Books – Page 2

Life’s full range of emotions

Bonny Reichert will be in Vancouver on March 4 to talk about her new memoir, How to Share an Egg, as an epilogue to the JCC Jewish Book Festival, which runs Feb. 21-26. (photo by Kayla Rocca)

When Bonny Reichert was a kid, living in Edmonton, her baba, who had come to Canada as a teen on her own in the early 1900s to escape pogroms in Ukraine, would come to stay with her family for the weekend and “the house brightened,” writes Reichert in How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty. “She arrived as though she were fleeing all over again, with parcels and packages and a giant soup pot wrapped in a tea towel, knotted to make a handle. Things were hot or cold or frozen. I didn’t know to wonder if she’d stayed up all night rolling and pinching and stuffing for us. Pekeleh, she called her bundles, little packages. Pekeleh also means burdens. Yiddish is like that.”

As with pekeleh, meaning both treats and worries, there have been many contrasts in Reichert’s life, opposite things or states of being existing simultaneously. Her memoir is fascinating for the challenges she has faced and the way in which she has dealt with them. Readers can hear the award-winning writer in conversation with Marsha Lederman on March 4, 7:30 p.m., at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, in a JCC Jewish Book Festival epilogue event.

How to Share an Egg is the telling of Reichert’s dad’s survival story – a story he so wanted her to share. Experiencing years of difficulty putting pen to paper, she approaches it through her own journey with intergenerational trauma, which she has felt deeply from childhood. Her mother grew up with “a dad who was quick to anger” and an “exacting” mother who taught there was only one way to do things. “That this was the same person who rubbed my feet as I fell asleep seemed impossible,” writes Reichert about her efforts to reconcile her beloved baba with her mother’s mother.

Reichert’s maternal grandfather, who had come to Canada in 1913, died before she was born. On her paternal side, she had no grandparents – her dad was a 17-year-old orphan when he came to Canada in 1947. His parents and five sisters were all killed in the Holocaust. He was one of the 1,123 war orphans Canadian Jewish Congress helped enter the country when the doors were only just starting to open again for Jews.

The Jewish Independent spoke with Reichert by email about her memoir.

JI: You were 9 when your dad first mentioned the possibility that you would write his story. Then there was the trip to Poland in 2015 that was a breakthrough. When did you actually write the first words and, from that point, about how long did it take for you to write How to Share an Egg?

BR: The very earliest work on the book started on that first trip to Warsaw with my dad. I took a few notes and some important photos, but I didn’t yet know where I was headed. After the second trip to Poland, in 2016, I had even more research and notes, but I still wasn’t sure I had a book. The more formal outlining and writing began in late 2020, in the depths of the pandemic. Including the time I spent waiting for my editor’s feedback and the editing, the book took about four years to write. I was earning a master’s degree at the same time.

JI: You write about your personal journey with inherited trauma, and you share some of the healing milestones on that journey. In what ways was the process of writing the book cathartic?

BR: When you write a memoir like How to Share an Egg, your job is to look at yourself very closely, but with objectivity, because the self becomes the central character of the book. In that close examination, you come to name feelings you previously couldn’t name, and evaluate experiences and situations that your younger self might not have understood. All of this leads to greater understanding and greater self-compassion. This, coupled with the relief of finding a way to write this book my dad always wanted me to write, has indeed led to healing and catharsis.

JI: What does your dad think of the book?

BR: He loves it and says that it has given new meaning to his life at 95. A wonderful outcome.

JI: One theme of How to Share an Egg is you finding your voice, being able to stick up for yourself when bullied, to be yourself in the face of others’ expectations (notably, your father’s). From where did you get the courage to be this open?

BR: You can’t decide to write a memoir and then hide from the personal. Readers want to see all of that raw emotion on the page. For the memoir to be successful, the true, honest person in the book should resonate with the true person inside the reader. At a certain point, I realized all of this, and I came to see I was writing about the universal human experience and there is no shame in being human. In other words, I practised radical self-acceptance to get the job done.

JI: You comment in the book about pekeleh meaning both bundles and burdens. Judaism is full of those instances, holding joy and sorrow at the same time. Can you speak about that, in the context of How to Share an Egg?

