Book Review: The Diamond Setter by Moshe Sakal

A book about multiple loves, deep-hidden secrets and the slow evolution of the Middle East into a story of deep hate, The Diamond Setter has a powerful story - 'inspired by true events'. The intricated memory legacies of a Jewish family from Syria forced by the unfriendly political circumstances to emigrate to Israel are explored under a sexual angle, but it is obviously more to the story than that. Connecting the love story dots with a diamond of impressive value brings a charm worth a 1001-night. 

From the historical and reality point of view, the stories about the 'marvelous' co-existence between Jews and their Arab neighbours in the Oriental lands - compared to the pogrom-ridden European stories - are often the results of a delusional projections aimed to mould into a reality that never existed. The novel rather focuses on a particular family story, without too much emphasis on the environment therefore avoiding the pinky kitch of co-existence 'stories'. And if not for some post-modern interruptions in order to let the author's voice to rearrange the game of plans between reality and fiction, it would have flow admirably too.

There is an impressive cast of characters, with the women being the most complex participants to the story. 

But the past is past and the idea of trying to re-create the initial circumstances and events is as wrong as believing that love has borders - although, there are so many cultural, linguistic and intellectual barriers that can easily break the love. Rather, there are specific circumstances at a certain moment that create the opportunitiy of a certain situation - and relationship - but those circumstances are unique and most likely impossible to reiterate. The reality changes permanently and so the people under the pressure of events and ideological/educational pressures. The Middle East that was described in the 1920s-1930s is completely different nowadays and the changes will rather be dramatically new than reproducing a reality that once was. Nowadays, more than ever, we are part of a greater complex continuum which moves towards a different - greatly unknown - forward than back to a past. 

Meanwhile, the human capacity of telling beautiful stories will always remain.

Rating: 3 stars

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

Book review: Trail of Miracles, by Smadar Herzfeld

Told in the slow pace of a Hasidic story, Trail of Miracles is the story of Gittel, born in the lands of Ukraine, daughter of a Torah scholar and daughter-in-law of the famous Maggid of Mezeritch. Written as a first person memoir, the story focuses on Gittel's account of a life in shadow, a pioneer of her own kind, married as a 12-year old who decided to follow the dream of her youth and go all by herself to Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem she discovered is a faint copy of her dreams but it is the last step of her ladder towards self-discovery and the litmus test of her ability to take over her destiny. Always living in the shadows of men, not encouraged to learn enough because not a boy, she is there all on herself, anonymous, her past left far behind but strong enough to start over and over again. Because this is life, swimming through hardship. 

The writing is beautiful, the words creating beautiful images, talking in dreams that you need to take a break from the book to decipher. Gittel is sharing her experience from the bottom of her heart and at a great extent it is not easy to see her account as familiar as it resonates with some opinions regarding the women's role in religious communities. Only the individual example can demonstrate that there is room for balancing roles. 

My only disappointment is that the story finishes too early, exactly when I was in the perfect mood to discover new stories. 

Rating: 4 stars

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

Book review: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Dara Horn

My first literary encounter with Dara Horn was an unforgettable blast, although the other two novels by her I've read were a bit deceiving. However, A Guide for the Perplexed, her fourth, is one of those books which haunts you for a long time, because of the intricated web of symbols and meanings openly expressed or hidding in plain sight. It is the kind of books that stays with you many days and even weeks after you finished it because it seems that regardless how many riddles you solved already, there is still something else left somewhere unanswered. 

Computer prodigy Josie Askenazi created a complicated Internet program called Genizah where memories can be stored and therefore, you can create and preserve a complete life story. Because 'Everything is absurd until one learns to code'. However, busy to save snippets of information, we may be too distracted sometimes to live the moment as it is. When she is invited to the National Library of the post-'revolutionary' Egypt for a presentation of the program, her less brilliant sister Judith encourage her to go. In her last day of the trip she is kidnapped and brought into the Death City of Cairo, where her death is recordeded and aired, although she is still secretly kept to create a home variant of the Genizah and also a virus that can destroy the archives developed by the Egyptian police using the system. As a 2.0 Scheherazade, she is trying to lure her kidnappers and win one more day and one more day of her life by using her strongest asset: her coding wisdom. 

Meanwhile, her sister is having her short-lived moment of glory, moving on with her husband and taking up the role of mother for her daughter. A short message Josie succeeded to send to the mobile of one of her kidnappers to both her husband and sister will change, although a bit later, the entire story and she will finally escape, with her sister killed during the events.

