The Very Best Sukkah by Shoshana Nambi illustrated by Moran Yogev

Sukkah, as many other Jewish holidays, offers a beautiful display of traditions and customs, adapted to the local histories and natural resources.

Written in a children´s voice, the multi-awarded The Very Best Sukkah written by Shoshana Nambi and illustrated by Moran Yogev published by Kalaniot Books takes us to Uganda. Shoshi and her brother are preparing for the celebration, trying to get the first prize of the most beautiful sukkah. Everyone in the village is taking part to the challenge, decorating it with local fruits like bananas, passion fruits, mangoes or jackfruits while adding a local touch to the design and colours. Everything is so beautifully described - and illustrated - that I can almost feel the smell of the village preparing for the feast. It made me so curious to taste the traditional kalo bread, made with cassava and millet flour, apparently a typical local staple. 

But then there is some unhappy natural incident taking part, with most sukkahs being destroyed, and everyone is leaving the competition spirit - nothing bad about it, by the way ´as long as everyone is sharing kindness toward each other´ - for more solidarity and community spirit. The most beautiful lesson of sukkah, where each of us stands for all, surrounded by family and friends and the taste of century-old traditions.

Since the first half of the 20th century, there is a community of around 2,000 people practising Judaism situated mostly in some villages in the Eastern part of the country. (I will not delve into halachic discussions and evaluations right now) Shoshana is the first female ordained rabbi by the Union of Reform Judaism originary from Uganda, currently serving an assistant rabbi in Los Altos Hills California.

The Very Best Sukkah was one of my best Sukkot-related reads for children in a while, a lessons in solidarity, as seen through the eyes of a child, beautifully told and illustrated.

Rating: 5 stars

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

Sisters of Fortune by Esther Chehebar

At the beginning of Sisters of Fortune by Esther Chehebar, Fortune is sharing her thoughts and worries about her life as she is about to get married. Her two other sisters, Lucy and Nina, are far from this moment, but until the end of the book, there will be a reversal of events during which the sisters will start writing their own love and life stories.

Set in the midst of the relatively clustered Jewish-Syrian community, this book is beautifully told, with a very vivid language - I had access to the book in audiobook format, excellently dramatised - that makes justice to the less represented world of the Syrian Jews. (The author explained herself why she wrote this book in this interview with Lilith. )

Through the story of the sisters´ parents we hear the echoes of the usual immigrant story struggling with acceptance, but it gets the colours of Aleppo or Damascus, and the longing for the food, language and a very special way of life and seen things. I was only a bit surprised to read how modern and emancipated the girls were, being allowed to ´date´ for long, spend time alone with their boyfriends and even come late at the break of the sun. Ah, and they also wear jeans. It sounded a bit too much for an obvious observant Syrian Jewish family. 

The three sisters, particularly Fortune, are however submitted to the expectations of their community, where there is also gossip and lots of idle talk. Fortune decision to break up the engagement and assume the freedom of making her own mistakes - without being ostracized by the community and her parents - was for me the favourite part of the story. 

Literarily, I enjoyed how the alternate stories of the sisters operate by fragments, with details resurfacing a bit later, without being explained into detail, so that we, the readers, we can figure out by ourselves what may have happened.

Rating: 4.5 stars  

Next Stop by Benjamin Resnick

 

Next Stop, the debut roman by rabbi and writer Benjamin Resnick, is not the kind of book to start your Jewish New Year round of readings. 

Set few decades into the future, the book is set into a world where the state of Israel was swipped into a black hole and the Jews in America are gathered into a ghetto-like area called Pale - a direct reference to the Pale of Settlement, a region that was assigned between the 18th and 20th century within the Russian Empire for the Jews where confined with limited mobility outside the area.

The events unfold through the eyes and experiences of Ethan and Ella. He, a writer, she a photojournalist with a son, Michael, that will be send in the end out of Pale with a children train transport. The crisis is deepening from a day to another, with mysterious holes consuming airplanes, among which the one where Ella´ sister was. 

I am not a fan of sci-fi or apocalyptic stories, but the depiction of antisemitism - both verbal and its violent form (no iron dogs, but still...) - hit the chord we are experiencing in Europe and North America and far beyond in the last three years. If there is something to keep in mind - over and over again - after reading this book, is the permanence of hate against Jews, combined with the inevitable rays of light brought by solidarity of humans in moments of crisis.

It is a dark read, patched with hope and humour at times.