BR: People often hold a pretty stereotypical idea of what Holocaust survivors and their families are like – severely traumatized, loaded down with psychological and emotional problems, etc. I wanted to address that – to challenge it and expand on it. There is sorrow and trauma, of course, but there is also so much joy and gratitude and celebration. So, the book is meant to express this fuller range of emotion. Part of my decision to write it as a food memoir was to offer the reader pleasure and comfort, even against the backdrop of the Holocaust. A Jewish approach, for sure.

JI: Hedy Bohm, who you mention in your memoir, just had her own survivor memoir published by the Azrieli Foundation. What is the importance of having these stories out in the world?

BR: Yes, I’m so happy for Hedy. She is a wonderful person. Preserving these stories has always been of the utmost importance – firsthand testimony is obviously critical. I also believe a plurality of stories and approaches brings the humanity back into the unfathomable numbers and statistics.

JI: How often have you been to Vancouver, and what are you looking forward to most about your March visit?

BR: I was just there in the fall for the Vancouver Writer Fest! I have friends I’m looking forward to seeing and I’m hoping for some nice weather so I can walk and admire your beautiful city.

For the full schedule and tickets to the book festival, go to jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

The power of photography

“Elaborate Pride Costume, Gay Pride,” Vancouver, 1996. (© Dina Goldstein)

One of the JCC Jewish Book Festival pre-festival events holds special meaning for the Jewish Independent. Photographer Dina Goldstein, whose artistry has focused on large-scale narrative tableaux the last many years, began her career with the JI’s predecessor, the Jewish Western Bulletin. She has compiled thousands of images from her work over the last three decades – as a photojournalist, editorial photographer, traveler and artist – for the recently published 400-page hard-cover The XXX Archive, which she will share with the community on Feb. 12, 7 p.m.

photo - Dina Goldstein talks about her new book, The Archive XXX, at a JCC Jewish Book Festival pre-festival event on Feb. 12 — Dina Goldstein talks about her new book, The Archive XXX, at a JCC Jewish Book Festival pre-festival event on Feb. 12. *(© Dina Goldstein)*

“I spent the pandemic going through containers of binders filled with negatives. Many of the images I remember snapping, but others that I found surprised me,” Goldstein told the Independent. “Editing the lot after 30 years of shooting was overwhelming at first. The process of archiving is slow and fastidious, often challenging my expeditious nature. I leaned in, not knowing how long or how many images I would be working with. Within two years, I scanned, photographed, numbered, printed and added over 3,000 images to a boxed and digital archive. The result left me relieved that my life’s work was now organized in a way that was documented and accessible.”

The word “herculean” is used in The Archive XXX to describe the task of creating the archive. Goldstein worked by year of creation, grouping the images by decades.

“I started with the early ’90s, when I first started my career and shot with black-and-white film,” she said. “Many of those images I had photographed for the Jewish Western Bulletin, my first job as an editorial shooter. I had special opportunities to meet and photograph many great people, like Elie Wiesel, Seth Rogen, Liz Taylor, Ruth Westheimer, Mordecai Richler, Jackie Mason, Bill Clinton.

“In the 2000s, I was working as a commercial and editorial photographer. I photographed mostly in colour and did some experimentation with processes. This is when I began crafting series of photographs. I spent two years at Hastings Racetrack and created Trackrecord. I expanded on my staged portraits with DAVID.

photo - Comedian Seth Rogen in his early days, 1997. Rogen is just one of many famous people that Dina Goldstein has photographed — Comedian Seth Rogen in his early days, 1997. Rogen is just one of many famous people that Dina Goldstein has photographed. (© Dina Goldstein)

“By 2006, digital photography was introduced as consumer cameras. Art directors were passing along assignments to less-qualified shooters and/or having the writer also take the pictures. I felt that I needed to pivot,” Goldstein said, adding that, by then, she was also a new mother and things in general were shifting.

“In 2007,” she said, “I began to focus on a new series inspired by my toddler daughter, who suddenly became obsessed with Disney princesses. This was a new way of creating narrative within my imagery. The series was a critical success, giving me the confidence to continue with this methodology.”

Although Goldstein mentions the making of her tableaux projects in The Archive XXX, she decided not to include the staged works within the compilation. “This is also because I continued enthusiastically photographing street, documentary and portraiture,” she said.