At the same time, there are another two stories taking place in the novel: one of the author of The Guide of the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides, searching for a cure of the asthma in the ancient Egypt, and the adventures of the 19th century Jewish researcher Solomon Schechter who discovered the famous Genizah in Egypt, a deposit of old documents and holy books aimed to be stored for preventing human destruction as they bear the name of Gd. 

The net of the story is so intricated that one feels that it is no details out of place. Horn has a serious Jewish knowledge which permeates the smallest details of the novel, from the details and commentaries of The Guide of the Perplexed until the history of Jews in Egypt or the various interpretation of the story of Yossef and his brothers. I've personally found fascinated the game of the double: The two Askenazi sisters, the twin sisters that brought prof. Solomon Schechter to Egypt, Schechter's relation with his estranged brother, Maimonides' brother who died during one of his oversea trips. This dual relationship applies even to the family names: Jossie Askenazi is married with Mizrahi.

A less clear connection for me was the asthma element: Maimonides wrote a Treaty of Asthma. Jossie suffers of asthma too, and her daughter too, as well as Schechter himself. I've only found a relatively obscure psychoanalitical explanation of this long-term lung condition according to which it is caused by the supressed cry of the child for the mother. 

Another aspect that was probably missed was the fact that after the killing of Josie is announced, her death is relatively easily accepted, and there are no efforts to rescue her body or find more about her whereabouts. 

The entire discussion about memory and how the past can shape the present and the future, including by repeating episodes from the past, although in different combinations and concentrations is worth at least another books. How much we can control our life memories, with the help of technology ? How much we can control our present and future? At what extent those memories saved are accurate and not just another story our minds avid for creating realities are longing for?

A Guide for the Perplexed by Dara Horn is a fascinating Jewish novel of the kind I would love to read more and more.

Rating: 5 stars 

Book review: Women's Minyan by Naomi Ragen

I had Naomi Ragen on my to-read list for a long time, but fate wanted that my first real encounter to be not a novel, but a play. Based on a real story of a haredi woman who was blocked from having access to her children, it continues the usual discussion regarding the disregard towards women among some Haredi groups. Although women are celebrated and appreciated for their dedication to bringing children to the world, taking care of the house and most often also working while the men are learning in the yeshivot, the moment when a women is requesting her right to think and decide, the pressure of the community often turns against her.

It is not necessarily the rule, but such things happen and it can be enough to offer inspiration to the writer. I really liked the idea of the physical absence of men in the play, while they continue to be the background noise and the constant reference - both as a source of fear and source of authority - for the women characters assuming that: 'We are just women. There are things we can't understand. We're not on their level'.

The play has a more optimistic note than the reality, as the destitute Chana fights for and wins the chance of being heard, in the front of a 'minyan' of 10 other women, among which her daughters and mother-in-law. The open heart breaks the barriers the men rose for women to keep them weak. 'They enforce marriage and divorce laws that keep us chained like prisoners to men we despise'. 

From the literary point of view, I particularly liked the first part of the play, where tensions and symbolic details are added in order to create a crecendo of expectations. Unfortunately, the closer we are from the end, the slower the pace and the dialogue is less dramatic. 

Although I am fully aware of many of the realities of the daily wife within Orthodox communities presented in the play, I always pledge for nuances and more colours than black and life. However, this play increased my interest to discover more works by Naomi Ragen.

Rating: 3 stars

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. 

Those fine chains of sand that bind us

I finished reading this book in one long night, but took me some more weeks until all the impressions and ideas started to get together, less emotional and more clearly. 

Written from the perspective of British, sometimes too liberal, Jew - see the discussions about Israel and the religious compromise in a mixed family - it explores the identity stories of young Jews and Israeli, during the last war in Israel. If for an Israeli born and breed like Udi, being Jewish and Israeli is an identity to carry on with, for the successful banker Daniel from London, making aliya and eventually going to the Army is the confirmation of an identity that cannot fully develop outside Israel. For Daniel, taking part to a pro-Israeli manifestation in support of the three yeshiva kids kidnapped by Hamas, although confronting animosity and anti-Semitism, was this way to show his support. For Udi, in a British hospital after surviving a terrible car accident, facing the animosity of some of the nurses, was a part of life. 'But he knows that there will be always be those who hate Israel, and most of the staff are friendly and welcoming and blessing-sent'. And there is also Daniel's mysterious artist girlfriend.

There are a lot of discussions and cruel social realities, about Israel and the everyday tensions and the need to break free of all the drums of war, in a quiet sanitized European city. But somehow, those fine chains of sands are bringing us together or around the same (Pesach) table, everyone with its own truth. 

