Looking the everyday evil into the eye

Jordana, granddaughter of Shoah survivors, decides to embark on a one-week trip to Germany, to the city of Lüneburg, to be part of the first week of the legal proceedings against the so-called 'accountant of Auschwitz', Oskar Gröning. 

After taking part to the March of the Living and being involved in various projects related to the Shoah, the idea of taking part at the trial of someone who was close to the Nazi killing machine sounds as a natural outcome. Being able to look into the eye of a war criminal, who for so many decades after the end of WWII was able to live a normal life after being part of the murder of at least 300,000 people was a big opportunity to get a better understanding of events hard to understand. Ambitious and decided to overcome all the obstacles, Jordana will make it to Lüneburg, and this book is the account of her experiences not only of the trial, but also of her encounters with Germans and Germany.

During 4 years and a half of operation, 1,300,000 people were deported to Auschwitz and only 200,000 survived. 6,000 members of the SS served as guards, but only 43 of them were brought to trial, and only 9 received life sentences, it is mentioned in the Introduction. An extremely limited number, given the tragedy inflicted to millions of people, and more than one generation of survivors' relatives.

Gröning's job - at the time of the trial 94 years old - was to record the goods and money stolen from people brought into the camp. After a while, he realized what was happening there and he witnessed himself the murder of an innocent child. The innocent portrait of someone who was just part of the machine, without possibility of decision-making, or because there is no other option, shows in fact the 'banality of evil'. There was the bureaucratic account that the people couldn't challenge the system and they were just pieces into the system. Gröning describes in his deposition the situation of food and drinks supplies when he arrives at the camp while people were there starving and living in conditions hardly described as human. 

The system as such couldn't work without the compliance of so many people. On the other hand, it creates the urge to keep fighting for truth, justice and restoring the chance in humanity. Although Gröningen only received 4 years and spent most of his life enjoying freedom, the lesson of his trial is that if there is a will, anyone guilty of crimes can be taken accountable. However, the reality that so many of them died peacefully in their beds without ever being questioned about their involvement in terrible crimes is hard to be at peace with. 

Jordana's inquisitive spirit is contagious and she can be taken as a good example for many youngsters. She wants to understand with her own eyes and the emotional stages she is going through are more than expectable. One of the signs of growing-up is acknowledging nuances and her own experiences and the observation of other people's reactions at the trial - including of forgiving something only G-d can - is part of this process. Meeting people like Thomas Walter, the German lawyer who challenged and extended the area of war crimes prosecution, is an example that individuals can make a difference.

This book can be easily used in schools for history lessons, but its readership extends to anyone curious in Shoah stories and testimonies.

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Wo bist Du, Motek?

For more or less clear reasons, I avoided this book for quite a long time, as I had a bad thought that in fact it is a book about fantastic Israeli life in Berlin, far away of that...and this...and that...About how beautiful and free and attractive Germany is compared to the realities back home. Nothing bad with the freedom of choosing your own country, but expat exhibitionism in this case may reach some levels close to the kitsch. So, again, I avoided the book.

But at the end of the last year I changed my mind and ordered a copy from the local library. The book is available only in the German version and it is a good and quality writing. More than a careful account of adventures in Berlin - living in this city is an adventure anyway - the book is the story of connecting with the German roots, reading old family diaries and tracing down less known personal histories. After the dark nostalgic episodes of the lecture of the family stories, the 'balagan' of the daily life and journalistic requests from Israel are welcomed encounters. From hysterical laughing to tears of regret and inter-religious passions, this book is an interesting read, outlining episodes of Jewish history in Germany. It is worth reading if interested to know the old and new Germany and its Jewish histories. 

Book review: This is not a love story, by Judy Brown

I till remember how shocked and deeply moved I've been by Hush, written at the time under the pseudonym of Eishes Chayil - a woman of valor.  After the book created controversies and awe at the time in the Hasidic community, faced publicly with a reality often hidden under the carpet, there were rumors about the real identity of the writer, but Brown decided to make the revelation during another dramatic moment: the murdering in Brooklyn of the 8-year old Leiby Kletzky. 

