understand the secular world and still be very religious´.

A living testimony of Jewish history, Rabbi Besser never ceased to be travel sharing his story or connecting with Shoah survivors, both in Berlin, Germany in general and his native Poland. Doing chessed and being considerate towards any human being is an obligation that stories like that of Rabbi Besser remind us that no matter where the world turns, we should never give up on being good. 

Rating: 4.5 stars 

About the Question of Antisemitism

 

In this collection of essays about antisemitism - then and now - Delphine Horvilleur is exploring the usual topics related to the everyday hate and discrimination against Jews, but also is adding some specific Feminist touch.

Antisemitismus is a reality that does not have anything to do with a specific historical, geographical or other situation. The Jews are either too much - thus, they may possess something the other, the majority, do not such as money and wealth and priviledge - or too less - case in which they are portrayed as ´parasites´. They are accused of being different or being apart - as in the story of Purim - or being mixed with the majority in order to subvert it. The list is endless and has a stubborn persistence. 

What Horvilleur adds is the assumption that the lack of proper democratic development and particularly a male-dominating society may create the conditions for further spread of antisemitism. A society more open and tolerant towards recognizing women´s right may rather counter such manifestations as per definition more tolerant and inclusive. 

Although such an idea expands the repertory of topics related to antisemitism, it does not make fully justice to the topic in my opinion. Women are equally perpetrators and agents of antisemitism and the book does not include a proper qualitative evaluation of the extent of such an approach, for instance any statistics if there is a radical split of a gender-related antisemitism. In lack of such premises, I rather take it as a wishful thinking, but I keep being skeptical about it because my everyday experience with antisemitism did not show any relevant gender-based difference in terms of negative opinions about Jews. It´s good to keep this in mind for further consideration though.

Horvilleur is the France´s third female rabbi and is an active journalist and opinion maker, associated with the reform movement within the Judaism.

I´ve read the book in the recent German-language translation from the original French.

Rating: 3 stars

Movie Review: The Septembers of Shiraz

I am rarely interested in watching the movie installment of a book, but some books are better told more than once.

Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer is a book featuring the drama of a Jewish jewellery businessman in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, based on personal accounts. Sofer, an Iranian Jew, grew up herself during those years and explores this experience in her books. Her latest, Man of My Time, was one of my favorite reads this year for the maturity of the writing and the complexity of the approach of another topic set up in Iran, without the Jewish narrative this time.

I watched the movie based on Septembers of Shiraz on Netflix, part of the monthly subscription. The film is directed by the Australian-Aboriginal writer, actor and director Wayne Blair, with an exceptional distribution of actors playing very well their roles: Adrien Brody, Salma Hayek, Shohreh Aghdashloo among others.

As an observation, the film follows the original script based on the book although it gives to it a strong socially-oriented touch. It made sense and the references were inserted in a smart way. The only thing I was largely skeptical about was the frequent use by the Arabic ´yalla´ by the Revolutionary Guards, long before Iran started to mix into the Arabic-speaking lands (the events are taking place in the months of 1979, therefore, slightly implausible.

At a certain extent, there is a grain of sad reality in the confrontational reality created those months: the gap between the very rich and priviledged and the very poor and with no chance to challenge their condition. The relationship between Farnaz, Isaac´s wife, and her home keeper has a revelatory dynamic of the lack of content of the social relationships at the time of the Shah. Therefore, once the social and political realities changed the representatives of the less priviledged were able to state with the same cruelty afflicted to them by SAVAK´s torturers: ´now it was our turn´.

Besides the strong social message, the moral dilemma present in the book is maintained and the characters - no matter which side of the self-rightousness are - complex and beyond the black and white portraits. 

The cruelty is explicit and raw but it is the kind of violence that is far from being gratuitous. It is the sign of the new times which, after a generation swallow undefinitely almost everyone. 

Rating: 4.5 stars

The Story of the Shanghai Sukkah

I love to read Jewish stories about less-known episodes of Jewish contemporary history, especially in relation with Asia, topics that are still not enough explored nowadays.

Shanghai Sukkah by Heidi Smith Hyde, with illustrations by Jing Jing Tsong was published by the resourceful Kar-Ben Publishing which is a top inspiration for intercultural and cross-cultural children books. It is inspired by the Jews who fled Nazi Europe - particularly Germany - for a safe heaven in Asia. With the help of the Japanese diplomat Chune Sugihara, dispatched in Lithuania since 1939, many Jews were able to secure a visa to Japan and from there, they flied to Shanghai, where most of them settled in the city´s poorest part. 

In Shanghai Sukkah, Marcus, recently refugiated from Berlin with his family, is longing for his friends and the life he left behind. He is learning in a yeshiva together with other children from refugees families. One day, he meets Liang, with whom he learns to communicate through the language of friendship, which overcomes the language gap.

Liang invites him to the local Moon Festival, and helps Marcus to set up a Sukkah as he never had before. No matter the language and the place, friendship is always the right answer to everyday life challenges. 

I loved the open perspective of the book. It teaches about how much we can learn from the others and how important is to value friendship, no matter the cultural background. Sharing our own traditions and cultural habits is very important, especially for children, as it teaches mutual respect and understanding. The illustrations are also beautifying the story, with simple pastels-like background. Although the Shoah is slightly mentioned, it is also a noteworthy reference for the book, although in a way which can be eventually better explained to children.

Rating: 4 stars

Tracing the Terrorist Money

Terror knows no border and fighting it on all fronts requires besides resilience and concentration, creativity too. 

Harpoon, by Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Samuel M. Katz is an account of the tremendous efforts deployed by the Mossad to track and subsequently block the financial support for terrorism. Initiated by the legendary Meir Dagan, the unit was designed to deter by any means the sources of wealth for various terrorist network, particularly those operating in Israel. 

The initiative was, among others, an answer to the dramatic outburst of terror in the 1990s. A new global paradigm was generated in the region, with powerful state actors willing to support generously the creation and maintaining of entities involved in acts of terror. The mission assigned to the specialists gathered by the Harpoon was to understand those new terror trends and besides the typical operations aimed to eliminate the perpetrators, to stop the flow of money. The philosophy that eventually was replicated after 9/11 by CIA as well (especially through the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program - TFTP), was that once the money will be disrupted, the blood shed would stop. 

Interestingly, the book offers significant insights into the financial aspects of the terror acts, by deconstructing it piece by piece. For instance, ´(...) the suicide bomber was the final link in a long supply chain of men, machines, and infrastructure that cost tens of thousands of dollars´. Drug and cigarettes smuggling operated through networks in South America (Venezuela, for instance) helped to finance terrorist activities within the state of Israel. Undermining those operations and disrupting the daily activities, including through the elimination of their heads of operations, jeopardized the possibility of organising and perpetrating acts of terror. 