Over the 2010s, Goldstein was invited to show her work internationally at galleries, photo festivals and museums, and traveled extensively – to Europe, India, China, Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand and Australia. “So many of The Archive images come from my travels around the world,” she said.

The Archive XXX ends at the start of the pandemic, in the early 2020s. Of course, she has continued to create. Last fall, she presented a new staged photography series: Mistresspieces. Each of the 10 works features a famous female portrait from history placed in a modern-day challenge. For example, the goddess of Sandro Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” floats alongside a beach piled with the life jackets of those who have fled to European shores and Salvador Dalí’s “Galatea at the Moment of Creation” has Galatea surrounded by Amazon packages and melting icebergs in Goldstein’s reimagining.

Mistresspieces is Goldstein’s eighth tableaux series, including Fallen Princesses.

“The idea for Fallen Princesses came to me intuitively, when I realized the way that Disney was influencing my daughter,” she explained. “I decided to select well-known female fairytale characters and parachute them into modernity. I gave them all relatable challenges that play out within a familiar location. The methodology, production-based, was novel, as I no longer just depended on myself and my camera. This format is more collaborative and filmic, with lighting as an intricate skill. Thankfully, the project was successful online, in the media and in education. So, I discovered that I could still create critical work, with specific messaging amplifying my voice in the form of visual social commentary…. Now, in light of AI and the quick accessibility of image-making, I am looking to the future, making some tough decisions.”

Goldstein recognized the power of images at a young age.

“As a child, I would go through my grandmother’s photographs for hours at a time,” she said. “The postcard-like black-and-white photos of her, as a young woman in Romania, were not only beautiful but a window into her life. I would stare at an image and take it all in, her outfit, her shoes, the people she was with, the buildings behind her. Within these images, I discovered people and places throughout the decades of her life. As an adult, I have kept my camera beside me, just in case, it was a compulsion of sorts. I wanted to make pictures that would tell the story of my life as well. Perhaps not as the subject, but as the narrator. Today, mostly everyone suffers from the same need, with the readiness and ease of using a smartphone camera to document or to create an image.”

In The Archive XXX, there are photographs of such a diverse range of people, from presidents to Pride paraders, the famous and the often-overlooked. That Goldstein is comfortable around people, no matter who they are, is partly because of her father.

“My father was a very charismatic figure,” she said. “He was a product of the Second World War, uneducated but street smart. He was able to connect with people, all sorts of people. I understood that there is always something that you may have in common with another person. That’s a good starting point.”

Travel has also contributed to Goldstein’s ease around almost everyone in almost every situation.

“Traveling as a young person allowed me to open up to others, and trust that most folks are good people,” she explained. “My positive experiences as a young photographer were foundational for what the next three decades would bring, working with various diverse personalities. Becoming a mother made me more cautious with my assignments and travel. I certainly didn’t take as many chances or put myself in danger while my girls were little. I remember traveling in India and Colombia, both places I had to be extra aware.

photo - “Horse and Carriage,” Romania, 2006 — “Horse and Carriage,” Romania, 2006. *(© Dina Goldstein)*

“In general, I find that society is complex and divided. This became super-evident during the pandemic, and recently after Oct. 7, 2023. I was able to photograph the anti-vaxxer gang, where bizarre people came out of the woodwork. The Free Palestine bunch includes some of these types, and also an element of proud antisemites. When they first rallied, in big crowds, holding up signs ‘From the River to the Sea’ down Commercial Drive, I photographed it, slightly shocked, slightly sickened. I decided then that I could not personally or professionally continue to be there as a witness to this open hatred.”

A lot changed for Goldstein after Oct. 7, she said. “Losing friends that were once close, making new friends (mostly Jewish), actively fighting against anti-Jewish/Israel sentiment in my East Van neighbourhood and within the Vancouver arts community. This leads to the next chapter of my career, where I will focus more on my Jewish/Israeli identity and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.”

Goldstein has written a TV series called Grimm Lane, which is based on Fallen Princesses. She is creating a new book with her narrative series Storyography and is also working on the TV series The Tribe, which is based on three Jewish families living in Toronto.

For more about The Archive XXX, Goldstein’s tableaux series and other work, visit dinagoldstein.com. To attend her JCC Jewish Book Festival talk, register at jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival-events/feb-12. The event is free to attend.