Part of a long lineage of Rabbis, Brown who is no more Hasidic nowadays, returns under the lights of the literary world with an equally beautifully written memoir, focused on the acceptance and lessons of loving her 'cursed' brother 'crazy as a bat'. When a child with special needs is born in a religious family, everyone seems to have its own explanation, like they just called Gd and got the answer. Either the family is not religious enough, or, in this case, the parents met directly not through a shadchan - matchmaker -, or they are cursed for old and hidden sins. Although nowadays the situation changed as there are much more children with Down Syndrome or various ADHD and autism-related needs, the perception remains, but at least the social services and assistance for families - and even the degree of acceptance, improved. Children with special needs are no more given away 'as a disposable', but integrated in special classes, undergoing therapy or taken care in the advanced and highly efficient health and therapy system created for decades in Israel. 

But at the time Judy Brown was growing up in America: 'Being sick was a much better thing (...) than being sick'. The curious Menucha wants to know why her brother Nachum is not 'normal', why Gd is not answering her prayers and doesn't reward her attempts of fasting. 'If I were Gd, I'd keep things much more simple and straightforward. Then I wouldn't have to listen to so many tearful prayers'. The misunderstandings around Nachum is a source of tension not only among children, but also for the parents. A terrible episode is describing the father trying violently to convince Nachum to say a blessing. He was unsuccessful, but kept shaking the poor speechless boy. 'My father couldn't stop. It was as if he was ripping down the wall around my brother's mind with his bare hand, trying to tear my brother out of there, and drag him over to our side, where he belonged'. The fear of the unknown and incomprehensible - the poor Nachum unable to defend or say something, like we all do - is always there and can explain, without justifying certain behaviors: 'where there are no words, there is always fear'.  

It is an emotional, well written, from the point of view of a small girl and a grown up, wiser, teenager, book, depicting perfectly deep feelings, contradictions and sadness, but also curiosities and funny childhood moments - I personally loved the sweets bargaining.

I first recommend reading this book because it is a good book, but also for the story of love and acceptance and growing out of social and religious borders and finding a voice and the own path. And sharing stories with the world. I can't wait for her next book, as Judy Brown is a writer to include on the Jewish literary radar in the years to come.

Book review: The Yid, by Paul Goldberg

It is late February, in 1953. A gang of few Yids, plus a Black Proletarian worker from the oppressive America, speaking fluent Yiddish, are set on a mission: killing comrade Stalin, before it is too late. Too late before the Soviet Final Solution is implemented. There are also signs and testimonies, as Black Marias - the trademark car of 'intelligence' services - are busy transporting Jews. It is just the prelude of a massive operation aimed to make the great Soviet Union free of Jews. In his datcha, Stalin 'can imagine the multitude of Jews, foreign sounding names, and he cans ee the gallows he'll construct for killer doctors who had the gall to plot against them'. The Yids cannot let this happen. This tragic-comical team of Bar Kokhba fighters breathing Shakespearean drama and moving in the pace of Commedia dell'arte, but in Yiddish, succeeds and the Yids are saved. They do it discretely, as any lamed vovniks do and split ways. Mission accomplished.

 The author himself was born in the Soviet Union and emigrated later to the US with his family later. The book is based on a historical reality: Stalin did have a massive plan to eliminate Jews from the Soviet life that was interrupted by his death, in March 1953. There are a lot of stories about those events, including the assumption that Gd's will was not that Jews are destroyed. Another historical fact is that many Jews fought on behalf of the Soviets in the 'Big Patriotic War' and also many of them ended up in the Soviet prisons because considered disloyal and even, German spies. Sounds familiar...Personally, I've read as a child a couple of stories about a Black Proletarian worker that joined the Bolshevik revolution and become a citizen of the Soviet Union, but I bet there were more than one in the country of Soviets.