An ingenious way that lead to the financial distress of the supporters of terror was the legal action against states and entities on behalf of the victims of terror attacks. Especially American citizens in Israel targeted by terrorist attacks in Israel and abroad were helped to get court decisions leading to blocking of bank accounts and financial assets of terror supporters. 

The insider perspectives brought by this book are very interesting for better understanding the practical aspects of the fight against terrorism those days. In a complex world, it requires sophistication and creativity to counter evildoers. Harpoon is such an example of good and smart practice. 

A New Episode of Jewish Medical History in Germany

During an early walk in Berlin today, I´ve discover another trace of Jewish medical history: In the front of one of the entrances of Wilmersdorf City Hall, there is a small square bearing the name of Julius Morgenroth, one of the creator of chemotherapy.

Julius Morgenroth was born in a Jewish family in Bamberg, in 1871. He studied in Freiburg, Würzburg and München. Between 1906 and 1919 he was the director of the Bacteriology Department of the Pathology Institute within the Charité. Following positions involved heading the newly created Department of Chemotherapy within the Berlin Institute for Infectious Diseases - nowadays known as Robert Koch Institute in Berlin.

Morgenroth worked closely with another fellow Jewish scientist, Paul Ehrlich, Nobel Prize winner as recognition for his works in the field of immunology. He created Rivanol, a medical substance used until today, as wound desinfectant, and studied extensively the effects of quinine against infections. 

Nowadays, we refer mostly to chemotherapy as part of the anti-cancer treatments, but originally this type of method and medication referred to the substances acting specifically against pathogenic infections. Ehrlich, as well as Morgenroth contributed regularly to the development of this field of study building up the basis for the current development, which is still a work in process.

The more I discover about the Jewish contributions to the history of German medicine the more frustrated I am by the lack of systematic information in this field. Obviously, the Jewish presence into the history of medicine is a topic that deserve a better historical treatment.

How to Desintegrate. To be Full Again

There is so much to say and write, on an intellectually critical note about how the Jewish life in Germany was set up but there are not too many intellectuals to create a critical mass against the mainstream.

On my side, I will mention one single event: it is the day when it takes place the so-called Long Night of Religions (Lange Nacht der Religionen). Once the year, usually somewhere at the end of the summer, for one night, the places of worships in Berlin are open to visitors. People come in large groups to visit various churches, mosques and synagogues. On one of those occasions, I was in the synagogue, for the end of Shabbat. Suddenly, a group entered the praying space, started to look around taking pictures (although they were told that Orthodox people on Shabbes don´t fancy such hobbies). They stayed longer for the seuda shlishit - the third required meal on Shabbat. Happy, they took another batch of people, observing how Jews are eating and singing and clapping their hands. They are alive, you see, let´s call it a day!   

Max Czollek belongs to a new generation of Berlin Jews. Born in Berlin at the end of the 1980s, he went through the full cycle of Jewish education. He doesn´t owe anything to anyone, in order to confirm his status as a Jew. He´s out of the everyday instrumentalisation of his identity for absolving the guilt of the majority. 

Desintegriert euch! is an honest account of the institutionalized game with memory on display in Germany, with Jews playing the main role according to a script which legitimizes the Leitkultur - dominant culture. It is a scenario which outlines what belongs and what not to Germany and where the Jews need to offer a ´perspective´ to the majority for excusing their historical excesses. For instance, let´s the Jews say their opinion on Luther´s antisemitism and call it a debate. 

There is a script for everything, but issued by the majority in order to push the minorities to conform. The Gedächtnis Theater - theatralisation of the commemorations - re-enacts the Shoa, among others, in a way which disconects the time slots. I´ve often heard young Germans complaining that ´enough is enough´ and it is about time to stop talking about the past, that past that ended up with the murder of 6 million people. Does AfD appear in a void? What about the neo-Nazis who are part of the everyday life for decades? My questions that owed me a dismissal.

But there is a lot more in the book and even a lot more to be said about how you are expected to think and behave as a Jew - and a non-German member of a minority group - in Germany. I am glad the circle of conformity is being broken. Itis about the time to take the floor.

I´ve had access to the book in audio format, read by the author.  

Rating: 5 stars

 

Movie Review: Love&Dance

 Ends of the week are for easy movies.

Love&Dance (2006) directed by Eitan Anner features fragments of the life of Russian Jews living in the Israeli city of Ashdod. Most of them are conforming to the stereotypical life and representations of this community: alienated, longing for their life as it used to be, unrooted. 

But there are their children too, making the best of a life at the margins of the society, running out of poverty and psychological abuse and complicated family contexts. In Love&Dance (original title in Hebrew is Sipur Hatzi-Russi) the focus is on a group of children preparing for a dance competition. They have dreams that are going beyond the peculiar life they share with their parents: they want to go out of country, maybe visit Tel Aviv too, as some never went out of their city. Dancing keep them busy, out of their small boxes of houses, away from the everyday family struggles they are forced to witness. 

The film is played in pairs: from the children dancers to Chen´s parents and the tormented dance instructors - former world champions in Russia struggling with debts, alcohol abuse and failure in the new countries. The adults are lost in their unfilfilled potential and have-been feeling while the children assume, at least by taking their life seriously, the role of the adults. 

Although the subject is easy and the representation is straight forward, lacking any complexity but only a level of everyday life realism, the actors - especially the children - do have a good play, who magnify and beautify the story.

I watched the movie on Amazon Prime, part of the basic monthly subscription. Love&Dance was also shown at the Moscow International Film Festival. 

Rating: 3 stars

Book Review: A Seat at the Table by Joshua Halberstam

Each story of leaving religion is different and the phenomenon is not new. New are only the outreach possibilities and the multiple ways people who left can tell their stories.

The OTD stories were probably less dramatic in the time of Potok. But going off the derech is obviously not a new phenomenon. Nowadays the cases are just amplified by the social media and various e-publications.

A Seat at the Table. A Novel of Forbidden Choices by Joshua Halberstam tells the story of Elisha, a 17 years old boy, from a Hasidic family in Boro Bark. Like the author of the book, he is scion of fine rabbinic families, refugiated to America from the old countries. The story takes place at the end of the 1960s, when America was at a crossroad of mentality changes, with the anti-war protests and Flower Power movement taking over the country. 

