I.M: A Memoir by Isaac Mizrahi

´The Syrian community have never seen anything like me before´.

One of the most successful Jewish designers in the US, Isaac Mizrahi is a bubbling personality that wrote fashion history. Born in a Syrian-Jewish family and a student of Yeshiva of Flatbush, he broke up with the religious community, came out as gay and fulfilled his artistic dreams. In addition to being a fashion designer, he also performed on the stage and movies, wrote a graphic novel and created costumes for opera or theater.

I.M is his memoir relating his life story. I  had access to the book in audio format, read by the author and it was a very pleasant experience - although Mizrahi mentioned that he does not like to hear his own voice. 

The book unfolds as a chronological suite of the events that marked his early childhood, his relationship with his parents - especially with his mother who was and is a model for him - with the Syrian Jewish community and his steps into the world of fashion, as well as his sleep problems and lifelong struggle with insomnia - an aspect I largely relate to as well. There are many details and observations interesting also for the fashion business history in general.

At times I felt that there are way so many details and a larger focus on events, without a specific structuring of the memoir based on milestones or various categories, but it belongs to the genre of memoir to follow the timeline and style that it is considered appropriate by the author and no one else. It is a subjective choice that the reader shall accept in its entirety.

A special not to the cover which is elegant, simple and straight forward. It suits very well Mizrahi´s fashion style.

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

The Organs Donations Issues

I tried to figure out myself a bit what it is the whole issue about the latest scandal about the organs donations.

Here, a couple of links:

Forward - How Kidneys are Bought and Sold on Black Market
one simple conclusion: there are people in desperate need for a transplant. The provisions in Israel are very strict and the offer is seriously limited in comparison with the demand.

See: Halachic Organ Donor Society

Also: the Syrian-Jewish Enclave in NYC
The insider spy
The almost Hollywood screenplay

and the letter of the Sephardic Community Alliance - a possible power conflict between the Sephardims and Askenazi could also offer an explanation ?

Hamodia found an explanation: We are Very Much in Galus

How much is your body worth - or part of it?
the UK disscussion
the ethics context
value or market value?

Recently, in Romania, several Israeli fertily doctors were arrested and are under investigation for egg trafficking. The "ova commerce" discussion is almost ten years old in Israel.