The World That We Knew...

´But life now depended upon luck, not reason´.

The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman is a gentle story about the intricacies of good and evil taking place during the terrible years of the WWII in France and Germany. It is also a story about strong resilient women and everlasting love that is stronger than the cruelty of death and goes far beyond it. 

Lea Kohn, guarded by Ava the Golem, and Ettie and Marta, rabbi´s daughters, are leaving the Nazi Berlin to France. Giving up a God that has forsaken her, inspired by Queen Esther, Ettie will join the Jewish Resistance to revenge the death of her sister. ´Vengeance was just beneath her skin, a shadow self, her true self, the one who had been holding her sister´s hand, the one who ran into the woods, who wanted to learn everytrhing she could be taught, starting now´. Ava, created by Ettie at the plea of Lea´s mother, was not made to have emotions, but she is developing slowly her own identity. I am not personally an expert on this topic, but I haven´t heard until now about a woman Golem. Ava´s character is evolving from  a clay-made creature assigned to exclusively serve his/her master to a curious being embracing life and dancing with her friend, the heron (a bird I´m almost sure I´ve encounter in a previous novel by Alice Hoffman I´ve read many years ago, but I cannot remember which one exactly), when no one is looking. 

When tragedies, both at the personal and historical level, unfold, staying alive is the most important achievement. There is no time for drama or overthinking. Running away at the right moment is life-saving. This is how the characters in this book survive, until the end of the war or just until the next incident. The Angel of Death is out in the fields and one must be faster than him. This quality of the characters, most of them young teens that are dramatically threw up from the childhood nest to the horrific realities of the fighting to stay alive when their parents are taken to death, is what makes the book a genuine realistic read. What would you do when you are given the chance to stay alive? Run for your life without never looking back.

Reading about encounters with death are emotionally exhausting, but Alice Hoffman is telling the story with such a beautiful voice, that one can come to accept life as it is, with humans the ways they are. A story which is first and foremost a Jewish story about terrible times that we are still trying to reckon with. 

Rating: 5 stars

Book Review: Kaddish.com by Nathan Englander

When a parent dies, the oldest son has to recite the Kaddish - prayer for the dead - for the next 11 months in a synagogue with a minyan - a quorum of ten Jewish adults. It is a religous obligation of honoring the parents and it´s aimed at elevating the soul of the deceased. When not possible, a shaliah mitzva - someone that can do the obligation - can be delegated instead, in exchange of an amount of money.

This is the main topic of kaddish.com, Nathan Englander´s last book. With his usual mix of irony, sarcasm and his deep atheistic religious knowledge he delves into the world of religious obligations and the difficulty - if not impossibility of separating from one´s past. 

There is a thought, or two, that I´ve come along myself more than once: how can someone think that once you are becoming religious or non-religious, your past and thoughts and encounters is simply deleted and replaced with your new life? I don´t think it is humanly possible. It´s just the projection you want to have that, in fact, you can start anew when you want, as you want.

Meet Larry, devastated by the death of his dear father, that he loved dearly. He decided to break up with religion long ago and now is sitting the shiva - the seven days of mourning - in his Orthodox sister´s house in Memphis (there are Jews there too, Orthodox too, read Tova Mirvis books for more details). He wants to honor his father in his own way, and rebelliously refused to stick to his religious obligations (`A stupid chair isn´t what makes it mourning´ allusion to the fact that during shiva the mourners are sitting on lower chairs). When told he needs to say the kaddish for the next 11 months, he evades the obligation, find a website kaddish.com (which actually exists in reality), found someone to do it instead (`It was like a JDate for the dead`), and navigates later on a porn website. As her sister Dina said, he was living a gornisht - worth nothing, in Yiddish - life. 

By designating someone else to do his mitzva, he did a transfer of rights, a kinyan. Remembering his father was someone else´s job now. Remember Esav? He also trader his birthright for a bowl of lentils because he despised it.