An anthropology student, Elisha is struggling to discover the world through his own eyes and make sense. The Hasidic masters and writings he grew up with are his guidance, but in a world which does not exclude the secular path. His switch is never permanent and, as many of those who left a world behind, they are never completelly cut out from their past. The familiarity of reciting a bracha or the felling of being at home when being around the family table at a Seder. However, some decided that being in both worlds can be possible, pursuing a secular life suits better his or her expectations about life. Refusing to be judgemental and leaving the doors always open, instead of a stubborn rejection of the family ties with the rebel(s) is in line with the deep message of the Hasidism, the one before it was distorted and turned into an ideological sword cutting the ties with those who do not conform.

I enjoyed the slow pace of the book, as well as the drama free plot and the positive message. Although not all the characters are equal and I would have expect more deep understanding from Elisha, the story is enjoyable and in many respects relatable. 

I may confess that I´ve discovered A Seat at the Table while randomly browsing for some easy readings but it kept me busy and was interesting enough to be worth a blog review.

Rating: 3 stars

Recognition for the Jewish Refugees from Arab Lands

I´ve become acquainted with the reality of the Jewish refugees from the Arab lands relatively late in my life. Growing up in my European priviledged society, focused on the deep trauma Shoah left in our everyday life none of the people I grew up with displayed any sign of interest towards other Jewish identities. Some did, but in a disrespectful way, a chapter that I will develop maybe on another occasion.

Our maternal grandfather´s Turkish roots did not count as he was French-educated, spoke some Ladino and was anyway fully educated in Europe. 

I´ve approached the stories of the Jews from Arab countries and Iran with a deep humility. They were talking mostly about countries were they could not return. About places where they grew up they would not be able to see again. They were spoken languages that were adding to their daily longing because those neighbours they share the language with, but not the religion, either turned against them or become impossible memories.

I´ve actually learned what means to really miss your old countries from their vivid memories of my friends and acquaintances born in Arab countries. Compared to me, that I was enjoying at least the freedom of a passport that gave me, again, priviledges, they lost everything: their citizenship, their memories, the streets of their childhood, their friends, the graveyards where they relatives were put to rest. I felt sometimes ashamed that my connection with my ´old country´ was so poisoned by resentment and indifference and sometimes haughtimess too. 

From their stories I learned to look at places like Iraq, Syria, Morocco, Lybia, Yemen, Algeria, Tunisia or Egypt with completely different eyes. Those may be countries where once in a while demented rulers decide to attack, force to wander and expel their Jews - as it happened with almost 820,000 people between 1948 and 1972 - but the everyday people may differ. 

Nowadays, this history is part of my little family too and I am proud of my son´s history that myself I am doing my best to learn more about. Hopefully, times will change and he will be able to visit the places where part of his relatives were born before being expelled or forced to leave.

Since 2014, on 30 November in Israel is celebrated the Day to Mark the Departure and Expulsion of Jews from the Arab Countries and Iran. It takes place one day after the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was adopted. For many of those refugees, life in Israel was not easy and they had a lot to fight for, including for their rights to differ, in a country founded by European Jews. There is still a lot to be done in the field of fighting discrimination and the equality of chances but those Jews from Arab lands and Iran do not have anywhere else to go. They are there to stay and make Israel a better place because they don´t have any other country. 

The world should hear their stories and learn the lessons. We should all do...

The Operative. A Better, Different Version of Tehran

When I started to look about how to watch Tehran, it came to my attention that there may be another movie on a relatively similar bigger topic - the spy war between Iran and Israel: The Operative, directed by the Israeli film director Yuval Adler, that also directed the interesting movie Betlehem that I watched a couple of years ago, featuring two actors that will later be distributed in Fauda. 

The 1h54m- movie, which was released in 2019 and presented at the Berlinale, and is available on Amazon Prime, is based on a novel by the Israeli author Yiftach Reicher-Atir, The English Teacher. Reicher-Atir was himself familiar with the intricacies of intelligence work and was part of the Operation Entebbe, the final format of the novel being edited dramatically by the intelligence agencies.

The movie adapted the book with relatively good results. I couldn´t say which version is the best, both in their own right being able to convene a complex story with interesting ethical and human questions. 

Rachel, the main character played by the German-American Diane Kruger, who also had a role in Inglourious Basterds and was among others Helen in Troy. Daughter of a non-Jewish mother that spent some time in the kibbutzim in the 1970s and a Jewish anti-Zionist British professor, she is recruited to work for Mossad in Iran, as English teacher. There, in-between her operations, she falls in love with one of her targets. Then, suddenly disappears while her former lover is stuck in Germany in an attempt of recruitment. 

I personally didn´t like the character, although was good played, but in fact it features a lot of complexities of working under pressure and being not always honestly acknowledged the risks of the work. Rachel was not prepared for the complex situations and practically abandoned to decide on herself when under high pressure to achieve her targets. On the other hand, she acted unprofessionally while falling in love with a local and even getting pregnant with him, a situation that her handler didn´t deal with it properly anyway - by not sharing the situation to his superiors. The price she was supposed to pay was elimination, but things are not always happening as in the intelligence scripts, because feelings may overcome the smart projections.

The Operative is a good movie. both in terms of the subject and the art of the actors. It has a completely different spin as Tehran and definitely a different audience but was equally worth to watch it.

Rating: 4 stars

Max Levy-Dorn, Jewish Medical History in Germany

The role of Jewish doctors in the development of German medicine is still to be told. It is a topic which got lost on the corridors of German hospitals. As a visitor of those institutions lately - not for research reasons, unfortunatelly, I am happy to spend my time googling about Jewish personalities that created the medical science that still makes history nowadays.

A relatively least mentioned but nevertheless relevant character of the medical history from the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th was Max Levy-Dorn. He was a pioneer in the field of the radiation science discovered by Röntgen, a passion that finally killed him as he contracted cancer after being exposed to the irradiation. 

I couldn´t find too much information about his Jewish roots and family, and the medical information are sparse as well. He studied in Leipzig and become a surgeon, but at the end of the 19th century, he was owning his own medical practice and a Röntgen Lab, the first of this kind in Berlin. In 1906 he took over the Radiology Department at Virchow Clinic, where I´ve discovered the mention on the wall close to the main entrance. 

Levy-Dorn authored over 200 academic publications dedicated to the then-new science of radiology and had noteworthy contribution to the development of the radiation techniques and clinical procedeeings, especially in diagnosis of thorax and stomach maladies. 

He died of cancer at the age of 56, the result of high exposure to radiation. 

Israeli Movie Review: Zero Motivation by Talya Lavie

Hopefully, in a year from now, I will remember how in the middle of the second wave of pandemic and facing a confused future of all kinds, I laughed hysterically on my own for two full hours. 

