German Book Review: Zwischen du und ich - Between You and Me by Mirna Funk

 

After Winternähe, I couldn´t wait for the next novel by Mirna Funk. As a passive follower on social media, I watch her energy in approaching tabu topics related to Jewish life in Germany - not only antisemitism - and her intense journalistic activity. She is not the only one, but always feel good to live in a society where there are young resilient voices.

Zwischen Du und Ich - Between You and Me - her newest novel, was worth waiting for. The writing is refined and the plot development gained in complexity. The characters - both the main and the secondary - do have stronger, relatable personality. Lola, the character from Winternähe, is also worth a sentence and a bit in the new book. A hint that maybe she is thinking those books as episodes of German Jewish life?

As in Winternähe, there is a personal plan which naturally interferes with historical encounters, but what really matters this time is the individual story. Nike is a 35 years old German Jewess, who grew up in East Berlin in a secular family. She decided to take a job opportunity of organising a DAAD conference in Israeli while making her aliyah. There she will hook up with Noam, a rather fluid character, a journalist writing for Haaretz - we all know that Germans will rather care about such a reference, Gd forbid to write for, let´s say Jerusalem Post...until he left. 

Both characters are worth a novel but their match was not my best scenario. Honestly, I will not waste a bet on their chances. But what attracts them is a shared trauma and the plot is rather developed to prove how trauma attracts trauma, with all the gratuitous sexual and urologic symptoms and references. At to a certain point I will admit that, indeed, someone with a traumatic past will rather enjoy the company of someone with a shared grief but relationships are much more complex and less casual and with a healing effect too. Smart people with a traumatic past maybe will rather enjoy the company of someone with a less or absent generational suffering. But otherwise trauma ends by controlling us, our future, present and relationships and it´s hard to escape it. Rather, it adds up more along the journey which complicates the DNA structure even more.

But despite those references and failures and the exhibitionism, Zwischen Du und Ich reads very well, the mathematical kind of writing which pondered words and effects creating an unique story. I never read something like that before in German language, because no one had the easiness of doing so as Mirna Funk. It´s such a fresh writing and topic that the eventual misfits are in fact a good sign. A hope that soon, in one or two years, she will write another book. I can´t wait to.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Shiva Baby...

Chaotic. Grotesque. Ridiculous. Dramatic and eating-disorders trigger. Fulls of stereotypes played intelligently into for creating an absurd encounter. Shiva Baby, the editorial debut by Emma Seligman is all at once. 

Which does not make it as a ´bad movie´ or a ´good movie´. It´s just a matter of taste and cultural preferences to enjoy this movie or not. I´ve personally more enjoyed the grotesque framing and the magnifying ping-pong of stereotypes than any other ´normal´ parts of the story.

Danielle, the beloved daughter of a middle class modern/Reform family is attending the beginning of the shiva - according to the Jewish tradition, the seven days of mourning starting shortly after the funeral - for a person she does not know actually. There, a lot of curious aunties ready to match her - it´s not only the tradition among the Orthodox Jews, no worries - or asking about her studies and latest job offer. Also present is her sugar daddy, that he met via an online app for...sugar daddies (amazing how you can find those days everything you need online) and her oldest crush, Maya. The sugar daddy is not only a good acquaintance of her father, but also married with an entrepreneur shiksa - your stereotypical blondini with perfectly white skin and very fit and elegant - and his crying daughter (that kid crying ruined my mood, honestly, it´s the least enjoyable part of parenthood, in my humble opinion).

Played by Rachel Sennott, Danielle is sometimes too dramatic for the screen, but overall it´s the main attraction of the movie. With all the good and bads and it´s food disorder habits and her emotional up and down and first and foremost her duplicity: towards her parent, her girlfriend, her sugar daddy, herself. But, hey, honestly, who was not having his or her little dirty secrets as growing up?

Although was not terribly impressed by Shiva Baby, at least I had some good laughs and enjoyed the confusions and the dirty tricks. You don´t have to literally take my word, just make an effort to watch the movie too.