The book is well written and keeps you awake and curious to find out the rest of the story. The characters have depth and the tensions between idetities and love stories make it a captivating story. It is a book that makes you think a lot about your own identity, sometimes in a provocative, not always convenient, way.

There is an inaccuracy in the book, as the Iraqi Jews do not speak Farsi, but an Arabic dialect. I did find the choice for using 'yamaka' instead of kippa a bit awkward. 

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher via NetGalley.com

Teaching children gratitude: Yitzi and the Giant Menorah

This is not a book about Hanukah, but about being grateful and thankful for the gifts we are given and, in general, for good things that are happening to us. Aimed for preschool and first grade children, this very beautifully illustrated work of writing tells a story taking place in the famous - for the Jewish world - village of Chelm, in Poland. This place was known for the less gifted minds of its citizens, but being intelligent does not make you automatically a better human. The - Jewish - mayor of  Lublin sent to the people of Chelm a giant menorah for Hanukah, and they were all the time thereafter trying to find solutions about what to send him in exchange. At the beginning, they are not very lucky about that: the delicious latkes made by Rivka the Cook are eaten before delivery, the giant ice is melting. Finally, they decide about something more symbolic: they all get together and lit the menorah, with all the beautiful lights reaching as far as Lublin, where the mayor was invited to watch the gratitude show from a hill. This was the most beautiful gift, worth all the material presents because it magnified the gesture creating a bigger, majestic effect. And this is the essence of the holiday of Hanukah, to be grateful for the wonderful small things that happened to us.

This book can be used as the starting point of a long discussion about gratitude and interacting with the others peers, either at home or at school. The language is simple, and the illustrations are inspiring - either colourful, with a Chagall touch, or very strong black graphics.
At the end of the book, the holiday of Hanuka is explained at length.

The author, Richard Ungar, is an artist with a lawyer background that authored and illustrated many books, including a series based in Chelm.
The book will be available on Amazon beginning of September, which makes it a great gift for the Rosh Hashana or Hanuka.

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher via NetGalley.com, in exchange of an honest review.

Book Review: The treasure of Mr. Isakowitz

I have met Jews from Sweden, but never read a book written by a Swedish author about Jews and Shoa. Danny Wattin's book offered me the occasion to correct this omission. 

Maybe the story as such - three Jewish men: grandfather, son and grandson are going to Poland from Sweden to find the whereabouts of a tresure hidden before the war by the grand-grandfather - I fell in love with the writing style. It is a memoir inspired by personal stories, rebuilding fragments of stories during the war, based on stories of relatives and the own research of the author. The style is succint, suple, easy, not-pathetic and (self)ironic. It is the writing of a new generation of post-Shoah writers, quite far away of the events to approach the stories from a non-engaged angle but equally interested as the previous generations to tell the stories and recover the old histories. 

It results an approach that it is not superficial, but different. It remains the interest for the truth and the revenge of memory, but the scale of the voice differs. I am really curious about discovering more authors from this generation and, who knows, maybe some more histories about Swedish Jews too. 

Walking through old Brownsville with Alfred Kazin

I have a weakness for post-war books about Jewish Brooklyn, describing with acriby the old and the news, the changes between generations while some things still stay the same. It is that combination between sadness and despair and hope that impresses me. 

Kazin's A Walker in the City has not only a clear literary value due to its beautiful and vivid descriptions, but also a sociological and anthropological importance, documenting the life of various generations of immigrants and their interactions with the outside world. It studies with the journalistic acriby people coming and going, the new generation and the old residents, or the social and religious network. 

The success of the residents of Brownsville's part of Brooklyn was confirmed by their departure from here. 'We were at the end of the line. We were the children of immigrants who camped at the city's back door, in New York's rawest, remotest, cheapest ghetto (...)', he described his native neighbourhood. When new people are coming, like the mysterious Solovey family, chosing this place after a life in big cities in France or Italy, there are soon to enter the big family of failures. 

He describes his school years, learning with rigid teachers, or the bar mitzvah preparations, reduced by some learning by heart practice. Although he is a socialist believer, and part of a secular family, he is curiously looking for some chasidim that might be a diversion to the distant religious practices, but there is no one around. But despite this, there is a feeling of togetherness shared at the family table every Friday evening: "We had always to be together: believers and non-believers, we were a people. I was of that people. Unthinkable to go one's own way, to doubt or to escape the fact that I was a Jew. I had heard of Jews who pretend they were not, but could not understand them". As he will outline later on: "Jews were Jews. Gentiles were Gentiles. The line between them had been drawn for all time". In later public appearances, he will said: "I was by temperament created for the idea of revolution, in the sense of making the world over and creating a new society".