Years of waiting to watch this movie, a spontaneous decision to do it after some bad news and a lot of Corona stress: the Israeli movie Zero Motivation directed by Talya Lavie - that I watched on mubi.com - is a gem of black humor. Exactly what I needed to run out of my petty problems.

Based on the film director´s experience in the IDF, without being autobiographical, it features the crazy adventures of girls soldiers in jobnikiot (noncombat) missions, in a basis in the middle of the desert. In Israel, girls are also under the obligation of conscription with 18, but not necessarily sent to combat. In Zero Motivation, there is no combat, no conflict and no checking-points, just a day and night office work and a lot of juicy characters. A kind of Israeli M.A.S.H. with the kind of direct, hilarious and absurd humor that you can only find there. 

I couldn´t stop laughing more than once, and the laugh come naturally in situations when the everyday military protocols are faced with the equal amount of absurdity by those girls who just happen to have to be there. My favorite is the fight with office stapler machines, a very dangerous weapon when in skillful hands. Elegantly, the movie has also something to say about how frustrating may be for women to be in decision-making positions in a world where men take it all. If women can be prime ministers, why not Army generals?

Zero Motivation was first presented in 2014 at Tribeca Film Festival and to other film festivals around the world. It´s really a gem of contemporary Israeli life.

Rating: 5 stars

Tehran. The Movie

I should keep restraining myself from having too many expectations from cultural productions everyone is talking about over and over again. Books, movies, theatre, music...that are such a hype, especially on social media that I generously serve those days, may not be such a great work of art, but just benefit of both a touch of actuality and a great - i.e. generous - advertising budget.

Take, for instance, Tehran, the 8-episode movie released this September, a production of Apple TV and the Israeli channel KAN. Some love it, some hate it. I´ve read furious tweets against and academic investigations into various messages and turns of the story. Indeed, movies are a great indicator of political positionings and ideological interpretations of current events, an excellent example in this respect being the Bond-series.

And when it comes to the Israeli-Iranian relations you know that nothing is neutral and innocent about it. That´s how it is for now but there is no black and white but a lot of colours in between and people belonging to a shade or another.

The story: Tamar Rabinyan, an Israeli born in Iran, is in a mission in Iran, during her military service (really, at such a green age, only because of her IT skills...) as a hacker (loud laughs...seriously, since when hackers have to travel to their target destination?) on behalf of the Mossad. She is involved in some local incidents and is getting lost - while wearing a hilarious sanitary-pad like nose covering - but find help and emotional/sexual support in the arms of another hacker that she first ´met´ across the Dark Web. There are wild parties with drugs and drinking - like in Tel Aviv - and encounters with the Revolutionary Guards and various Mossad backers on the ground. Although on a mission she contacts a lost aunt married with a Muslim policeman and a daughter actively involved with the Revolutionary Guards. Tamar enters secure institutions in Iran, on whose halls she speaks Hebrew with her bosses in Israel. 

Overall: Some parts of the movie make sense, many not, there are some good actors playing excellent roles like Shaun Toub playing the Revolutionary Guard counterintelligence Faraz Kamali, there are some smart twists of the screenwriting by Moshe Zonder (the creator of Fauda) but Tamar does not make too much sense as a Mossad agent - while the other top Mossad Iranian-born woman Kadosh does, but she is killed. Some episodes are too long, and the love story between Milad and Tamar is clumsy. There are some ideological messages with a drop of truth - the mullahs stole the land, we want to take it back and they help us - and the longing for Iran of many Iranian Jews is so real. A good point is there are some smart nuances outlined between the different centers of power and the everyday Iranian is seen in a human, even sympathetic light. 

Personally, I don´t regret watching Tehran but it´s just an entertainment before and after the war is over.

Rating: 3 stars

Book Review: Mischpoke! Ein Familienroman by Marcia Zuckermann

I feel guilty for not reading too many books by German Jewish authors. I am definitely guilty for being so much focused on Jewish books about life in Israel or America ignoring what it is so close from home. The home, Germany, where I live and try to define my everyday Jewish identity.

Mischpoke! (extended family) by Marcia Zuckermann covers 300-year of Jewish life in Germany (West Prussia), through the story of the Kohanim family. The result of ten years of work and research, the book is sometimes ironic, sometimes dramatic, features that define, among others, the turmoil of Jewish life in German lands.

Some of the episodes and stories are inspired by the author´s own life and family experiences. She grew up in a Jewish communist environment, with family members killed in the Shoah or part of the anti-Nazi resistance. Together with her family, she left the GDR in 1958 for Western Germany where she settled her career as a writer. 

Although the book is important from the historical point of view and as a contribution to the literary history of Jewish topics written by Jewish authors in Germany and in German language - the original language of the book I´ve read - from the literary point of view I was not necessarily happy with the story. The timeline is sometimes confusing and the story is going sometimes in too many directions without always coming back. The characters do have a strong potential that is not always fulfilled through their literary encounters and life stories. The anchor to the reality - the story of the Iranian friend the she-storyteller is trying to save - is also a weak chain of the story in my opinion because it relies on a cliché - tikkun olam (repairing the world through good deeds - which is but also doesn´t make too much sense for the rest of the story. 

However, there is a lot of quality humor in the book, created through well-crafted dialogues, and story encounters, but also many elegant allusions on inter-marriage and assimilation - or integration, German style. 

Mischpoke! is a relevant work for the Jewish voices and histories in Germany. Hopefully will open my literary curiosity for more works signed by local authors (which will help me win more small victories in my everyday encounters with the far-from-perfect German language).

Rating: 3 stars

The Untold Stories of the German Jews who Returned for Retribution

The tragic fate of Jews during WWII remains an important source of historical research and inspiration. Relevant for an exhaustive coverage of the topic are the micro-stories of people that lived during those times and further participated at the historical events in the aftermath of the war.

Sons&Soldiers. The Jews who Escaped the Nazis and Returned for Retribution is an interesting book not only for the unique topic, but also for bringing back from historical facts to reality the life of German Jews that returned from America to help the Allies fight and, once the war was won, to interrogate the defeated and unrepentant Nazi officials. 

Some of those young Jews, born in Germany but forced to leave under various circumstances, left together with their families. Most of them, though, had to leave behind their parents, siblings and relatives whose whereabouts they are looking for upon return. Unfortunatelly, in the vaste majority of cases there is a dramatic reality facing them, represented by the concentration camps.

Bruce Henderson is reconstructing the stories of those German Jews, the so-called ´Richie boys´, after the name of the training camp where they got their military and intelligence education before being send back to Europe. Their big advantage was the knowledge of the language as well as the familiarity with the German culture and history. 

