Dog by Yishay Ishi Ron translated into English by Yardenne Greenspan

´I´m not in Gaza, I´m in Tel Aviv, and there are no shells here, only a dying dog, and no one is helping, no one comes´.

A short and intellectually sharp novel set in Tel Aviv, Dog by Yishay Ishi Ron, brilliantly translated into English by Yardenne Greenspan is emotionally powerful and dramatically realistic. It is a very well constructed story, that doesn´t dramatize, but inserts the elements of drama into the characters in a seamless way. 

Nicknamed Geller - the magician able to bend a spoon with the power of his mind, the main character was wounded during the Operation Pillar of Defense, suffering of severe, untreated PTSD. (The author himself is a survivor of severe PTSD). ´Everyone was so proud of me. They say I´m a hero, but I didn´t feel like one´. Now, he is a heroine-addict, living with other addicts in Tel Aviv. He is befriended - against his will, but he doesn´t have any will anyway ´So I seem friendly to you? (...) I´m a heroin addict. I need drugs, no friends´. - by a woman who lost her son many years ago, living alone with a dog. 

There are short dialogues and short scenes succeeding, sometimes similar with traumatic episodes, only that for Geller - who is only later on named with his real name, Barak, when he is arrested for a framed murder - those episodes are now more than isolated flashes; his whole ife is a long endless traumatic flash.

Depictions are realistic, as well as the life-like setting. It ends - after a crime-story intermezzo - with no promise, but it as the end of a sequence. The end of a tragic story beautifully told.

For me, it was the best Jewish/Israeli-related read of the year so far. 

Israeli Movie Review: Barren directed by Rabbi Mordechai Vardi

Long time no Israeli movie, but the last one I´ve watched, Barren (Akara, the original Hebrew version), directed by Rabbi Mordechai Vardi, offered me enough food for thought for the next weeks.

Feigi and Naftali are a young couple in their early 20s, living in Tzfat by Nafali´s baal teshuva parents. Feigi desperately wants a baby, and so wants her husband, but as he is away for Rosh Hashana in Uman, a wandering wonder rabbis Rabbi Eliahu is hosted in the house. He is manipulating her and sexually abuses her, which creates a big rift in the relationship. 

What I really liked about this movie is the nuanced, empathic and non-judgemental approach of the film director. There is no judgement or critique, it just shows the ways in which faith can mislead and can be abused. The inflexible, non-emotional way of the halacha is faced with the more diverse human realities they may not necessarily match. 

Well played, this movie opens up so many questions while leaving room for human connection and understanding. It also opens up on a topic carefully or rarely touched upon in religious communities, namely sexual abuse. 

A film that would love to watch again at a certain time. I also added this film director on the list of Israeli film directors to watch.

City of Dogs by Leon de Winter translated into German by Stefanie Schäfers

´Lea hatte ein Recht auf ihre Illusionen, auch wenn er selbst keine hatte´.

Jaap Hollander is a very successful brain surgeon, searching for years for his disappeared daughter Lea, during a Birthright trip, in Mitzpe Ramon.  Year after year, he lands in Israel, trying to find out a trace of her. Until one year, he is requested by the unnamed country´s ruler (Bibi) to perform a very delicate brain surgery to the sick daugher of (also unnamed) Saudi prince (MBS). Unlikely to succeed, but he does, which makes him rich enough to invest his fortune in complex searches. However, as he may turn himself into a brain surgery patient he may shortly experience an emotional shift, that may bring him closer to understand his daughter´s closeness to his identity. While recovering, he will stay in Tel Aviv one 7th of October day day taking the sudden decision of taking part to a rave festival in the Negev desert.

City of Dogs (Stadt der Hunde, translated from Dutch to German by Stefanie Schäfers) is a book you need time to digest and even more time to understand. The professor is a cynical, narcissist and macho person, disrespecful towards women, cynical, he is very much aware of his professional value. There is no place for belief in the brain. But the brain is a place of paradoxes, and he will experience it himself, although while in coma fighting for his life. 

There is more than a CV to show when asked ´Who you are?´

I personally enjoyed very much the digressions about brain and brain science in general, but got a bit lost at the fantastic part - with the talking Ibrahim/Avi dog. There are deep, open questioned the book is asking, but the answer is clearly a matter of individual choices. Which makes the book even more interesting. 

Balagan by Mirna Funk

There is a new book by Mirna Funk   and I hurried up to get to read it. As in her previous novels, there is again, an Israeli-German story, rooted in the realities of the two worlds - post 7th of October, built around a well developed plot. And there is also a lot of sex, but the author is, after all, a sex columnist as well.