Fast forward 20 years after, Larry is not Shuli, made tshuva - repentance - and is an Orthodox rabbi in the fictional Brooklyn´s Royal Hill neighbourhood. This flipping transition is a bit superficially featured, as we have no idea what exactly happened and how and other details. After a discussion with a kid from the school going through a rebelious phase - eating non-kosher, ignoring religious obligations - Shuli is suddenly haunted by his past, by his demise of his obligation as a Jewish son. He is becoming anxious, especially after obsessive messages sent back to the kaddish.com website are left unattended. (`What if I can´t get my birthright back?`). He desperately wants to finish his teshuva and leaving his family behind, he embarks on a mystery trip to Jerusalem, tracing the website and trying to find the person who said the kaddish for his father. 

In shock, he will acknowledge that, in fact, the entire story of the website was a hoax and no one ever said the kaddish for his father. It reminds me of a story I´ve been told of someone from America who for a long time, used to send tzeddakah - charity - to a foundation and once he made aliya to Israel, wanted to visit the recipients of his donations. In reality, it was no foundation and the money were used for some personal use - like dowry for a daughter - by the recipients. Does it make his mitzvah less worthy? Not at all, as he sent the money with the good intention and the aveirah - the transgression - belonged to the person who misused the funds.

After the deception of the Dinner at the Centre of the Earth, kaddish.com brought back my interest for Englander´s reading. Truth to be told, his chiseled art of creating world through words goes in most of the cases better with short stories - which I love - and might fail once in a while the art of the novel. But sometimes depends of how large the list of topics is. In Dinner..., it was way too much, and although I can understand that modern Jewish authors feel the obligation to have their word - and novel - on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it doesn´t guarantee that they are successful in this approach. On the other hand, the list of subjects featured in kaddish.com are better outlined, hence, there is a coherence and simplicity of the frame yet allowing a complex construction of the novel and an elaborated array of symbolic layers. 

Rating: 4 stars

Book Review: The Covenant by Naomi Ragen

Esther, Leah, Maria and Ariana survived Auschwitz and made a covenant to always be ready to help each other. When the husband of Leah's granddaughter and their daughter are kidnapped by terrorists belonging to Izzedim al-Qassam terrorists in Israel, the four ladies reunite both their prayers and their connections and financial resources to save the two innocent lives.

There are many ways one can read The Covenant by Naomi Ragen, probably one of the best books I've read by this author so far: as an international thriller involving international actors; as a book about the torments of Jewish life in Israel and abroad; as a book about frienships cemented during terrible times. All reading are correct, in my opinion and it makes the book interesting and entertaining. Personally, I've read it in one sitting, curious about how the kidnapping case will evolve, as well as about the human interactions in time of crisis. 

The covenant uniting the four women, not all of them Jewish, is what separates humanity from lack of it, fear from the risk taken of never being helpless. It has to do more with human understanding and unity against evil, wherever it comes, regardless its justifications.

In the end, what kept me passionately reading this book was its obvious sparkle of humanity.

Jewish Book Review: The Sisters Weiss by Naomi Ragen

If the Saturday Wife was largely a disappointment, The Sisters Weiss by Naomi Ragen brought back the pleasure of reading from this author.

The novel takes place in the 'Ultra-Orthdox' part of Brooklyn, starting in the 1950s, where the two sisters Pearl and Rose are growing up in a modest religious family. Their life options are clear and relatively limited: they are going to school and learn some basics until they reach the age when the search for a shidduch (match) starts. Once there is one, the path of motherhood and childbearing/rearing while the man is studying Torah is what a wooman is offered. This system means stability, continuity and it's the traditinal way.

However, after Rose is exposed to the library of a French colleague, her life changed. A photography book considered 'dangerous' will seal her destiny. She is send to stay with her grandmother and enrolled in a very conservative Bais Ruchel Satmer school, where even the religious learning offered to girls is superficial and extremely limited in terms of knowledge.