Besides the snapshots of Jewish life in Germany and the different biographies of the participants, new to me were the different ways in which some of the German Jews succeeded to escape. 

The mental landscape of Germany and especially the ´no remorse´ attitude of those who were close to the decision-making centers of the Nazi machinery of war are maybe not new but equally relevant as well for the generation post-war and their everyday life attitude to the responsibility - of rather lack thereof - for the crimes committed against innocent people. The lion´s share of the American isolationism at the beginning of the war is as well a painful topic that costed way too many lives.   

Once returned to America, the ´Richie boys´ preferred to build their lives mostly outside of the political turmoils of the Cold War. Sons&Soldiers does justice to their memory and outlines stories that together with many others creates a canopy full of insights and testimonies about Jewish life in Europe, particularly in Germany.

Personally, I was slightly disappointed that the book put so much weight on the pre- and during the war period of time, as I was rather curious about the period of return and, eventually, how they related to the category of ´retribution´ and the perception of Germany as the former homeland that betrayed them. Maybe will find more about this topic in another books and researches.

I had access to the book in the audio format.

Rating: 3 stars

 

´No Room for Small Dreams´

 ´In Israel, in order to be a realist, you should believe in miracles´.

No Room for Small Dreams - that I´ve had access to in audio format, read by the actor Mark Bramhall - is the book published in Peres last year of life. Half-memoir, half-inspirational book, this is just another testimony of a brave man who loved the people of Israel. A man who, together with other founding fathers like Ben Gurion, had the chutzpa to believe in their dream and set out of nothing a country. And not any country, but the country of the Jews.

A warrior, Peres also believed that peace is inevitable, and he personally worked toward it while concluding the agreement between the state of Israel and Egypt on one had, and Jordan, on the other hand. In his optimistic vein, he declares that peace is inevitable, and the current shift taking place within the Middle East is a proof that, again, he was right. 

People like Peres, or Rabin, or Ben Gurion, did have a humble dedication to the public office that unfortunatelly seems to be vanishing nowadays. Being part of the state project is a duty and they are grateful for the chance given to build The Dream. Which does not coincide with their and their family dreams of acquiring personal wealth and priviledges. Their families felt compelled to help them, from the shadows, without any expectation of public acknowledgement. They lived their religious upbringing through actions and good deeds, not by dangerously playing the card of the public piety for the sake of the cameras. Those were the days...

Peres prediction is that the future of Zionism is a two state solution, otherwise a one-state solution without Jews might happen. In an Israeli democracy, Jews and non-Jews should be equal, with the right to be different as a legacy of our own past of persecutions. Bridges would be made only through direct contact and dialogue, and this was the objective Peres had in mind when he created in 1996 Peres Center for Peace and Innovation. 

Shimon Peres had the moral courage to change from a hawk to a ´vocal dove´ ´on behalf of the Jewish people´. From the Hagana to the ´start-up nation´ and the creation of the nuclear resource facility in Dimona he had both the chutzpah and the vision. I am sure many of those reading him will see the difference and, as this writer, will be reminded that, indeed, miracles are such a reality of the Jewish life that one must work hard to achieve. 

Mutual Responsibility

Some days ago, on the second day of Rosh Hashana, happened to be with my family at a religious gathering. There were plenty of people on two sides of the mechiza but except us, there were hardly more than 10 people wearing masks. 

I felt the urgency to leave and forget about the mitzvah of hearing the shofar because my precious life was at stake. 

I am working hard to keep my heart far away from evil thoughts but once I was listening some drasha about how important is positive thinking to keep you safe and healthy, I just wanted to stay away of all this. Just a couple of months ago happened to be myself in a hospital surrounded by people - me included - that I bet they were not willing to die, but just sickness happened, no matter what was in their thoughts. 

What really annoyed me was the lack of responsibility and inappropriate leadership. Many, old and young, do consider their rabbis as persons with authority, whose example is worth following. When they don´t wear of mask assuming some special divine protection they risk their lives. There are old people and young people, sick people and people with a problematic health history. All those deserve to live and they deserve to be told how risky is to avoid wearing masks and social distance. No matter what other mitzvah you want to perform, saving lives is the most important one. Where is the wisdom of the leadership when they continue to encourage dissent and disregard basic medical knowledge? How they can go to sleep at night after they heard that someone who attended the mask-free religious gatherings died and spread the virus to their family members too?

Where is the mutual responsibility?

PS: A couple of days ago, I´ve watched some videos featuring the aggressive Police intervention against the religious anti-mask dissenters in Jerusalem. What´s wrong with humans lately? 

Normalization

It´s almost a month since the Abraham Accords were signed in the US, allowing the normalization of relations between UAE and Bahrain, on one side, and the State of Israel, on the other side, and so many things are in the making. At least, this may be the only best news in this strange year and, seriously, what a great normal news it is. 

On one hand, the Accords are the recognition of a reality in the making long before the Trump administration, who was offered, though, an elegant opportunity to show off. The trust of intelligences cannot be build in four years only, and the fact that for over five years discrete bar/bat mitzvah were celebrated in a private location in Dubai, tells a lot about how far everything started. 

On the other hand, it´s clear for everyone that four decades of hate and distasteful brainwashing and propaganda haven´t helped the so-called ´Palestinian´ cause. And it will never help. By creating communication chains and personal contacts there will be more likely a chance to have an answer to a painful situation. But well, do you know under what conditions the Palestinians in Lebanon are living - no citizenship, no rights...Or in other countries from the region that keep to condemn Israel when they are going through crisis of legitimacy, even no one serious in his/her mind do really believe this circus. Hopefully voices like that of Faeze Hashemi (hopefully she is wiser than her late father) who recently recommended a recognition towards Israel as a way to defend the Palestinians are not singular, although one may only dream and dream until things will really be able to move in a different direction between Jerusalem and Tehran. 

In the last weeks, there were a couple of moves of soft power diplomacy that took place either in the UAE or Israel, not all of them equal in weight, but nothwistanding news-worthy given the many decades of dissent and the religious propaganda in the Gulf: an Arab-Israeli soccer player who plays for the Israeli national team, Diaa Saba,  signed with Dubai Al-Nasr; there were some photo joint photoshooting for undergarments with the participation of Israeli and Dubai-based models, musical collaborations between artists from the two countries (Waleed al-Jasim and Elkana Marziano, de gustibus but still something). The Harvard graduate Nuseir Yassin, known as Nas Daily, started a tour in the region which angered the BDS movement supporters - because they will feel that soon they are becoming completely redundant...