Sesame’s breadth and depth

I made my wife a rockstar carrot cake for her birthday last week. Thanks to the JCC Jewish Book Festival, I received a review copy of Sesame: Global Recipes & Stories of an Ancient Seed by Rachel Simons, which features a unique take on one of my wife’s favourite desserts. The Tahini Cream Cheese Frosting with Carrot Cake & Seed Brittle was a hit – as was every other recipe I tried from the book. Everything I made looked beautiful and tasted great.

New York-based Simons, founder of Seed + Mill, the first store in the United States to focus solely on sesame products, will be in Vancouver for a JBF pre-festival event Feb. 8, 7 p.m. Tickets are $20. (Go to jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.)

Simons seems delightful, with a passion for gardening, family, travel and being an entrepreneur. In Sesame, she shares some of her background, what led her to become an expert in all things sesame – the seed, oil and paste (tahini). We also learn a bit about the history of sesame and tahini. There are 80-plus recipes, ranging in complexity, most accompanied by a brief introduction. The whole presentation is appealing: the book’s layout, the feel of its pages, the photography by Alan Benson and illustrations by Evelina Edens; credit is given to Maren Ellingboe King for some of the text.

Just before the recipe section, Simons notes how hard it was for her to write many of the recipes, as she tends not to follow recipes herself, and cooks more “by instinct and with lots of practice.” This is an important note because newbie cooks might have to Google pieces of information like how long it takes to bake a cake at 350˚F, because Simons doesn’t give any baseline, just writes “bake until a skewer … comes out clean.” Even with Google and Simons’ advice, I slightly undercooked my cakes. Yes, cakes. Somehow, though I’m positive I followed the recipe to a tee and the cake we ate tasted amazing, I had twice as much batter as I was supposed to have. (I froze the second cake.)

There were other, smaller surprises with each recipe. And every recipe took me longer to make than indicated. I often find that with cookbooks though – if I were to rinse and de-leaf my cilantro, parsley, etc., chop all the nuts, etc., in advance, then maybe I could make something within the allotted time, but instead I plan for it to take two to three times as long as suggested.

On the day I made the carrot cake, I wanted to leave as much guilt-free room as possible, so made the Thai-Inspired Tahini, Lime & Broccoli Salad. It was full of flavour, seasoned with tahini and lime, as per its name, as well as soy sauce, hot honey for a bit of bite, garlic, lots of cilantro and mint for freshness, peanuts and sesame seeds for protein and texture.

The next day, we had friends over and served Pistachio and Whipped Feta, with veggies and pita bread, as an appy. A couple of tablespoons of tahini, a bunch of cilantro, plus lemon juice and, especially, lemon zest made this dip disappear quickly.

Birthday day started with An Indulgent Middle Eastern Breakfast Toast, which was all its name promised. I couldn’t find labneh, so substituted in pressed yogurt. While the recipe said the sprinkle of Sweet Dukkah was optional, I’d argue it’s essential. All together, this rich, tangy, toasted, sweet treat demanded a second serving.

In all this cooking, I’ve stained several pages of Sesame and will, no doubt, stain others, as this book becomes one of my staples. I’ve already made a few other things that are not included here for space reasons, not taste reasons. It’s all yum.

AN INDULGENT MIDDLE EASTERN BREAKFAST TOAST
(serves one)

1 thick slice sourdough bread
1 tbsp labneh
1 to 2 tbsp tahini
1 tbsp honey or date syrup
1/8 tsp flaky salt
Shake of Sweet Dukkah (recipe below)

Toast the bread or leave it fresh, depending on your preference. Spread the labneh on the bread, then drizzle with the tahini and honey and finish with the flaky salt and Sweet Dukkah (if using). Serve immediately.

SWEET DUKKAH
(makes about 2.5 cups)

1 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup pistachios, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup almonds, coarsely chopped
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp flaky salt
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
2 tbsp edible dried rose petals (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 375˚F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Spread the sesame seeds, pistachios and almonds on the baking sheet. Sprinkle with the cinnamon, cardamom and salt and toss to evenly combine.

