Book Review: The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

 

I don´t remember when I´ve read last something written by Primo Levi. I remember only how shaken I was every time by the very easy way to tell stories, terrible stories. There is a detachment in the pace and the voice of the every sentences that one can achieve only after being overrun by the sadness of the world. After all, there is no hope in the world so let´s take it easy and keep writing stories inspired by this cruel world.

The Periodic Table, which I had access to as audiobook, read by the late Neville Jason, was based on the translation from Italian by Raymond Rosenthal. Levi who experienced Auschwitz and shared his experience in the devastating If This is a Man was a chemist by formation. The Periodic Table is a wise chemical thread of stories of Italian Jews, before, during and shortly after the Shoah, mostly from Piedomont, where the author was originary from. Each story is associated with a chemical substance, with the main element of the story emulating the features of the element. 

I´ve listened to the short stories - listening to the audiobook lasted around 3 weeks, because always felt the need to take a break in between readings and think about the essence and message of the account - careful, looking for both the fiction and the historical background - Shoah, local Jewish history. There is no judgement, no screams, no tears. Just the monotous voice - an excellent audio rendition, by the way - and the collection of senteces after sentences making up the collection. Such an art of storytelling is not taught or learnt. It just comes out of, from the deep ends of the being. 

Stories of Bene Israel

´After all, he was Jewish and that was more important than anything else´.

The everyday traditions of the Jewish communities around the world are such a fascinating topic. Although I love history, nonfiction books featuring one community or another, it is fiction which I love the most. The strength of the creative mind, using nonfictional elements and details in order to generate stories is an unique mind adventure. 

I am relatively familiar with the world of Indian Jews in Israel, being invited to various social and personal events, such a brit mila, but Bombay Brides by the Ahmedabad-based Indian-Jewish author Esther David delves into many stories and carefully curated encounters. 

I had the book on my TBR for a long time and was able to finish it within a couple of long hours this Shabbes. Besides the stories, the graphical look of the book is also noteworthy, with fine graphic portraits aimed to give a face to some of the characters - women - portrayed.

The short stories are interconnected and are mostly based on the building of Shalom India Housing Society in Ahmedabad, a city in Gujarat, with a little bit over 100 Jews living there. The house belongs to the community and most of the stories do take place here and are populated with residents of this Housing Society.  

There is a lot of matchmaking involved, a couple of new comers that converted for love - I may have an objection of someone being given the name Jennifer after converting to Judaism, as the name has a British/Cornish resonance but no Jewish connection at all, but the rest is just fine - but also traditional Shabbes meals and holidays where, surprise, even more matchmaking takes place. There are so many references to the Propher Eliyahu Hanavi being venerated as a Hindu saint and the favorite intercessor for, among others, finding a good match and this is a very specific characteristic of the Jews originary from India as it is said that he may have appeared in the Konkan area - which includes, among others, also Goa, Israelis favorite resort in the country. There are stories about growing old and becoming adult, widowhood and illicit relationships and there are also many children who will start their own stories. The participants do move often from India to Israel and back and there is so much easiness by almost all of them to jump over many obstacles and hardships. 

I enjoyed a lot the adventures and the tragi-comical encounters and I am left with a lot of questions about traditions - would love to be part one day of an Indian Seder - and everyday life of the few Jews still living there.

Was worth including the Bombay Brides on my list of books to read and was worth waiting a bit until getting the book. Getting to know more about those communities is a blessing that books can offer when travel to discover those communities in real life is not (yet) possible.

Concealed: Memoir of a Jewish-Iranian Daughter Caught Between the Chador and America

 

´My parents came from a city and culture that kept girls out of schools and far from written word - a world that firmly believed female illiteracy was a blessing that helped shape young girls into good wives´.

The history of the Jews of Mashhad, one of the most religious cities in Iran is cursed by hate. In the 18th century, Nader Shah, called the ´Napoleon of Persia´, brought around 300 families here, mostly from Tehran. After his assasination in 1747, the antisemitism become rampant and the humiliations the Jews from here were targeted for random attacks and often buying their peace and life by paying protection money (reshveh. in Persian) to local imam. In 1839, a Jewish woman was accused of desecrating a holiday which lead to a wave of mob attacks against the local Jews, an event consigned to history as Allah Daad. Dozen were murdered, Jewish properties ransacked and afterwards the survivors were faced with the choice: death or conversion to Islam. 