The most important of all these, though, is the meeting hosted by the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, between the top diplomats from Israel and UAE, Gabi Askenazi and Abdullah bin Zayed. The two officials who inaugurated the first ever meeting at this level in the history of the region, visited the Memorial of the Murdered Jews, near the iconic Brandenburg Gate. 

There is such a huge window of opportunities right now in the region which is stronger than a political representative or another. It has to do with the everyday life of humans who deserve better and the hopes of a generation that hate should be left way behind in the history books.

What a Loveless World...

After reading a book like Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa you got the feeling that in fact, no matter what there should not be peace in the Middle East. It´s a deep feeling of despair that do not gives any chance for a future for young Palestinians other than got beaten by the ´colonizers´ and blow themselves up. It is a narrative embraced by some academics too, just another proof that sometimes academic research is not only ideologically biased and hate-fuelled but equally inadequate. But when it is ideologically biased it is clear that searching for truth it´s the last concern of the research. Instead it serves a narrative enslaved to various political plots.

Those who put their pen and intelligence - the writing of Susan Abulhawa who also wrote Mornings in Jenin is so good sometimes until you are brought back to the ideological message when one of the (Palestinian) characters is from the buttom of her heart ´destroy the Jews´ -  enjoy their victim status. And they got their credentials from insisting that the people they supposedly represent - the Palestinians - should continue to maintain this status because otherwise they will not win any popular contest of world victimization any more. It sounds so fancy to keep telling that there is the world - including the Muslim world - against the Palestinians. There should be no way out and the Palestinians themselves are against themselves as they suspect the traitors and the informers - the ´birds´ - among themselves.

The narrative of ´resistance´ carries the self-fulfilled profecy of a land where only one people live. The others, the ´colonizers´ should probably go to those countries who tried to destroy them. No answer to the question from where, historically, those Jews came from? Therefore, it is justiciable to poison the water in a settlement, and to kill other humans by individuals whose only vital energy is given by the pathetic frustration of not considering themselves worth of a better life. 

This is the message of the story of Nahr - river in Arabic - born in Kuwait, in a Palestinian family displaced from Haifa - after the European Jews stole everything, including their books...From Kuwait, where she also worked as a sex worker to support his brother´s medical dreams she lands in Amman, following the Emirate´s offensive against the Palestinians accused of collaboration with Saddam´s Iraq during the invasion of the country. As she decided to get divorced by a husband that actually was gay and in love with an Israeli soldier, she meets her brother-in-law who will lately marry her and introduce her to the ´resistance´. She ends up in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison - The Cube - but will be freed after a couple of years in a prisoners´ exchange.  

The book is indeed heavy of symbolisms and carrying an ideological message that outlines several times that there is no way out of this. But this is what a discourse of hate wants you to hear. It wants you to hate everyone because the whole world doesn´t care about you, as an individual whose destiny can develop outside the political and ideological patterns. And what a loveless world it is... 

Jewish Movie Review: Fill the Void

With what excitement I was waiting for years to watch Fill the Void, directed by the Israeli-based Orthodox film director Rama Burshtein. The movie, set in the Orthodox community of the un-orthodox city of Tel Aviv, won several Israeli Academy Awards and the main actress, Hadas Yaron, who also played in Shtisel, among other roles, won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival.

Personally, I am very cross about this movie. 

First and foremost, there are so many aspects I´ve loved about the movie. The game of the actors is natural, non-affected, their scripts are simple yet tensed by the weight of the choices they have to make and the responsibilities they have. There is not a ´we´ - the religious - against ´them´ - the non-religious - narrative although at least in one moment, during the Purim festival, when the old rabbi wants to learn Torah while the outside world is loudly celebrating, he requested with a mild irritated voice to close the windows. But it is a normal behavior and the decision is made without further discussion about who´s the best. 

I also deeply loved the artistic effects, with the long focus of the camera on the light and shadows reflected on the tensed faces of the actors. The silence while the camera stays focused tells more than the whole script sometimes. Especially for the case of people belonging to the religious realm, it reflects the unique interior life and the conflicts that often arise between what you want and you can´t say for reasons that pertain to religious obligations. The eyes and the more or less open exchange of sights - in line with the modesty requirements - are a world in themselves with their own grammar and expressivity rules.

On the other side, there are those things that I was not so happy about. Which is, the story itself: after her sister died during the later stages of pregnancy, Shira the youngest daughter of a respectable religious family, is tormented by the difficult choice she is faced with: marrying the husband of her late sister and thus the little baby born will not leave or follow her shidduchim plans. The movie starts with Shira and her mother, bursting out of innocent joy, spying on a funny bochur in a supermarket, that she would fancy to date. This, before the family is struck by misfortune. What can one do against misfortune? Especially if you are a religious person? Will Shira marry her brother-in-law?

There is not the ending I wanted, but it has to do with my own rebelious/selfish nature of rather doing what I think it is good for myself, instead of thinking at a macro-, larger level, which involves obligations and less feelings and emotions. 

The movie is relatiely short - 1h27 - and although I did not enjoy the story, I appreciated the play of the actors and the artistic effects. And this was a big won of my last movie evening.

Changing the Narrative: ´Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran´

In an effort to challenge the usual historiographical narrative about the Jewish diaspora, Lior B. Sternfeld researched alternative histories based on the experience of Iranian Jews. Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran helps better understand the complexities of the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel. 

´The intense relationships between Iran and Israel since 1979 have given proeminence to the false dichotomies and wrong assumptions that dominate the discourse instead of facts´. Indeed, at the level of the everyday political and international fight, it looks like Iran and Israel and the Jews in general are separate and antagonistic topics. The histories - I love so much this plural of honesty because it modestly outlines and acknowledges the epistemological limits of history - told by Sternfeld are being told in a larger context of Iranian communities part of the Iranian society. Which means that there are Jews living in Iran as part of the society, bearing Muslim-sounding names, marrying non-Jews, taking part to events such as the Islamic Revolution or the Iran-Iraq war.

His main challenger is the usual Zionist-oriented historiography, which denies to the Jews the possibility of living anywhere else but in Israel, therefore their diaspora histories must be affected by benign anti-Semitism. Which anti-Semitism actually exists, including in Iran, but Sternfeld is looking for different kind of stories - although it is a bit of denial to not introduce the murdering of Habib Elghanian a proeminent leader of the Tehrani Jews condemned to death by a revolutionary tribunal. Which challenges the narrative that mostly the poor Iranian Jews were actually affected by anti-Semitism and made aliyah - although many of them were deeply disappointed by the unfriendly political attitudes towards non-European Jews and left for America or even returned to Iran. But this is rather a political than an academic debate and what the reader is left with are a couple of good histories not told too often about the complex community which can trace its genealogy from the Babylonian Exile.  