3. Bake for 6 minutes, then give the baking sheet a vigorous shake to move the nuts and seeds around. Add the coconut and shake the sheet again. Return the mixture to the oven and bake until the coconut has turned golden brown, 4 to 6 minutes. Check regularly to make sure the dukkah isn’t burning.

4. Cool the dukkah completely on the pan before adding the rose petals (if using). Store in an airtight container in the pantry for up to two months.

Partners in the telling of stories

Robert “Lucky” Budd, left, and Roy Henry Vickers have co-authored close to 20 books together, with more to be released in 2026. (photo from “Lucky” Budd)

As oral historian Robert “Lucky” Budd tells it, his collaboration with First Nations artist Roy Henry Vickers, which has produced several award-winning and bestselling books, was accurately summed up during a car ride with Vickers’ sister, Patricia, as a unique version of a father-son bond.

“Roy’s the same age as both of my parents, and I am the same age as one of his sons. So, we do have this relationship that’s very, very close, and there definitely is a bit of a father-son element to it,” said Budd, who is a member of the Victoria Jewish community.

“I consider him one of my closest friends, and I love learning with and from him, and we learn a lot together, and he teaches me something all the time. I’m so deeply interested in the stories he has to share.”

For the past 14 years, the pair has teamed up on a variety of projects, but the path that led them to one another, according to Budd, goes back decades, to when Vickers was in high school in Victoria.

His art teacher, realizing that there was little to teach his student, tasked the young Vickers with delving into the art of the Tsimshian and the Haida. Missing his home on the Skeena River, in Hazelton, Vickers started his research, but his efforts yielded no results until he met cultural anthropologist Wilson Duff.

Through Duff, Vickers was able to locate books and recordings, such as those produced by CBC journalist Imbert Orchard, who, from 1959 to 1966, recorded interviews with BC pioneers and those from First Nations. On the cassettes, Vickers listened to stories of the people of the Tsimshian and was moved.

“Over the years, he ended up losing those tapes, but it stuck with him. And so, around 2009, 2010, he went on a mission to try to find those recordings,” Budd said.

Vickers got in touch with the BC Archives, but nobody there knew what he was talking about, until he spoke to someone who said, “Oh, I think the person you’re supposed to be talking to is Lucky Budd.”

Vickers called Budd, asking for help in retrieving the recordings, and their work together began.

Budd holds a master’s in history from the University of Victoria; he is also a rock musician with a penchant for recording everything. At the time of Vickers’ call, he was digitizing audio recordings owned by the CBC and the BC Archives.

“The crown jewel was the Orchard Collection,” said Budd. “And it hit me very early on that I was supposed to turn that material into a book because I was getting an education on the history of the province that no one had ever heard before.”

Budd’s first book, Voices of British Columbia, was based on those recordings, and many of the ones that interested Vickers were in the book.

Budd returned Vickers’ call, telling him, “I know exactly who you are, I know exactly what you’re looking for, I can help you find those stories. It’d be my pleasure to do so.”

By this time, Budd had started a business, Memories to Memoirs, where he interviews and records people to help them tell their stories. He asked Vickers if he had thought of sharing his.

“He said, ‘Oh no, no, no, I’m way too young to do a thing like that,’” Budd recalled. “I was joking with him, and I took a little risk, and I said, ‘Hey man, didn’t you just release a print called “65 Years”? Doesn’t that mean that you get an old-age pension?’ And I started laughing, and he said, ‘OK.’”

After deciding that he had found the right person to work on his story, Vickers invited Budd to visit him in Tofino on Nov. 11, 2011.

“We hit it off like old friends. Roy, in that moment, was, like, if this isn’t the voice of the Creator saying that we ought to be working together, I don’t know what it is,” Budd recalled.

“Lucky has been an inspiration for me since the day we met,” Vickers told the Independent. “His enthusiasm and positivity is uplifting. Lucky has impressed upon me the importance of writing my stories.”

In the 14 years since their first meeting, the duo has co-authored close to 20 books, with more to be released in 2026. Their published titles, such as Raven Brings the Light (2013), Cloudwalker (2014), Orca Chief (2015) and Peace Dancer (2016), have sold well and brought home awards.