The main protagonist of the story, Amira, inherited from her grandfather a very valuable art collection, that was stolen from the family during the Nazi times. The realities of becoming millionaire overnight. an upgrade from a status of a survival online journalist, put into motion an expected row of envies and confusion, but also led her to shocking personal and family discoveries, especially about her mysterious grandfather.

Funk is extensively using the experiences of the toxic post-7/10 environment in the German cultural sector to prompt a decision on Amira´s behalf. Sadly, it is a realistic and well-informed assessment, forcing a poisonous terror-oriented ideology into the field of arts that are supposed to be free - and open to contradictions. It is a toxicity going well beyond the arts and culture, hitting in general the public space. There are no nuances, no intellectual acceptance, only ´friends´ and ´enemies´ which already reminds of an old mindset. 

Dealing with current, unfolding events in literature may have a price and although I agreed with the ideas, from the literary point of view it sounded like forcing the characters to adapt to the ideas, limiting their options and character development.

Funk writes about topics no one writes in German: being Jewish, and Zionist, and fully embracing one´s Jewish (and sexual) identity. I wish I could compare with other similar novels, but there is none so far.

Choosing to be Chosen by Kylie Ora Lobell

´The world was too amazing for there not to be a God. It was an absolute miracle. I don´t know why I didn´t see it before. It was just common sense that God existed´.

Even since she was a teenageer, Kylie was devoted to journalism and the written word. Faith (Christian), she lost it during her parents divorce. Then, she went through the usual troubles of teenagers from anywhere in the world: anxiety, a bit of bullying, rebellion. There were boyfriends too, Jewish ones, who left because...well, she wasn´t Jewish. Until she met Danny, in her mid 20s, a comedian disillusioned with religion, that she, following her decision to convert Orthodox, brought closer to faith.

Choosing to be Chosen, the debut memoir by journalist and author Kylie Ora Lobell does not differ too much from other conversion stories. It is no sudden revelation. but a promise. After she went to a free meal at a NYC Chabad, she got drawn not only about the great food - both they were surviving on a menial income - but also the sense of belonging that persisted even when their relationship went through a crisis. She wanted to remain with her current husband and being Jewish was part of their story.

Fact-oriented, carefully written and avoiding the usual fluffy exuberance - she recounts how the first time she went to the Kotel she didn´t feel anything, any connection - Choosing to be Chosen is a story about a choice the author made. She shares her story without trying to be a role model or educator, although I would have been a bit curious about some of her lectures and intellectual sources. But the book is not supposed to be about that, anyway.

Israeli Poets in Germany

There is not too much talk about the emerging Israeli literature in the diaspora: Germany, but especially France, Netherlands, Italy etc. America, yes, it´s the opposite, with many Israeli authors publishing and being appreciated as such. But Europe, for all the good and bad reasons is mostly quiet. Or maybe I need to do better research.

A collection of poetry signed by Israeli authors living in Germany, Was es bedeuten soll (title inspired by a verse from Heine´s Lorelei) - in my own translation What it´s supposed to be - is filling this gap, just opening up the interest - at least my interest - for more. 

The book - with a cover by Köln-based illustrator Noam Weiner - is a collection of works by 13 authors, among which Michal Zamir (who created a Hebrew library and a literary salon in Berlin), Zahava Khalfa, Asaf Dvori or Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus. There are different topics, some dealing with alienation and the loneliness of the life abroad, different voices and perspectives. 

The poems were originally written in Hebrew and translated into German by Gundula Schiffer, a poet herself, and published Adrian Kasnitz´ parasitenpress. 

A Double Crime in Erlangen

Despite the important amount of researches dedicated to the extreme left - RAF, among others - crimes and developments in West Germany significantly less attention was paid to the wave of far right violence who reached its highest peek at the beginning of 1980s. Interestingly, even less was written - at least internally - about the common denominator of the two extremes, who often got professional training for their attacks against Jews and Israel in the same training camps in Lebanon or Iraq, among others.

Professor Uffa Jensen researched a case relatively less covered that may echo however ´the spirit of the time´: the double murder of Shlomo Lewin, an Israeli/German Jew and his non-Jewish German partner Frida Poeschke. Killed in cold blood in their apartment in Erlangen by members of the Bavarian far right movement. 

The book is trying to put together all the elements of the crime, connected with the overall mood in Germany, particularly Bavaria, and the main actors of the far right scene, eventually involved in the crime like WSG Hoffmann. A serious crime that was relatively fast forgotten and superficially analysed and contextualized.

Overall, a very interesting analysis of an episode representative for a very specific mindset with reverberations until today.