Complex and preferably unbiased approached is the main approach that needs to be used when trying to understand the life of Jewish communities. Having in mind all those aspects is essential for a further acknowledgment of the diverse communities living in Israel, especially those originally from the Middle East. When the assumptions are eliminated from the historical research there are interesting realities revealing.

In the case of the Iranian Jews analysed in the book, it is worth mentioning the intellectual contributions of their representatives to the ideological construction of the Tudeh Party - which further developed as well individual contacts with members of the MAPAM, the Israeli United Workers´ Party active in Iran - as well as to the journalistic landscape during the Shah. Another historical chapter is represented by the support that members of the Jewish community offered to the prime-minister Mosaddeq, despite his partnership with the arguably anti-Semitic Ayatollah Kashani and his decision to severe ties with Israel. It would be interesting to read more (preferably) ideology-free contributions of the relationship between Iran and Israel - described off the record by the Shah himself as an ´extramarital affair´ - as well as of anti-Semitism during the Shah years. Another less known fact involves the Jewish presence during the protests that helped to install the Islamic Revolution, such as the fact that the Sapir Jewish Hospital in Tehran was used to treat wounded protesters protecting them from the long arm of SAVAK - the Shah´s internal security services with a reputation of no-mercy attitude towards political dissent. And there is even more: late in 1978, a delegation of the Jewish community visited to Paris the Ayatollah Khomeini himself in order to ensure that ´Jews would not be regarded as enemies of the revolution but rather as its supporters´. 

The distinction between Jews and Zionists or rather between religious and political Zionism persists today and permeates the public discourse and personal attitudes in Iran. The role of micro-histories is to take the wise distance from the political and ideological stamps and look into the personal testimonies and human contacts. One day, those contacts will be more than mediated by words, but hopefully by the strength of human intellect and direct contacts between humans who can communicate beyond the brainswashing language of ideology. It´s worth waiting for those times.

Rating: 4 stars

Book Review: An Unorthodox Match by Naomi Ragen

 

For me, Naomi Ragen is one of the Jewish authors writing Jewish stories that I can hardly put down. What I love about her books is how she is creating stories that sound so close from home, populated with authentic characters with deep and complex psychologies.

An Unorthodox Match - which I had in audiobook format - contrary to the literary and movie trends, is about a young woman, Lola/Leah, who decides to become religious and move to Borough Park and live, work and marry within a religious community. There is drama, but not that kind of drama the fans of Unorthodox - the book and the Netflix movie - are expecting. Of course, when you leave your secular life, everyone - especially your parents - are in shock. Of course that on the other side, the grass is not green and in addition to being suspicious, there is always the risk of being considered a second class Jew - even this is so anti-halachic and contrary to the very basis of our religion (what about Avraham avinu who was himself a idol worshipper, or Ruth the Moabite the great-greatmother of King David from whose lineage Mashiah will descend. A baal teshuva - BT - needs help and support and have to be half-deaf to not hear all the lashon hara that is said on his or her back.

Lola/Leah is going through her personal Gehenom as she is set on dates with people with serious mental disabilities or with other physical and personal issues. A kind woman with a golden heart she is helping in the house of Yaakov, a widower with five children who is pushed to have a new start by his energetic mother-in-law. His intention to marry Lola/Leah are welcomed with shock by the community and Yaakov´s own daughter, who is afraid that such an alliance will damage her chances of finding a good Torah scholar.

As in other book by Naomi Ragen I had the chance to read, the characters are going through complex personal transformations and choices. They unfairness of the shidduchim process and its incumbent crisis, the unfairness of the judgmental attitudes of the community, the pressure for role conformity and the unwelcoming attitude towards difference and deviants, as well as the terrific stigma of mental health are topics the people in the book - that can be easily identified with real people in any small or big Orthodox Jewish community - are reflexive about. 

Without taking stances, the book shows the complexity of people and issues affecting religious Jews, but also the need to search for a meaning, no matter your religious orientation, but a meaning which does not exclude the other and especially those who are not following your own interpretation of things.

A lot to think about for this Shabbes or for the rest of the holy month of Ellul. The King is in the fields and the yom ha´din of Yom Kippur is coming soon...

Rating: 4 stars

Life ´In the Neighborhood of True´

Life ´In the neighborhood of true´ is a double-faced game of incertitudes and fears. In exchange for a temporary acceptance, one can agree to give up or hide his or her identity, but this game cannot played for ever. Or if you do on long term, it may damage irremediably your soul. Sometimes though, there are external factors that may put an end to this precarious double game. 

Based on the true story of the 1958 Atlanta synagogue bombing, In the Neighborbood of True by Susan Kaplan Carlton is the story about a young teenage Jewish girl, Ruth, moving from NYC to his mother town of Atlanta following the sudden death of her father. Converted to journalism, Ruth´s mother belonged to the white elites, with his father the owner of a local newspaper and her mother, Fontaine, a respected socialite with social anti-semitic views on Jews (´Jews are well accepted at the banks or the law offices, or the hospital or what not. But after dinner? After five o´clock, people like to socialize with their kind´). 

Ruth starts her new life in a private - Christian - school, where she is hiding her Jewishness, and is getting busy making new friends among the popular girls. She is easily accepted, given her pedigree. Her bibliography is intense, as she is trying to follow the social requirements for young ladies. She is also falling in love with Davis, an attractive and popular young man, from whom she is hiding her Jewish origin. Meanwhile, she keeps going to the synagogue on Saturday and become acquainted with Max, a young local activist. 

At the same time though she is observing her environment, with active KuKluxKlan attacks and the segregation. Somehow, Ruth´s secret is out in the air, but not yet completely but it will be only a matter of time until everyone will find out. At this age, when the self-esteem is still a work in process, it happens to prefer not being open about your identity, especially when it involves social and political risks. Once upon a time, I´ve been myself for one year in a very high-end high school where half of the students were Jewish bearing Jewish names, at least the given names, but still they prefer to keep their identity hidden, some of them by fear that the other half of the students will turn against them. 

But there are moments when one cannot stay silent and hiding who you really are it is more than cowardice. The attack against the synagogue in Atlanta, whose rabbi was against the segregation, woke Ruth up. There were no victims, but the view of the destroyed place of worship raised questions about her own choices, including her boyfriend. Whose brother, she will discover, was directly involved in the terrorist attack.

In the real story. in October 1958, KuKluxKlan bombed the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, as a message against the political engagement of Rabbi Jacob Rotschild, who was an advocate of integration, civil rights and the end of the segregation. After several trials, no one was ever convincted.