The two have also put together board books for children featuring Vickers’ artwork: Hello Humpback! (2017), One Eagle Soaring (2018) and Sockeye Silver, Saltchuck Blue (2019). In 2026, Harbour Publishing will be releasing Summer Brings Berries, a board book using rhyming text and colourful imagery to explore and celebrate traditional foods of the West Coast.

Additionally, Budd and Vickers have two other books coming out next year: a children’s colouring book and an art book celebrating Vickers’ 80th birthday.

“I am an oral historian,” said Budd. “I work in the medium of storytelling, and he’s one of the best storytellers I can imagine. We get on the phone and we start talking and, the next thing I know, 45 minutes or an hour has gone by, and he’s told me a ton of different stories.”

Besides his books, Vickers is recognized as a printmaker, painter, carver, designer, author and keynote speaker. Among his numerous accolades is a nomination for a Grammy Award in 2019 for his artwork on a box set of Grateful Dead recordings.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Unique, memorable travels

I know what my wife and I will do for at least part of our winter break – go through the latest edition of Robin Esrock’s The Great Canadian Bucket List: One-of-a-Kind Travel Experiences together and make plans. For when? I’m not sure. But plans. Wish lists.

Published by Dundurn Press, and released just last month, this is the third edition of Esrock’s popular book. I interviewed Esrock when the original book came out in 2013, and it has evolved substantially since then. Notably, as he points out in the introduction, this new list “casts an overdue lens on Indigenous tourism,” which he hopes will result in powerful and personal connections this country desperately needs.”

New experiences have been added and some revisions have been made. In tandem with the books, there has always been a website, canadianbucketlist.com, because, as Esrock writes, “Tourism is a constantly evolving industry. Tour operators, restaurants and hotels often change names or ownership, adapt their services or cease operations altogether. Records fall, facts shift and practical information needs to be constantly updated.”

The Great Canadian Bucket List is organized by province, west to east, then up to Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. It wraps up with a national section, which has some “Canada’s best” lists, among other things. There are fabulous colour photos throughout. Esrock highlights four to 17 experiences in each chapter, with his home province of British Columbia having the most entries.

You will hear no complaints from me about this! During COVID, I saw more of British Columbia than I had in the previous 28 or so years of living here. What I love about Esrock’s bucket list choices is their range, from, for example, houseboating on Shuswap Lake, which I could see myself doing, to heli-skiing, which is a hard no, to visiting Haida Gwaii, which I hope to do next year, to things that I’ve done, like visit the Malahat Skywalk on Vancouver Island, and things that probably all of us have done, such as take a stroll along the Seawall.

The range is as varied for the rest of Canada: there are places I’ve been, things I’d never do, and things I’d jump at the chance to do.

Years ago, I visited Head-Smashed-in-Buffalo Jump in Alberta and found it fascinating, learning a lot about Indigenous hunting practices. According to Esrock, the “UNESCO World Heritage Site is the most signiﬁcant and best-preserved buffalo jump site on the continent.”

I’m “hometown” proud of Magnetic Hill in Moncton, NB, where I was born. I’ve rolled “up” the hill more than once and still get a kick out of the cheesiness of it all. As Esrock explains, it’s all an optical illusion, but it’s still magic to me.

I’ve had the privilege of wandering, and occasionally buying something, in every one of Esrock’s best urban markets in Canada: Granville Island here, St. Lawrence Market in Toronto, ByWard Market in Ottawa and the Forks in Winnipeg.

I’m not a big risk taker, so won’t be leaning off the top of the CN Tower in Toronto anytime soon, even with all the safety cords in the world, or scaling a frozen waterfall in Mont-Sainte-Anne, Que. And I will never jump off anything much higher than a curb.

That said, there are so many experiences that I would like to have. In the context of Esrock’s book, one of the top ones is cycling the Kettle Valley Railway, especially now that I’ve learned from Esrock that there’s a company that will provide the bikes, accommodation – and carry our bags! I’d like to check out the tunnels in Moose Jaw, Sask., which “were access corridors for steam engineers, then used as a safe haven for Chinese migrants fearing for their lives, and finally by bootleggers and gangsters.”

I would love to get to Churchill, Man., something I never managed to do when I lived in Winnipeg. Visiting L’Anse aux Meadows, in Newfoundland and Labrador, where there are the remains of a Norse settlement from 1000 CE, would be cool. Cruising the Northwest Passage would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience (hopefully). There are hikes and kayaking adventures that call to me….