More than a historical tragic-comedy, the book develops many fine layers exploring the new and old transfigurations of anti-Semitism, from the blood libel to the 'Doctors' plot' and the everyday Jewish hate. As one of the characters is described: 'He hated us in the abstract. He hated the idea of our being. But one-on-one, he was a decent man. I've fought beside men like him, and I would again'. Sometimes the victim enters the logic of the accuser and assumes the labels assigned. In Paul Goldberg's book, the Yid is a common character, because this is how 'they' saw them, doesn't matter what.

Any story is nothing without the writing and in this respect, you have a happy mixture of many styles and influences, from Shakespeare to commedia dell'arte, Kafka and Daniil Kharms. Absurd and supernatural and a pinch of marxism-leninism, in the illegible Stalin version - what serious communist would ever give a 2 penny to Stalin writings. anyway. The dialogues are delicious and ridiculously smart. As smart as a pirouette with Finnish daggers in the heart of a NKVD little something coming to arrest a harmless clown. 

The Rebbe: The life and afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson

I dare to say that I had a lot of expectations about this book that I decided to buy not because of the controversy around it, but because I appreciated some of the books written by both authors. The main accusation against the book was that either they used selectively the sources or they did not have access to some of them that would have create a different perspective on their subject.

My impression about the book was that the authors had access to many sources, including people from the close circle of Rebbe, but they were at a certain extent overwhelmed by the information. Many information are interesting, presented as new but maybe it is too much information and not too much analysis and evaluation - even strict selection - of the sources used. 

Maybe the Rebbe was not too religious and there were internal conflicts following his choice as the next Lubavitcher Rebbe, but it does not explain the overwhelming success of the movement and the dedication of so many young people that leave their comfort for fulfilling their mission in sometimes very far away corners of the world. It does not explain either Rebbe's influence of many non-Lubavitcher religious Jews from all over the world and the success of his educational model, as well as the particularity of Chabad within the other Hassidic groups in Europe, Israel and North America. 

For me, the book is unfinished and is too much focus on events when more analysis was needed. 

Book Review: Tough Jews

As it is not for the first time I hear about the "Jewish gangsters" I was not excited at all by the topic of Rich Cohen's book: Tough Jews. Father, sons and gangsters. Originary from a family with connections with this world, I was expecting a detailed account of the mechanisms and motivations of the individual members of the group.

Although using academic research, the book includes many personal accounts and memories of his father, Herb Cohen, - whose best friend was Larry King, and this could be considered the weak point of the book as they lived in Chicago for a long time and the heart of the gangsters was New York. Also, I didn't like at all the writing style - too abrupt and not captivating at all.

But, at the end of the more than 200 pages, there are some good memories to keep in mind - and explore through other books. One of the most important is the idea of the Jews with guns and wealthy - not the sad and depressive accounts of the immigrants coming to America and fighting to survive. "Jews were bullied in America, but in America Jews could fight back" (p.42), in comparison with the Jews from Europe and far Russia victims of sheer anti-Semitism.

This is an explanation suggested by the author too, that I would like to believe, but for which I didn't find too many convincing, academic explanations in the book.

The fate of the gangsters was sealed and they didn't survive the Second World War. Names as Louis Lepke, Abe Riles, Mendy Weiss, Greenie Greenberg or Buggsy Goldstein remains sources of inspiration for movies or thriller books. And in a way it's good like this. The world Jewry was having other important things to do.

Book Review: Limassol

When you are an Israeli writer - former information officer for the IDF - and you address in your book various issues involving secret agents and Palestinians, you should expect to be read with the attention dedicated to daily newspapers. It's what happened with Yishai Sarid's book in Germany - but probably in other countries as well - when after 2010 Dubai killing newspapers as Suddeutsche Zeitung and Spiegel did their possible journalistic best to find some hints in the narrative of the story.

"Israel is not Switzerland" said Sarid in one of his interviews with the German media and this could be a message line strong enough for trying to evaluate the book according to literary standards.