The parents of Esther Amini were the descendants of those Jews from Mashhad who pretended they had converted while, in secret, they kept following the laws of the Torah. Her personal account - Concealed: Memoir of a Jewish Iranian Daughter Caught Between the Chador and America - traced back personal histories, seasoned with memories of her life caught between the strict rules of her family and the modern life in an America that her mother which was illiterate, praised for the advantages offered to women.

Compared to other memoirs on similar topics - alienation, living in a small community following anti-modern mindsets, mostly against women - Esther Amini book is matter of factly, collecting mostly facts instead of feelings and describing various family and community dynamics. It follows both a historical, psychological and sociological journey in a non-judgemental, aimed rather to offer realistic descriptions of a situation instead of emotional/psychological revelations. 

I´ve loved both the pace and the tone of the story, and the richness of the details encompassing the small but unique community of Jews from Mashhad as well as their particular interactions with the other Jewish groups, Iranian or other. I was actually hungry to read more about this particular community, but while reading I remembered that in fact I am reading a memoir not a history book so I better appease my hunger for facts elsewehere.

Concealed is a noteworthy testimony of a Jewish Woman which adds concent and colour to other similar testimonies and memoirs. I am happy I finally had the time and the mood to go through the book and will definitely keep in mind many of the fine observations and stories shared.

Rating: 4 stars

The Ambivalence of Yiddish in Israel

 

In all the buzz and confusion and emotions and let´s say it bluntly, hate too, of accusing Israel of all the imaginable crimes in the world, sometimes just because it look intellectually trendy for some, stating how the Yiddish language was oppressed by the ´Zionists´ is one of the frequent intellectual tropes. The other one - that will approach another time - is to scream discrimination against the Jews from Arab lands and Ethiopia who moved to Israel.

As in the case of half-truths and manipulated concepts, there is a certain authenticity to those claims and there are facts that may support those assumptions. However, if done in full academic honesty, there would be many more arguments who will balance such statements, not necessarily to negate them - another ideological-driven stance that does not have anything to do with academic curiosity - but to display a diversity which, in fact, is the real face of things.

Yiddish in Israel. A History by Rachel Rojanski is an investigation into the story of acceptance of Yiddish in the land and later on, the state of Israel. Was really the mainstream Israeli culture ashamed of the its Yiddish writers, of its Yiddish roots? What about the socialist and literary culture of the ´old country´ who shaped so many of the elites - cultural, political - of the Yishuv? Was it Ben Gurion indeed so angry and enemy-like against the Yiddish culture?

The biggest merit of the book, besides using extensive sources covering both the nation-building process and the fine cultural layers covering not only literature but also theater, a chapter in my opinion not enough explored when it comes to its role in shaping Zionism as a nation building process. 

Indeed, the first years of the state of Israel were, as expected, focused on building the nation - economically, socially, internationally, politically, culturally. Part of the ´imaginary community´, both Hebrew and the projection of a citizen with a strong personality, strong enough to leave behind the centuries of persecutions and grow brave enough to not allow any other Holocaust to happen, were important elements. Until the 1980s-1990s, Yiddish - and at a lesser extent, because counting a much smaller amount of active users, Ladino - were not necessarily considered a threat to this new identity in the making, but they were rarely needed for the process. It was not automatically an open hostility towards Yiddish, but it has rather to do with a meticulous planning of nation-building. 

Interestingly, Yiddish was used in the pre-state period of time as an intellectual tool shaping Zionism but in its new revival episode it is associated with those groups and mindsets which, in fact, deny the political and especially religious availability of Zionism - particularly among the Hasidic groups in Israel and abroad, such as Satmer. 

Yiddish in Israel is an important contribution to understanding not only the history of a language - who, not surprisingly for many, is going through such a revival nowadays - but the place of the language within the national identity. Its struggle and ambivalence are part of the process and reading the different stories with a clean, curious, hate-free eye is important for fully acknowledging the phenomenon. The more people would read and know the more - hopefully - will be able to write honestly about cultural changes and phenomenon. 

Oh, and calling Yiddish an authentic language, folksy and humorous is such a promise that, in fact, this language cannot ever disappear, because it reflects a certain state of mind and humanity cannot deprive itself such genuine humanly features. 

This book is a great recommendation to anyone having an academic interest in languages, Yiddish and state-building, particularly Israel. It is well documented, written in full academic honesty and with a truth-seeking attitude, such an important academic skill unfortunately too easily abandoned for the sake of political activism of all kinds.