But, for now, I will flip the pages of The Great Canadian Bucket List, contemplating all the possibilities. I’ll worry about what’s affordable, what’s doable physically and mentally, what’s possible time-wise, etc., later.

Family memoir a work of art

Karen Bermann’s The Art of Being a Stranger: A Family Memoir, published by New Jewish Press, an imprint of University of Toronto Press, is a work of art. It is moving in ways hard to describe. It might not capture every detail of her family’s history – in fact, wide swaths of that history are missing. What’s not missing, what is powerful, are the feelings this book evokes.

Bermann, who lives in Rome, is professor emerita of architecture at Iowa State University. Her father, Fritz, was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Vienna. At 15 years old, he and his younger sister, Elsa, who was 10, fled Europe, alone, in the late 1930s. They were separated in Haifa, his sister being taken to an orphanage with the other children who were too young to work. Fritz, as lucky as one can be after losing one’s family and home, ended up with a Russian farming family who treated him well. Nonetheless, at 18, he left the farm and headed off to live on a kibbutz.

The way in which Bermann intertwines her father’s words with her own commentary and descriptions is so effective. For example, when Fritz tells her about getting in trouble, at 10 years old, for writing a story about building a bomb to blow up the school, Bermann writes, “‘Oh, Dad, that is really bad.’ Yes, that was a particularly bad one. ‘Were you always so angry?’ I was born angry. And scared. As was my father before me. ‘Even before the Nazis, you were so angry and scared?’ Well, yes. But the Nazis didn’t help.”

This dark sense of humour permeates The Art of Being a Stranger. Bermann doesn’t sentimentalize or sensationalize, she just tells us what her father tells her and sometimes shares her reactions. We also learn – and feel – what she went through as Fritz’s daughter. She writes succinctly, poetically, in both words and images.

From pre-state Israel, Fritz went to New York City, where he worked in building maintenance. After an incident with an antisemitic boss, he found work at a company, where, over 20 years, he rose up the ladder. “Somehow from being a peasant in Palestine I found myself a bigshot in the world of New York building maintenance,” he tells his daughter.

But New York never became, for him, a city of museums and operas, but remained one of crooks and bribes. Just like his Vienna wasn’t the city tourists visited to eat sachertorte and go skating, but rather was “a shtetl of poor religious Jews, a ghetto of ignorant bastards who beat their children for making noise on Shabbos, but who knew in their bones that they were not welcome, who recognized the stench of antisemitism in the street while others were perfuming their noses in the rose gardens.”

Fritz’s trauma, inherited from his ancestors, is passed on to his daughter in full force. Yet, Bermann, as a teenager, would defend her father against her friends’ calling him a Nazi, for instance. He was brutally abusive. She only talks about this in relation to herself, not others in the household. To survive, she built “a parallel structure to the one I live in my father’s house.”

“Fritz was ruthlessly (one of his favorite words) honest about the danger of hope. Hope was more than pointless, it was stupid, and led to suffering,” writes Bermann. “People disappointed by life were stupid people; they made him angry…. He taught us about the strength of character that hopelessness required.”

In addition to sharing some of her childhood experiences, Bermann shares some of her experiences working, at the age of 19, on the rehabilitation of one of the more than 1,000 abandoned buildings on the Lower East Side that she and a group took over from the city: “Ditched by landlords who couldn’t squeeze a profit out of a tenement in need of heat, in need of maintenance, a building that leaked from every weak pore.”

We meet other family members, we find out how Fritz’s story ends. From fragments of a life, we see how complex we humans are, how many contradictions we hold within us, how we can be that which we hate, how we can hurt who we love and how we can love the broken, how beauty exists, sometimes inextricably with the ugly. The stranger of the title is Fritz, it’s Bermann, it’s us. Yet, experiencing The Art of Being a Stranger made me feel more part of humanity, kind of like when we chant Ashamnu together as a congregation: we have abused, we have betrayed, we have been cruel…. None of us is perfect, none of us gets through life unscathed or without hurting others. Yet, we keep getting up in the morning and living. Until we don’t.