But Rose keeps going her dangerous way and enrolls for a photograhy class. Matched to a mediocre yet with good-yichus (family background) she is running away the day of her wedding leaving behind an ashamed family and starting her way that will make her a famous photograher.

Four decade later, Pearl's daugher, Rivka, will do the same and her first contacts in the outside world will be her cousin, Hannah, Rose's secular daughter. The story repeats itself, but only the context is the same, as there is no guarantee for happy endings. Rivka will feel fully the dramatic consequence of his radical decision, which also means being cut from a warm community of traditions and celebrations. Even the strong Rose felt the alienation and the childhood family memories of being together with people sharing the same values will be always cherished. 

The Sisters Weiss is a realistic depiction of what really does it mean to leave the Hasidic community, and a traditional way of life in general. The strong ties cannot be cut automatically, on both sides and the heartbreak is not only on the side of those who left, but those who remain do also have their share of sadness. Another aspect the novel features very well is the hardship of adapting to the non-traditional way of life. Rivka's mistake in considering a sexual encounter a relationship comes from the culture she belongs to, where women and girls do not have 'boyfriends': all their life they are prepared to be ready to fulfill their role as wives, spending the rest of their life with a husband. Those women are simply not prepared to understand the accidental and short-term relationships in the secular world.

Another layer of the narrative features women stories. Each of the women that appear in The Sisters Weiss do have a story to tell, which made it into the bigger Jewish women story. From women to surrender to their husbands to rebelious women who are searching for an authentic soul mates. 

There is no happy ending and it is one of the many things I've liked about this book. The author found the best tone and non-emotional approach which suits such stories whose emotion resides in the strength of the characters.

For me, it was by far one of the best OTD (off the derech) reading in a long time, overcoming many of the relatively memoirs on this topic I've read in the long time.

Book Review: By Light of Hidden Candles by Daniella Levy

A story of fight and resilience, By Light of Hidden Candles goes back and forth across centuries from the time of the forced conversions of Jews during the Spanish Inquisition to the current hi-tech era of digitalized archives. Alma and Manuel are apparently belonging to two different worlds: She is the observant Jewish daughter of a family of Spanish descent, he is a Catholic boy from Spain considering becoming a priest. Their paths cross accidentally in the Judaica store of Alma's grandmother, and later on, at the NYU, where Alma is getting involved in a genealogy project, where she hoped to find the Spanish roots of her family. 

A couple of centuries earlier, her ancestor is faced with the choice of converting to Christianity or leaving Spain, or marrying a non-Jew or leave to unknown lands. The story has everything: from heavy historical content, to insights into everyday observant Jewish life - although I've found sometimes the observations about kashrut a bit too artificious, as it happens when you are trying to explain some of the concepts to a foreign audience on an easy note - and a little bit of romance too. 

I liked that both Alma and Manuel do have a very complex personality and even more complex family story, but bringing them together as a match and the later discovery of Manuel about his Jewish roots - that I was expecting a bit from the very beginning - sounded a bit stereotypical for me. I also appreciate the idea of dialogue between religions, but it doesn't need to be done whatever the reason and in a way that simplifies at extremis concepts. 

Despite its ups and downs, By Light of Hidden Candles is a book of interest for anyone who loves historical Jewish novels and which shed some light into the complicated histories of Spanish conversos. 

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

Book Review: The Book of Separation

When the Jewish divorce is pronounced, the Biblical term for the get document given to the woman is sefer kritut, in translation, the book of termination or the book of separation. In her memoir, Tova Mirvis retraces her journey from the moment when her separation process started - not only from her husband, but from her Orthodox life - until she climbs her own mountain and tries to set up her free life, the original version of herself. 'After years if trying to silence the voice inside her that she did not agree, did not fit in, did not believe, she strikes out on her own, to discover what she does believe and who she really is'. 