Written in the first person, the book is the story about the action of a Shabak agent - Israel's home agency whose motto is "Defender that shall not be seen" - in mission to help the assassination of a terrorist Palestinian activist. In order to tempt him to go to Limassol - Cyprus' second city and a good summer destination for many Israelis - he's befriending Daphna, a beautiful lady with a drug-addicted son, whose best friend, the dying Palestinian Hani is the father of the terrorist. He addressed Daphna as a beginner writer, trying to get professional advice for advancing a story about a Jewish trader of etrog and step-by-step he's helping her to bring the son back from a drug resort in Caesarea and is helping Hani to be treated at a good hospital outside Gaza. In parallel, his personal life is succombing - his wife's decision to move to Boston with her job is the beginning of their separation - and his professional life is going under a high improbability, after failing to the mission of interrogating Palestinians suspects of terrorist connections, confessing that: "I'm also turning into a butcher. I don't have time any more to be sophisticated swith them. You've got to work with force from the first moment".

From time to time, we are introduced to the moral and personal dilemma of our hero: between family and profession, between profession and friendship, between duty and human sensibilities. Such questions are normal and understandable and most likely to be encoutered in the real life. When we are talking intelligence it prevails the survival of the fittest.

Book review: Running away the temptation: The Fugitive

Published in 1904 by Ezra Brudno, whose great great father studied with the Gaon of Vilna, The Fugitive could be considered a good study of the influence of Haskala (translated here as "culture") in literature, or a sociological testimony or a pro-assimilation pledge. Otherwise - or because of the aforementioned traits - the literary value is very limited. After the first 100 pages of the book you easily realize that the whole construction is aimed to reach a lecturing ending: life is possible also outside the shtetl.

Israel - a name symbolic for the whole community - is condemned to wonder from a place (the Russia of pogroms) to another (till America) and from a country to another after his father was accused on Pesah - the celebration of the freedom - of the blood label. From the cruel world of the yeshivas - from where he is expelled after being found reading Spinoza - to the bloody reality of the pogroms and the hard work of the immigrant in the United States, Israel will be driven by his love for the Christian woman and the final meditation about the equal indifference against all religions. At the end of his long and adventurous sentimental journey, he will achieve what her lover ask him to do when he was a poor orphan: to achieve the same intellectual status with writers as Pushkin or Lermontov. The whole story is written at the first person as a way probably to create the image of more authenticity.

Although it was written before Shoah, the ending is echoing in our 21st century ears the saying of Elie Wiesel according to which the children of the criminals aren't criminals. At the end, Israel will marry the daughter of the man directly involved in the murder of his father. Symbolically, Israel accepts the communion with those who murdered his community. The symbolism is relatively cheap and our hero doesn't develop too much about his choice(s), although given his exposure to Haskala and modern literature and philosophy, more tension and complex thinking would have enriched the story.

Reading recommendation: only if you are a lot of free time, you are working permanently to improve your English and writing skills and experience.

Book review: The rise of David Levinsky

David Levinsky is a young and talented orphan Talmud student escaping an Eastern Europe tormented by pogroms and hate. Lucky enough to find a benefactor (a young lady from an "enlightened" Jewish family called Mathilda) to give him the money helping him to touch upon the American dream from the native and aggressive Antomir.

The long years of study dedicated to the Torah helped him to adjust relatively fast to the language and the customs. Add to this a relative easiness in fully respecting ethical rules and you will have at the end of the day a successful business career, where the fat bank account matters and loneliness is the only friend left.

You will find in this book a lot of sociological insights regarding the generations of Jewish immigrants in America: you will find descriptions about the transmission of tradition from a generation to another, the relations between the German and Russian Jews, the booming business of real estate in Brooklyn, the increase of socialist ideas in the Jewish communities from the US. The story in itself is entertaining, with a bit of suspense and tension, focused mostly on the autobiographical account. The influences could be both from social authors as Dickens as from the Russian literature of Tolstoi and Gogol.

The author himself, Abraham Cahan, could be considered an example of success story in America and maybe some of the traits of Levinsky are shared from his own experience as a successful first editor-in-chief of Forverts. At the end of a full life, with outstanding professional achievements in the clothing industry - but a failed academic journey, Levinsky is longing after the "David, the poor lad swingering over a Talmud volume at the Preacher's Synagogue".