The Strange World of The Passenger

 ´Be human!´

A Jew is on the run. He is called Otto Silbermann, has a decent amount of cash, a non-Jewish wife, a career of fighting on behalf of Germany during WWI, with a son in France with whom he is talking all the time, mostly asking him to secure an exit visa. He is robbed, told to be reasonable to understand those who don´t want to be seen talking with him. He is on the run, trying to escape to Belgium but turned back, taking a train to Berlin, another to Munich, maybe the next one to Hamburg.

The Passenger (originally published as Der Reisende) by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz is a utterly troubling intellectual experience. It is indeed a book of fiction, but the author was a witness of the infamous Kristallnacht and is inspired by the everyday interaction he witnesses. The feeling of being hunted and neglected, when not directly shamed and accused of being a Jew because born this way, on the most polite, condescending tone. That´s killing you; the polite tone of the neighbours pledging to ´please, don´t put it that way´, and understand that it´s ´against our will´ to behave differently. After all, they were in the party ´just like everyone else´. 

The writing is realistic, focused on the man on the run, Silbermann, who turned overnight into ´a swearword on 2 legs´. The ambiance, the characters he encounters and his attitude are the result of his situation. Thus, he doesn´t have too much time to reflect to his situation, he is aware of the pressure he has to cope with in order to escape. There is a crescendo of events reflected in the increased intensity of his feelings but it is the reader who is observing from afar all the changes. Silbermann, him, he has to run for his life.

Written when the author was himself on the run, The Passenger is becoming a bestseller more than eight decades after its conception. Once in a while, there are always books written by Jews or by authors who were against the Nazi regime are (re)published and are becoming suddenly the talk of everyone but by far this is one of my favorite ´discoveries´. Maybe because it sounds so close from home, so realistic thus frightening. 

I had access to the book in the audiobook format, lively narrated by Neil Hellegers. 

Book Review: A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg

 

When the outside world is approaching the issues regarding Hasidic communities, in most cases the sensationalist and sometimes exhibitionist - see the fascination with they traditions associated with the mikve, among other things - prevails. From the secularist point of view, what really matters is the alien and extreme nature of the Hasidic groups, that are mostly thrown in the same hat and never separated based on their various histories and ideological backgrounds. But what about not only considering Hasidism as a part of American history, but also put the different movement in a larger Jewish context, especially after WWII, and the overall social American history?

A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg by Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper the book makes a historican tourning point in approaching the Hasidic development in NYC, particularly the Satmar community. It examines the various evolutions of Hasidic Williamsburg based on real estate expansion and development. Thus, it enlarges previous researches on the topic by a larger analysis which does not necessarily focus on Hasidic life and thought, but uses it as an intellectual matrix to understand the current state of affairs.

Take, for instance, the controversy regarding the creation of bike lanes crossing Bedford Avenue and other parts of the area. The dispute goes beyond the morality which is however part of the problem, but only one of them. It has to do with expanding boundaries and facing the outside world as a threat to the global mindset of the Hasidic groups like the anti-Zionist Satmar. A frame on the ´anti-Zionist´ part because as they do not consider Israel as their home by choice - as most of the Hasidic groups, excepting Belz, for example - creating a home in the galut (diaspora) is an existential challenge. Thus, the tendency towards creating more stringencies among the post-WWII communities recreated in America by the Shoah survivors from Central and Eastern Europe.

But on the other end of the survival line, there is a shift taking place within those communities who cannot remain completely isolated from the outside world. Due to the mobility, the gentrification, the real estate expansion, including by Israeli players on the market, there is a new world in the making. This has to do not only with the ´Artisim´ - the artists - and their liberal customs, but with the openings of other Jewish groups as well - the dissent between Satmar and Chabad perceived as more ´liberal´, especially when it comes to women modesty standards. 

The book is mind-opening and very interesting and can be easily used as an example of sociological/anthropological analysis applied to various ethnically and religiously mixed neighbourhoods. At the same time, the books offer valuable insights into the modern shifts affecting Hasidic communities in America, particularly the Satmar group, within the complex net of local dynamics.

A Tale of Love and Darkness. The movie

 

Based on the memoir by Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness, with a screenplay written and directed by Natalie Portman, is first and foremost a testimony of the weight of chronical sadness on family members. I may have a very personal take on it but the impact of living with and close to a direct family member affected by depression it is largely overrated. 