I've previously read and reviewed another book by Tova Mirvis and liked both the approach and the writing. Her memoir to be released in a couple of months, flows beautifully, streaming through the various tensed and even anxious life moments, while trying to put herself and the scattered fragments of her life together. 

After 17 years of marriage and three children, the lines between herself and the community, the path of the tradition and her own path are blurred and where other could easily find comfort and peace she is tormented by questions. Her incessant questioning marks her progressive taking off, starting from getting away from the community pressure - 'we were taught, we were told, we were watched' -, following her voice as a writer, ending up her own struggles with observance and reconciling her old and new ways with her new situation as a divorced woman partly in charge with the education of her children, with a father remaining Orthodox. 

Sometimes, making choices is much easier although painful and difficult, than being accepted for what your choices made of you. 

I loved everything about this book, but especially the honesty and the genuine way she opens her heart. Is that kind of book that I would not have anything against reading twice.

Rating: 5 stars

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

Where Memory Leads by Saul Friedländer

Saul Friedländer is mostly known for his acribic search for the historical truth into the Vatican Archives, particularly in connection with the WWII, but it is always interesting to explore the life history of the historian. Where Memory Leads is the second installment of his life historical account, exploring his identity post-Shoah as well as its relatively less known relationship with Israel, Germany, France - his cultural identity remains French - and his country of adoption, US.

'I am a Jew, albeit one without any religion or tradition-related attachments, yet indelibly marked by the Shoah. Ultimately, I am nothing else'. He, like the founding fathers of the State of Israel, he belongs to a generation of action, secular and aimed to create an identity shaped by the Shoah. An heritage that still needs to be explored and analysed although meanwhile, a new generation of Jews and Israeli made the choice for a dramatically different identity. '(...) the only lesson one could draw from the Shoah was precisely the imperative: stand against injustice, against wanton persecution, against the refusal to recognize the humanity and the rights of 'the others''. As many of his generation, he is for the 'two state solutions' and refuse to understand the new religious fervor who sees as an alienation from the founding meaning of the state. Interestingly, he just doesn't want to understand the new process, either historically or sociologically, it just rejects it as alien. 

But the book is more than an essay about Israel, and this saves it when the reader might have a different political opinion. It is a book about growing up and coping with the lost of parents, about the lost childhood memories and a life broken into too small little pieces that can hardly come back together. It is equally a testimony of old times, of a different era that the less survivors are the more difficult to understand it. 

Friedländer also writes about life fragility and fears, about personal life decisions and growing out of love. A book worth to read, regardless one's opinions about the current situation in Israel, because it is written with passion and love, although the ideals and visions may differ dramatically. 

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

Book review: This is not a love story, by Judy Brown

I till remember how shocked and deeply moved I've been by Hush, written at the time under the pseudonym of Eishes Chayil - a woman of valor.  After the book created controversies and awe at the time in the Hasidic community, faced publicly with a reality often hidden under the carpet, there were rumors about the real identity of the writer, but Brown decided to make the revelation during another dramatic moment: the murdering in Brooklyn of the 8-year old Leiby Kletzky. 

Part of a long lineage of Rabbis, Brown who is no more Hasidic nowadays, returns under the lights of the literary world with an equally beautifully written memoir, focused on the acceptance and lessons of loving her 'cursed' brother 'crazy as a bat'. When a child with special needs is born in a religious family, everyone seems to have its own explanation, like they just called Gd and got the answer. Either the family is not religious enough, or, in this case, the parents met directly not through a shadchan - matchmaker -, or they are cursed for old and hidden sins. Although nowadays the situation changed as there are much more children with Down Syndrome or various ADHD and autism-related needs, the perception remains, but at least the social services and assistance for families - and even the degree of acceptance, improved. Children with special needs are no more given away 'as a disposable', but integrated in special classes, undergoing therapy or taken care in the advanced and highly efficient health and therapy system created for decades in Israel. 