In comparison with other characters of the novels dealing with Jewish immigrants in America, Levinsky isn't tempted to baptize although his practice of Judaism is becoming almost symbolical. He is looking - from time to time - for a Jewish wife and will offer free day to his workers on Sabbath, and will always remember the yahrzeit of his mother - killed by mushiks in Antomir after an altercation with those who were aggressive against David - but the joy of the mitzvot left him.

What I liked very much about this book - in addition to the sociological background, is the realism of the character. I met many David Levinsky in America: some of them looking for a better economic achievements, for fun or for something else than what they called a boring life in a small country. Some realized that they could be the next Levinskis and returned, others are still looking for their luck, maybe in Beverly Hills. In comparison with the poor orphan Levinsky, they have more than a foggy Antomir.

Who We Are: Identity and Words

Being Jewish is so important for the identity of a writer? Or it is rather a kind of secret obligation to address exclusively and preponderantly Jewish issues in their books? Or it is simply impossible to go out of your cultural background when writing, although the issues addressed doesn't deal necessarily with identity matters?

The collection of articles edited by Derek Rubin and authored by various writers - more or less famous, more or less known beyond the boundaries of the Jewish culture, or simply more or less interesting - isn't offering the universal solution but various faces of various interpretations of their Jewish identity.

What do I think about this issue? Expressing your identity is a creative choice. Nobody force you to do so, but you will be able to convince your reader when your words are reflecting a specific reality reorganized in a new way or outlining completely new corners. You will write better about what do you know better. As Isaac Bashevis Singer said: "Every writer needs to have an address".

I liked a lot the cover of the book (see image) and I was happy to discover new names and works that I already included on my reading list for the next days - and mostly nights.

Following, there are some quotes from some of the authors:

Saul Bellow: "I am often described as a Jewish writer; in much the same way one might be called a Samoan astronomer or an Eskimo cellist or a Zulu Gainsborough expert". (p.5)

Cynthia Ozick: "A Jewish book is liturgy, ethics, philosophy, ontology. A Jewish book speaks of the attempt to create a world in the image of G-d while never presuming to image G-d". (p.19)

Chaim Potok: "You can grow up along the periphery of your subculture and enter the rich heart of Western secular humanism - say, be going to university, the generating plant of Western secular civilization (...) You can grow up along the periphery of your subculture and experience only the periphery of Western civilization". (p.31)

E.L.Doctorow: "Of course the writer's background, religion, tradition, nationality, lived life is crucially directive as to what she writes about whom and where...but as a reader I find quite beside the point that Garcia Marques is Catholic from Columbia - or Jane Austin is an Anglican from Britain, as instrumental as their culture may have been in forming them". (p. 38)

Philip Roth: "The test of any literary works is not how broad is its range of representation - for all that breadth may be characteristic of a kind of narrative - but the depth with which the writer reveals weather he has chosen to represent". (p. 49)

Leslie Epstein: "I believe that the return to Israel, the sensation of being immersed in Jews and Judaism must have represented in some sense a return to my own past and not just to that of my coreligionists". (p. 70)

Erica Jong: "By writing, we reinvent ourselves. By writing, we create pedigrees". (p. 99)

Jonathan Wilson: "A Jew can never really be English: it's as simple as that". (p. 157)

Melvin Jules Bukiet: "No one - not a German and not a Jew - who isn't a child of survivors can begin to understand the bottomless depth of rage inside those born into the Khurbn. No one can understand how we can hold collectively guilty not only the octogenarian perpetrators but the rest of the nation that saw nothing for the twelve-year reign of the Thousand-Year Reich, and their children and their children's children and the yet unborn tainted by their German blood". (p. 173)

Nessa Rapaport: "The moment I noticed our sacred texts flowing through me without cease was the moment I became a Jewish writer". (p. 177)

