Book Review: The Memory Monster by Yishai Sarid

´Don´t you know people are murderous? It´s in our nature´.

Some books invites you to the journey but let you take the rest of it by yourself. Sometimes, the journey means that you are faced with your own fears and misconceptions or beliefs. Sometimes, your only companion is the memory monster.

The Memory Monster by the Israeli writer Yishai Sarid - a name that I previously mentioned on the blog many years ago - is a short book but long enough to wake you up. That´s why people write and read books, in order to be faced with new realities and exposed to new ideas that may contradict their average ways of thinking and being. I´ve read the English translation from Hebrew, beautifully rendered by Yardenne Greenspan. 

Written as a 1st person account of a PhD in history, former guide to the concentration camps in Israel, who writes his report to the chairman of the Yad Vashem after being dismissed. After years and years of guiding people from a camp to another in Poland, the memory monster wants its share. 

The unnamed author of the report, the character of the book who writes at the first person, was ´drawn to the technical details of the annihilation: the mechanism, the manpower, the method´. His PhD topic and the subsequent book were on the topic of: Unity and Distinction in German Death Camps. Methods and actions during WWII.

Over and over again, he repeats a story that soon will take him over. It´s a mechanical repetition focused on the process, the mechanisms, the balance of power - ´to gain any kind of social standing, man must be capable of killing´. This acknowledgement of the mechanisms of power, repeated over and over again, obliterates the person, leaves place to imagination only. It forgets the persons, many of them anyway forgotten with anyone left to tell their stories. Most importantly, it amplifies the victimization stories and confirms the victory of the murderers. ´The chamber was connected to the motor of an old tank and the people inside were posoned with carbon monoxide, the guide continued, using phrases that glorified the process´. 

But what about the yearly ´March of the living´ bringing young Israeli to visit the deserted places of the concentration camps, wrapped in the blue and white flag, singing songs about how life will always prevail? Who won, in the end, those left with multi-generational trauma to cope with, or those who lost the war but are nowadays in the position to study and analyse and film what their grandparents did and visit Israel and found the country ´interesting´? Whose narrative won - the victims´ or those who made them victims? Is the fact that the murderers were in a position of power when they killed 6 million people perpetuate in fact their victory? How to read the fact that the oppressor´s pattern is considered an example worth following by some of the young participants to the tours? Sooner or later, we will be all eaten out by the memory monster.

I would be curious how those questions and dilemma reads out by someone who does not have any connection - emotional or historical - with the Shoah. For those for whom those connections exist, 

For those who do, this book open up beautifully so many memory wounds. Could it be that keeping them open is the best antidote to the memory monster?

Rating: 4 stars

A Different Way of Reading the Bavli

I haven´t been in a long time so fascinated by a book dealing with religion from a historical, geographical and anthropological perspective. For me, it returns to the Bavli, and to any other religious analysis, it´s deep intellectual meaning.

The Iranian Talmud. Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context by Shai Secunda is skillfully charting the intellectual context of the debates and approaches present in the Babylonian Talmud. Bavli is the primary source of Jewish law and theology therefore, its permanent relevance in the current Jewish legal context nowadays. 

Does a contextual understanding of the Bavli change its significance or may alter/undermine its relevance? Probably not. For the legal-theological mindset, the decisions stay valid and are probably independent of the historical context and the social interactions between the Jews and the other ethnic and cultural groups active within the Sasanian empire.

However, for the historian of religions and the historian in general, the approach followed by Secunda in its very small and applied details reveal an unique and realistic landscape of mutual interaction and, more often than not, coexistence. What is very important to keep in mind is that Bavli, as other religious texts during the Babylonian exile, did not appear in a vacuum and as expected, Jews lived and interacted with the other groups from their immediate neighbourhood and this interaction was at a certain extent translated in the discussions and decisions featured in the Bavli, for instance. 

The research uses the methods of intertextuality and comparative studies, in the ways paved by the 19th century Wissenschaft des Judentums and the recent researches developed by Jacob Neusner. It proceeds with the diligence and application of the archaeologist, with deep knowledge in the field of language, anthropology and history as well as Iranian studies. However, this kind of research should not be considered automatically as belonging to the Reform Judaism way of thinking, as it helps also the Orthodox Judaism to understand the complex web of meanings featured of the rabbinical decisions and discussions.

Personally, I was always fascinated and intrigued by the long details about magi and magical references in general. It seems that this is the result of the interaction with the Zoroastrian practices which I am not familiar at all, but whose understanding makes sense in the bigger overview of the topic. 

The entire book is a marvelous example of literary and historical archeology of human contacts and diversity which makes so much sense. How can we think that the Babylonian Jews were separated from their compatriots living in the Sasanian Empire? Obviously, the interactions and exchanges were on both directions and practices were eventually influenced and changed following the daily contacts with the Jews. Persians, Jews, other minorities, intersected - randomly or for specific reasons - within a vibrant milieu. Outlining the diversity of opinions on the same topic, or identifying the original sources is a work that brings to light extraordinary facts and conversations. Enlightened people with different background need to continue such researches and keep the conversation alive, sometimes against the temporary adversities of the milieu.

Israeli Movie Review: Suicide

 

Suicide, an Israeli film directed by Benny Fredman, is an average crime movie, with sadistic gangsters and company owners in big trouble and debt. The film was released in 2014 and is available on Netflix, part of the monthly subscription.

In debt over his head, Oded Tsur is forced to set up his own suicide in order to honor the accumulated debts to a mafia ring. The events are set in Jerusalem and involve a lot of bizarre characters, and a crime story with some hilarious and spectacular twists. The mafia guys look like ogre - but do not speak Hebrew with a Russian accent - and exhibit an elaborated pleasure to kidnap and kill, especially children. 

The viewer should not expect too much depth from this movie, but it is entertaining and worth spending a bit of adrenaline-fuelled time. There is plenty of black humour too, for those looking for more than just mafia stories from the Holy Land.

Rating: 3 stars

 

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