Set on background of the moving sands of the British-ruled Palestine on the way of becoming the UN-declared state of Israel, the movie respects in very fine details the letter and spirit of the book. The personality of Amos Oz and the roots of his literary influence are strongly portrayed, and the interpretation is important for those familiar with Oz´s work. However, the film can be watched/read beyond those limitations, as a story of Jewish life at the very beginning of the state of Israel, with a strong community of intellectuals looking for finding a place or a role, alongside the fighters for independence and the broken souls from the old Europe. 

All of those beginnings are portrayed in Oz´s tales, which maybe at a certain extent tried to keep alive those connection with the mother who left this world long before her physical disappearance. 

A Tale of Love and Darkness is a fine movie, with both an emotional and historical plot lines. Natalie Portman - playing the role of the mother - is an excellent actress, finelly carrying on the burden of the love and the darkness.

´I do not care if we go down in history as barbarians´

Memory is such a trickster. It plays with people, let people play with her in a seduction trechearous game of cat-and-mouse, set unfair from the very beginning. In the end, it wins and its price is to gulp its victims which are always the same. Maybe truth in history does not exist, but the manipulation of historical memories, made by states on their own saving purposes´ does.

The title of my blog is a real quote by a Romanian official during WWII, mentioned in official documents of the time. Archives, those depository of truths, everyone´s truth. It refers to events that took place during WWII, during which the Romanian Army occupied Odessa and murdered ten of thousands of Jews. The fact is largely obliterated from the Romanian public memory, particularly from the school books. As the person who ordered the murder, Ion Antonescu, remains a highly praised historical figure, especially among the establishment of all colours, old school that trained the green conscripts, it´s not too much discussed about this episode. The report regarding Romania´s involvement in the WWII atrocities, elaborated by a commission inspired and supported by Elie Wiesel - who was the target of all kind of attacks for this involvement - outlines the ways in which the country mistreated its own Jewish population, but it did not create a moment of moral awakening. The mud of oblivion still entrenches the approach of Shoah in Romania.

Radu Jude is one of the most talented and thoughtful Romanian film directors. His films are a wide-opening encounter with stories no one wants to listen because they are a counter-story to the embelished national narrative. A narrative that we all know it does not clean up the authorities of corruption or bring better medical conditions, but it´s the lure of a beautiful past which mesmerized the impoverished and bureaucracy-harassed bellies. 

A young film director, Mariana who confessed at the beginning of being Christian-Orthodox and baptised - just to be sure that she will not be accused of belonging to the ´treasonous party´ - wants to create a public event for raising awareness about those events. As the production is supported with public money, she has to discuss the details of the plays with a representative of the funding authorities, a nice gentleman that insists that there are so many other massacres and unhappy events that happened in the world. After all, he said, this Antonescu saved the Jews from the rest of Romania, isn´t it? With Mariana to answer that it was the same that instead of killing 10 people in the room, one just killed five and ´saved´ the other five. On the other hand, the high bribes requested by local Romanian officials during the war from Jews to stay alive were all known at the time. Sure, they ´saved´ their Jews...

Or better she makes a play about the fate of national elites during the communism? What about that? And what about that Romanian Jew, Steinhard, that converted to Christianity, become a monk and wrote extensively about his happiness of not being a Jew anymore. (I ironically simplify things but in fact this kind of discourse used to be pretty common and I bet it still is when it comes to approaching the truth of the Romanians´ thinking on Jews).

The elaboration of the play is more than a reflection per se on the killing of Jews, but overviews the fabric of history and the precarious fate of those who are looking for the inconvenient truths. One mindblowing event featured in the movie is when during the ´enactement´, when the Jews are gathered in the center square to be killed, one tries to escape outside the artistic space but the spectators are not letting him go, but made a wall of bodies which forbid him to go out to his freedom. 

Radu Jude created several stories into the big story and there are many messages and plots to think about it, but the movie was such a great pleasure to watch because who will ever have enough of smart takes on complex histories? The fact that there are people, although just a few, who are shaking the lazy historical narratives gives hope. Always.