The most terrible word is aleyn, alone. "Socialism would be one long Friday evening around the samovar and the cut-glass bowl laden with nuts and fruits, all of us singing tzuzamen, tzuzamen, ale tzuzamen!"

The first American born of the family, he is supposed to over achieve as a confirmation that the efforts of the parents of moving in this strange land, far away from der heym, were not in vain. "It was not for myself alone that I was expected to shine, but for them - to redeem the constant anxiety of their existence". Different perception of der heym shows the dramatic differences between generations and explains the strong American identity of 2nd or 3rd generation of Jewish immigrants. For Kazin, it was a 'terrible word". "I associated with that old European life only pain (...) and hopelesness". 

His life in Brownsville involves going out of the ghetto often searching for books, sharing his long love for reading and literature. As he will later confess: "Literature has been my lifework, my passion and oddly enough my 'profession'". "My idea of heaven is to settle down in a jet with a book, a notebook and a Martini" he said in an interview and he shared to the world his part of heaven through his books and literary analysis. 

Book review: The Gospel according to Judas, by Amos Oz

Amos Oz represents for me a typical case of an author whose writing I like very much, and to whom I am indebted a lot in terms of literary development, but whose ideas are at the very very other end of my own thinking. I've read most of his books and I am always curious about new releases, but it seems that from a book to another, I am more and more disappointed.

The last two days I tried tremendously to finish a book who is greatly appreciated in Germany, Judas, as it was translated, or The Gospel According to Judas, according to some variants. It tells the story of a small microcosmos at the end of the 1950s Israel, made of Shmuel Ash, one of the best portrayed intellectuals in Oz's writings to date, the old Gershon Wald he is hired to take care of and entertain for couple of hours in exchange of boarding, and his daughter-in-law of his deceased son, Atalya Abrabanel. Following the bankrupcy of his parents company, Ash has to leave Haifa and his studies and find some work. Meanwhile, his girlfriend left him and he is left in the middle of a dramatic existential crisis. Atalya, a woman in his mid-40s, whose hands are obsessively described quite often - always as looking older than the rest of her appearance - was the daugher of a deceaed leader of the Zionist movement, who was in favour of a separation of the land with the Arabs. Ash is kind of falling in love with, accompanying her shyly to her pretended different detective work assignments, and the game of feelings is one of the best parts of the book.

Hoping in an eventual return to academic studies, Ash is using his time when not dating Atalya or entertaining Wald, to work to his graduation thesis, about Jesus from the Jewish perspective. The development of his ideas, his references and the discussion about them are actually the main part of the book. The thesis is that, in fact, Judas, is the one who played the most important role in spreading Christianity because he is the fact the one that was the agent of history whose treason made things happened. It seems that Oz himself is trying to come to right terms with his own history - his intelligence involvement with a British sergeant and his constant position since 1967 on behalf of Palestinians. The interpretation of Judas' personality resonates with the various discussions about the Abrabanel's radical separation from Zionism, with his final pledge against the very creation of a Jewish state. 

How far you can go?

The questions are: What are you about to do in order to achieve your ideas? What you do when your dream is fulfilled: you keep dreaming or you build another dream? 

In an interview for Israel Hayom with Eshkol Nevo, Oz explains that: 'sometimes, the title of traitor can be wear as a badge of honour', giving as diverse examples as Ben Gurion who accepted the partition plan, or Rabin or Ariel Sharon. He said that 'This book emerged from the pit of my Jewish stomach for all haters of Israel, for all those who creed Judas and drove the dagger into us and burned down the synagogue with the Jews alive inside it'. However, the problem is that the interpretation of the traitor cannot be separated from this new version of Judas and this is simply hard to digest. With a couple words and using his authority of star writer, Oz just turn everything in his favour. I can understand that he tries to publicly explain his own history and image in Israel but still, this sounds very false and in fact, excuses any treason, because, of course, the reason behind it was more noble than it looks at the first sight. Somehow, there is no middle way here: those who are weak and leftist will clap their hands and find a new rationale while those who understand why they are doing this, will never accept it. End of the story.

Deceived by the dream

'Israel was born out of a dream, or an entire spectrum of dreams. Every dream that is fulfilled leaves behind a taste of partial disappointment. The only way to maintain the purity of a dream is not to fulfill it. This holds true when it comes to building a house, writing a novel, traveling the world or fulfilling a sexual fantasy. Israel is a dream fulfilled, and thus necessarily leaves behind a slight taste of disappointment, despite the fact that it is still a fascinating fulfillment of some of the dreams', he said in the same interview. In other words, his apparent detachment and extreme positions that can be assumed as a traitor's are in fact the cri de coeur of too much love and intellectual instability.