As a story, In the Neighborhood of True is slow paced and raises interesting questions about identity and being true to oneself, especially for young/teenage readers. The ´white American´ part of Ruth´s life comes with many details and insights, while her Jewish identity is rarely explained. Indeed, she is going to the synagogue and cheers the memory of her Jewish father, but all the Jewish characters in the book do not have an outstanding genuine Jewish connection. I´ve personally found a bit curious that one of the perpetrators of the synagogue bombing is called Oren, which is a Jewish/Israeli name. 

Despite its shortcomings, this is a book that I will recommend for reading and a lengthy discussion for Jewish families and young adults living in predominant non-Jewish areas. It makes you think twice what to stand for and what it is important to keep being who you are, no matter the risks.

Rating: 3 stars 

Book Review: The Drive by Yair Assulin

The Drive by Yair Assulin is NOT a book against the compulsory military service in Israel. Is NOT a book written from a leftist perspective - although the author is a regular contributor to the Haaretz, the fanion of the left in Israel. The Drive is instead a book about chronical depression and masculinity misunderstood.

An unnamed young man is driving with his father to the WHO (Mental Health Office) at Tal Hashomer in Ramat Gan. He is a non-combat unit after being discovered that he has asthma. His family, especially his father, although is fully supporting him, cannot understand what is happening to him and keep outlining the risks of leaving the army altogether. The further integration into civil life in Israel depends at a great extent of the evaluations one got durin the military service. Being officially stamped as mentally unfit means not only a stigma for life, but also a very limited chance of professional achievement and for finding a partner as well (especially in the religious circles, as the narrator of the story is religious too).

But he cannot ignore for ever what is happening to him. ´(...) I knew that someone looking from the outside could not even begin to comprehend the suffocation that filled me each time I took the train to the base, the insurmontable pain I felt when I walked through those gates, the fear of something I cannot describe or define, the horribly cramped sensation that was unrelated to anything, certaninly not to a particular place or space´.

As the story evolves, so it is the story of the chronical depression, through the eyes from his family and people he is in touch with at the military base. ´I looked at Dad. He saw my look and put his hand on mine. I told him I was sorry, and he said that was nothing to sorry about, that he knew I was telling the truth, but all he was saying, again, was that he could not understand what was so bad for me than, and that he throught or feared I wasn´t telling him everything, because if I was then he simply could not understand what it was so bad´. 

He is banging his head against the wall, he is crying, he is about to jump in the front of a car. His interest in politics and the surrounded reality is disappearing. There is no more ´us´, it is only him and his pain and anguist. He feels trapped inside himself. Meanwhile, he is surrounded by arrogant and self-important people, keen to humiliate the others. He is turning madder and madder from a day to another, but it is not enough for the other people to notice the pain. ´(...) that betrayal of words, the capacity of people to say things without really meaning them, or to say things or take them back, or even to say them and deny they´d ever said them - that betrayel drives me mad´. ´My soul was genuinely threatening to explore at any moment. I really wanted to die. Every morning I wanted to die when I woke up and saw that miserable gray room with its four bunk beds, and the other soldiers getting dressed and polishing their boots, and I realized that another horribly normal day was about to begin´.

The emotional pain and restlesness are described in the smallest details and it is written depression all over the pages. The torments of the mind and of the heart are heartbreaking.

The army system in itself, with sometimes false gratifications doesn´t satisfy him, it deepens his pains and alienation. ´I repeated that the army was suffocating me. I said that all around the world, this was the age when a person shone by flourishing and I felt as if I were dying in the army. Why did we Israelis have to do that? I said I was dying, that I couldn´t breathe in that place´. They say in Israel that army is the school of life, that it makes you grow up fast and mature faster, For many, the friendships made in the Army lasts a lifetime. Everyone knows from an early age how their life will be after finishing high-school: the psychometric tests, the medical evaluations, the army service. This is the duty as it is the miluim, the reserve duty. Those few who actually skipped for different reasons the army service do not share it. But unless one has rich parents to set up a company for them, applying for work without the army service is a recipe for long time unemployment. The very religious who are not going to the army by principle do not deal with such issues, as they are supposed to spend time learning Torah in the kollel anyway. 

It is a complex issue, but this is not the aim of the book. Depression is a lifelong companion and its fights are by far harder than the ones fought in the army. The Drive is a testimony of the terrible true of this disease, no matter where and what context.

At first, I was a bit disappointed how abruptly the book ends. But, after all, the book it is called The Drive and it ends when the drive is over and the military psychiatrist put him on extended leave. 

I´ve read the book, that was awardede Sapir in the English translation by the excellent Jessica Cohen, the artisan of all the good Hebrew books translations.

Rating: 4 stars

The Story of Queen Vashti still waits to be told

You know that feeling when everyone is elated about something - in this case a book - and all the reviews in the publications that matter are enthusiastic and you are the only one who seems to not get the point. Not that your opinion will change the world, but still, you feel frustrated that it seems you´ve read something wrong or you misunderstood the book and you have no idea what you are talking about or what you are talked about.

Those are the kind of feelings during and after reading The Book of V. by Anna Solomon. I wanted from the bottom of my heart to find time to read this book, as it seemed to make a great point: making justice to Queen Vashti, the first wife of King Ahasverus in the book of Esther who was banished from the court after refusing to show herself naked in the front of the guests of the banquet, as per request of her husband. The midrashic sources - the Biblical exegesis - do have a variety of interpretations about Vashti. In any context, it is Queen Esther who is a winner, the hero and the savior. 

The Book of V. - V from Vashti - tells the stories of three women, at three different periods of time. Vee, the rich wife of a rising senator in the 1970s- which happens to be Jewish - who refused to show herself naked to a party, as per the request of her husband. Lily, from Brooklyn, a writer in waiting, Jewish, who is preparing for the festival of Purim - when the Book of Esther is read. And Queen Esther herself.

The stories of the two women intertwin, while the story of the Queen Esther serves as a background screen for their narratives. But I think the stakes were too high for the two women. Lily´s bland, the usual Lululemon confused NYC woman. Her mother, Ruth, who is dying during the story, a convert to Judaism, seems by far more interesting and with a good literary potential, but she is killed by the author way too fast. 

There is a very big risk took by an author when it plans to re-write such a complex story like the one displayed in the Book of Esther. You are either come with some outstanding new story, or not. A stay-at-home mom from Brooklyn is in any way out of this league. Trying to make everything sound cool and hip involves a high risk of failure. I suppose the story of Vashti still waits to be told. At least for me.

But justice to be done when it´s due: the writing is good and it compensates when the story is less good. 

I had access to the audio variant of the book.

Rating: 2.5 stars