Lev Raphael: "My writing is deeply Jewish not just in subject matter, but in its sense of urgency to break every constricting silence. The refusal to accept silence and marginalization, the importance of speaking for ourselves, of telling stories, have been recurring themes of my fiction and essays". (p.200)

Binnie Kirshenhaum: "We're attaching ourselves to the world of our grandparents". (p. 225)

Thane Rosenbaum: "I am a post-Holocaust novelist, which means that I rely on my imagination - my capacity to reinvent worlds and reveal emotional truths in order to speak to the Holocaust and its aftermath, one generation removed from Auschwitz". (p. 244-245)

Jonathan Rosen: "The Talmud tells us that in the womb we all study and master the Talmud, but that at birth an angel touches us and we forget everything we've learned". (p. 253)

Allegra Goodman: "I have come to think that a writer cannot have enough labels if they are keys to new audiences, if they are combined and subverted imaginatively. I work with as many as I can - Jewish writer, woman writer, Generation X. Each provides a different opportunity". (p. 268)

Rachel Kadish: "I grew up with two paths stretched before me: the life I would live in the United States and the life I would live if I had to flee". (p. 286)

Tova Mirvis: "I do some of my best writing in shul. Not with pen and paper, not with my computer, all of which are forbidden on the Sabbath, but in my head. What moves me to write is the gap created in shul, the contrast between worlds: the public and the personal, the holy and the prosaic". (p. 300)

Dara Horn: "Jewish literature is a contemporary commentary on ancient Jewish texts". (p. 315)

Yael Goldstein: "As my favorite works of literature, the stories of the Bible had always functioned as the standard of depth and largeness I longed to reach when I wrote". (p. 329)

Episode from the Chronicle of our Times

Reading Anatole France in the wonderful year 2011/5711 might sound ridiculous. Who needs the old style books with their images and societies impossible to imagine with the eyes of our high tech life?

For me, the very lazy lecture of the second volume of the Chronicle of Our Times - the Amethyst Ring was an endurance test. I used to read some Anatole France long time ago, but didn't find anything notable and interesting in his books. Too much dust and too much boredom and this impression didn't change since then.

The decision to spend some time in the exhibition hall of the various images of the "France profonde" was took after reading again some new books about Affaire Dreyfus. Convinced to include the book in my bibliographical list for academic reasons only I went easier beyond the stylistic emptiness of this old story.

Placed during the development of Affaire Dreyfus, the book could be read also as an account of the deep and constant anti-Jewish feelings of the middle-class French society of the time. Converted or "enlightened" the Jew is seen as a dangerous element and the good old society - as the one represented by the religious and military elites - should avoid and isolate them. In the daily representation of this society the Jew is a nuisance and, in addition, given the conflict with the Germans from the time, as a potential supporter of the German enemy. Children or adults, rich or poor, they are happily united in their hate against the Jew. A phenomenon we were used to considered familiar in the far Eastern lands of Europe, but expressed in a more sophisticated and culturally transmitted way in many Western European countries as well, in the wonderful and optimistic 19th century.

Meeting Yoram Kaniuk

Although not the biggest fan of reading in German, I appreciate the book not only by the language of the cover, but by the opportunity of finding and discovering new worlds and new words. Till my Hebrew will move graciously enough for not needing a dictionary every 20 words, I must appreciate the early education and the many foreign languages I've been exposed to from various reasons.

Kaniuk's thriller was my first meeting with this sometimes exotic writer. A former Palmach fighter under the command of Yitzhak Rabin, he continues to be an important writer from the old generation of intellectuals, formed befored the creation of the state of Israel.

The book is a thriller ingeniously introducing the dream as part of the daily tension of the story. The curious investigation in the quest of a perpetrator of a terrorist attack in a Tel Aviv pub is leading not to an Arab, as it was suggested, but to a fellow Israeli. The parallel with Rabin's assasination is clearly purposed. Beyond the various political and sociological references to daily life in Israel, I loved the book for the suspense and creative construction of the narrative. An interesting thriller from an author I would like to discover more.