With words, everything can be explained and justified, whatever the reason. Should it be a moral limit to it? Here to, it is a matter of choice and, after all, of intellectual honesty. 

This book was expected sooner or later, but left me very deceived because it just prove once again some personal assumption that great minds are not necessarily honest. 

By Faith Alone

"The IDF is the Army of the Jews, not the Tsarist Army that one would find every excuse to evade", said Rav Yehuda Amital, a Shoah survivor and among the first which articulated the need to integrate Torah study with military service.

The pros and cons the Tal Law will never end and most probably the lessons of Tisha B'Av will help maybe some of us to understand what is wrong and where we need to thin twice before launching various accusations. Doesn't make any sense to reproduce the accusations of both sides. What impressed me in the history of Rav Yehuda Amital was his power to support his own ideas regardless of the social consequences, because the Zionist ideas mattered.

„Yeshivot without military service would produce non-Zionist Torah scholars, and the religious Zionist community would remain bereft of spiritual leadership“, he outlined, according to the book. He encouraged the capacity of his talmidim to think by themselves and to respect the diversity of opinions for the sake of Torah, as he did his entire life: “Whenever I feel that I can say something to benefit the Torah, the Jewish people or Eretz Yisrael, I do not hold myself back”. The experience during Shoah left him with a certain understanding of the world: “In Auschwitz, they did not check people’s tzitzit before sending them to the gas chambers; should we check tzitzit before regarding someone as a brother?”

Of course there are outstanding Torah scholars that would be better in yeshivot that in the Army, but the theory and practice need to meet. Plus, if you have the chance of living in Eretz Israel, why not trying to understand what this country is about, and thus to see what does it mean to fight for your country. The road to Eretz Yisrael was not a debate between scholars, but a hard fight and unless you go to see what does it mean to defend your precious land, the Torah knowledge is incomplete.

And what a beautiful book about friendship, Torah study and defense of the country is Haim Sabato’s book Adjusting Sights in the wonderful translation of Hillel Halkin. One day, I would love to learn more about what does it mean to be a religious person and to serve in the Army. Isn’t shameful, disgraceful or impossible.

Memories of the shtetl

All those we were born long time after Shoah will never know how the world of shtetls looked like. We have pictures some distant memories but not a direct contact with the practical and sentimental geography of those places. We will know nothing how it is to live with the fear of pogroms and what was the charm of the little stiebls, the smell of preparations for Shabbat and the quiet 25 hours thereafter. 

Nothing about how to grow up in this world, the emotion of going to the heder for the first time and where you can find the resources for fighting the overwhelming poverty. We grew up in a self sufficient world where we took everything for granted and refused to rely on anything else but ourselves. But this is never too late for second chances.

This is what I was thinking about while reading Sholem Aleichem’s Jewish Children. 

Reading adventures: Giving up the Romance Reader

I started my discovery of Pear Abraham's books with the Romance Reader that, due to the frequent mentions in relation with Unorthodox did not impress me at the first sight. Later, I discover by myself how much the author of Unorthodox tried to copy some ideas from this book even though she is centuries of style behind. The story in itself it is not very sophisticated: Rachel Benjamin, the daughter of a Hasidic rabbi, grows up and wants to build her independence. As the oldest daughter she is supposed to be a role model and to marry first, but her hunger for knowledge and curiosity creates conflicts between her reality and the religious duties and her imaginary world. Abraham, with a background of Hasidic rebel herself, gathered in Rachel the seeds of many free-by-heart girls of the 20-21st centuries fighting with the various pressures of the religious life.

The story of Deena and Daniel from Giving Up America was more interesting for me. There are not too many characters here and the intensity of the interior conflict is different: Deena married Daniel against the warnings of his father, a Hasid from Jerusalem. Daniel cheats on her and the simple American style - 'I kissed her, so what?' - but she cannot go further, even though they decided recently to have a house of their own. The colors chosen by Deena to paint the house are telling a story about her universe and her longing for a different life. However, what does this difference mean could be the subject of another book. She does not say she would like her Hasidic life back, but more than one thing from Daniel's behaviour alienates her. She is a gentle person that still looks for herself, and the ups and downs of her inner tensions are more interesting than taking a decision as such. The talent of the author made an interesting story from a relatively simple fact and this made me look soon for other books by Pearl Abraham.