 

Memories of the Everyday Jerusalem

 

One can miss a city, fully. Its smell, sounds and first and foremost, its people. Every single one of them, because each and everyone of them are creating the city, that special feeling and the memories one can miss.

Jerusalem. The city of sinking sun - in the original German translation from Russian by Jennie Seitz and Friederike Meltendorf: Jerusalem. Stadt der untergehenden Sonne - by the writer and scientist Alexander Ilitschewski has the evocative power of a memory trigger. Ilitschweski which is born in Azerbaijan during the times of the Soviet Union and lives in Israel after studying physics and mathematics in Moscow and a short exile in California is not a tourist. He is walking the streets not like a tourist looking for the excitement of the new discoveries, but with the comfort of the everyday connection to the place. He knows its history which alongside with the everyday connections create a particular human geography. 

Ilitschewski´s writing is precise and informed, empathic and curious. It reveals the beautiful diversity of this city of huge contrasts, where languages and cultures and traditions and modernity meet or sometimes bluntly clash. A beauty which is not aesthetic but based on the soul of the place. A beauty that suits both poetry and prose, gently intermingled in Jerusalem. 

It is a different kind of book with an unique strength and a writing which seems to come as a profound human need. The writing seems to come less as an exercise of self admiration but rather as the result of the pressure to share the story and the experience.

My literary journey back to Jerusalem was intense and punctilious but it was so good to be back, also for the sake of discovering a different way of writing about places. Being personal and directly connected to the place is not a sin, rather the opposite, enriches the quality of the writing.

I am enamorated with the cover of the German edition, a perfect visual rendition of the writing that I couldn´t have enough of.

Understanding Contemporary Left Antisemitism

 

Contemporary Left Antisemitism by David Hirsch questions and exposes the many faces of Jewish hatred based on various examples from the British left. The fact that it focuses mostly on the British example may be considered extraordinary, but in fact based on the author´s sociological approach helps to further explore and identify similarities in the case of other leftish movements around the world.

Everything and everyone is covered in the smallest details: Corby, Ken Livingstone, the intellectuals supporting the academic boycott of Israel and the BDS and pro-Hamas/Hizbullah supporters. However, I would have expected a more historical-contextual approach in addition to the sociological take, as it helps to explain the British antisemitism in its entirety, as a long-term phenomenon instead of just an episode of the left wing orientation.

The book is informative, with reliable data, including the author´s personal involvement in various testimonies and first hand experience of antisemitism, particularly in the academic field. By sharing the experience it offers intellectual support for formulating answers and replies and countering its effects through education and intellectual accountability.

Personally, I am looking for an extensive anaylsis of the French left - from the 1960s onwards - as it offers another interesting example where the socialist ideology meets easily the negative projection of the Jews and the Jewish state. That´s all I want to write as for now.

Conversations with My Body

When women are erased from religious publications and from public life and the calls for a radical separation between the women and men are becoming more and more vocal, books like Conversations with my Body. Essays on My Life as a Jewish Woman by Elana Sztokman are a trustful companion to those women who do not want to give up their rights and dignity.

Approached from very personal angles, but also from an anthropological perspective, the articles are covering a variety of topics burning nowadays in the Jewish world: the oppressive dress code and the body politics, sending women to the end of the bus - literally and symbolically, the overwhelming number of cases of eating disorders among Orthodox Jewish women, the overall limitations women of all ages should cope with during their lives. 

Although the topics repeat themselves, each article brings a new idea or point of view, as the author herself is ready to share more personal experiences and insights. The personal note of most of the articles brings not only authenticity, but has the force of an example empowering women that may want to follow of similar path but are not sure what to expect or how to actually do it. 

The direct tone and openness in sharing her life journey is key in creating awareness about the general topics that affect the everyday lives of Orthodox Jewish women. Over two decades ago, Sztokman decided to uncover her hair, which is mandatory for a married woman, and continued with smaller or bigger steps on creating her own path: as a woman, mother and Jewish feminist. Using a clear anthropological mindset, she makes clear distinctions which help to understand various patterns and mindsets.

Conversations with my Body is an inspiring book especially for those women looking for a Jewish life outside the society models ordered by men and sometimes sheepishly vouched by women. All can start so easily, by taking back the control over our bodies, piece by piece.