But at the time Judy Brown was growing up in America: 'Being sick was a much better thing (...) than being sick'. The curious Menucha wants to know why her brother Nachum is not 'normal', why Gd is not answering her prayers and doesn't reward her attempts of fasting. 'If I were Gd, I'd keep things much more simple and straightforward. Then I wouldn't have to listen to so many tearful prayers'. The misunderstandings around Nachum is a source of tension not only among children, but also for the parents. A terrible episode is describing the father trying violently to convince Nachum to say a blessing. He was unsuccessful, but kept shaking the poor speechless boy. 'My father couldn't stop. It was as if he was ripping down the wall around my brother's mind with his bare hand, trying to tear my brother out of there, and drag him over to our side, where he belonged'. The fear of the unknown and incomprehensible - the poor Nachum unable to defend or say something, like we all do - is always there and can explain, without justifying certain behaviors: 'where there are no words, there is always fear'.  

It is an emotional, well written, from the point of view of a small girl and a grown up, wiser, teenager, book, depicting perfectly deep feelings, contradictions and sadness, but also curiosities and funny childhood moments - I personally loved the sweets bargaining.

I first recommend reading this book because it is a good book, but also for the story of love and acceptance and growing out of social and religious borders and finding a voice and the own path. And sharing stories with the world. I can't wait for her next book, as Judy Brown is a writer to include on the Jewish literary radar in the years to come.

Book review: The Yid, by Paul Goldberg

It is late February, in 1953. A gang of few Yids, plus a Black Proletarian worker from the oppressive America, speaking fluent Yiddish, are set on a mission: killing comrade Stalin, before it is too late. Too late before the Soviet Final Solution is implemented. There are also signs and testimonies, as Black Marias - the trademark car of 'intelligence' services - are busy transporting Jews. It is just the prelude of a massive operation aimed to make the great Soviet Union free of Jews. In his datcha, Stalin 'can imagine the multitude of Jews, foreign sounding names, and he cans ee the gallows he'll construct for killer doctors who had the gall to plot against them'. The Yids cannot let this happen. This tragic-comical team of Bar Kokhba fighters breathing Shakespearean drama and moving in the pace of Commedia dell'arte, but in Yiddish, succeeds and the Yids are saved. They do it discretely, as any lamed vovniks do and split ways. Mission accomplished.

 The author himself was born in the Soviet Union and emigrated later to the US with his family later. The book is based on a historical reality: Stalin did have a massive plan to eliminate Jews from the Soviet life that was interrupted by his death, in March 1953. There are a lot of stories about those events, including the assumption that Gd's will was not that Jews are destroyed. Another historical fact is that many Jews fought on behalf of the Soviets in the 'Big Patriotic War' and also many of them ended up in the Soviet prisons because considered disloyal and even, German spies. Sounds familiar...Personally, I've read as a child a couple of stories about a Black Proletarian worker that joined the Bolshevik revolution and become a citizen of the Soviet Union, but I bet there were more than one in the country of Soviets.

More than a historical tragic-comedy, the book develops many fine layers exploring the new and old transfigurations of anti-Semitism, from the blood libel to the 'Doctors' plot' and the everyday Jewish hate. As one of the characters is described: 'He hated us in the abstract. He hated the idea of our being. But one-on-one, he was a decent man. I've fought beside men like him, and I would again'. Sometimes the victim enters the logic of the accuser and assumes the labels assigned. In Paul Goldberg's book, the Yid is a common character, because this is how 'they' saw them, doesn't matter what.

Any story is nothing without the writing and in this respect, you have a happy mixture of many styles and influences, from Shakespeare to commedia dell'arte, Kafka and Daniil Kharms. Absurd and supernatural and a pinch of marxism-leninism, in the illegible Stalin version - what serious communist would ever give a 2 penny to Stalin writings. anyway. The dialogues are delicious and ridiculously smart. As smart as a pirouette with Finnish daggers in the heart of a NKVD little something coming to arrest a harmless clown.