A little holiday romance

One of my guilty pleasures is Hallmark-style holiday movies. Fine, they’re Christmas movies mainly. But, whenever there is a Jewish character, plotline or, in rare instances, it’s a Hanukkah movie, I am even more a fan. Comfortable in their predictability, especially the happy ending, my body relaxes just thinking about the break from reality they offer. In the last few years, I’ve also read more than my share of Hallmark-style novels, and this is why I was excited to receive an email from Amelia Doyle, author of Two Weeks in Toronto, which was published last year but was just named a finalist in the romance category of the Canadian Book Club Awards. The winners will be announced in February.

Doyle, a Jewish author based in Dublin, Ireland, has written a few romance novels and has another on the way for next year. Two Weeks in Toronto would make a wonderful holiday movie – and a welcome gift for anyone who’s admitted to you that they like romance novels. There’s no will-they-or-won’t-they-fall-in-love here, just how they will, what obstacles they will have to overcome, what role their best friends or family members will play.

In Two Weeks in Toronto, our protagonists are Ciara and Ethan. They live in Dublin and know each other because Ethan is Ciara’s dentist – and Ciara is terrified of the dentist. Not of Ethan, but of the dentist as a larger concept, its root canals, teeth-cleanings, etc. Ethan does what he can to help Ciara overcome her fears. So, though the two have known each other awhile, it’s been a professional relationship, and they don’t know each other well.

This changes when Ciara’s sister’s wedding requires Ciara to return to her family in Toronto, which she really doesn’t want to do because of a brutally harsh mother and a very difficult sister, and Ethan must go home for the celebration of his parents’ 40th anniversary and of his brother’s engagement, which will be awkward, to say the least, because his brother’s fiancée is Ethan’s former girlfriend.

Ethan suggests to Ciara that he join her in Toronto for the wedding (and Hanukkah) and she join him in Galway over New Year’s – as “boyfriend” and “girlfriend,” so neither will have to face their situations alone. While Ethan is not Jewish, he ends up feeling quite at home with Ciara’s family. Turns out her father, who’s from Ireland, knows Ethan’s parents, and there are connections with other folks in Ciara’s realm. Ciara’s dad also makes sure Ethan knows what’s going on with the candlelightings and what Hanukkah is all about.

I had some trouble believing the sheer horridness of Ciara’s mother and sister, in part because her dad and brother are so friendly and caring, but also because I’m lucky enough not to have such nasty people in my family. I would have been more heavy-handed in the editing process, but, overall, Two Weeks in Toronto is a light, fun read. I’ll keep Doyle in mind when I’m looking for my next escape.

Life, beginning to end

Love is at the heart of three new children’s books that would make great Hanukkah gifts.

Many different types of families welcome their newborns in Mazel Toes!, written by Dr. Audrey Barbakoff and illustrated by Annita Soble. Each set of pages is a work of art with a rhyming poem that highlights playful gestures of love, like a kiss on the pupik (belly button), and more serious ones, like making sure baby is safe and warm in their schmatte (rag or, in this case, “a well-loved baby blanket”). Multiple generations of Jews are depicted, multiple family configurations and multiple cultures. It is a fun board book for both reader and listener – and can be as interactive as you want it to be. You can read it quietly, all snuggled up, or more raucously, with tickles of “mazel toes” and other giggles.

A more serious but equally adorable and educational book is Waiting for Max: A NICU Story, written by Emily Rosen and illustrated by Esther Diana. Based on Rosen’s own experiences of having had a baby who had to spend 16 days in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), Waiting for Max centres around Louise, Max’s big sister, who is very keen to meet her new baby brother and doesn’t really understand why Max, who was born premature, can’t come home yet. So, she puts her mind to figuring out ways to help him escape from the “little plastic box” (incubator) he’s in. She puts a lot of imagination and work into drawing out her ideas. Each one she comes up with, she gives to her parents to take to Max, so that he can follow her instructions. She shows great perseverance, always thinking up a new idea when one doesn’t work. She keeps at it until Max eventually makes it home – no doubt, because of her idea.

Apparently, one in 10 babies in the United States must spend time in an NICU, and Rosen will donate a portion of her book’s proceeds, as well as copies of Waiting for Max, to NICU hospitals and nonprofits across the States.

At the other end of the life spectrum, author Kathy Kacer, who specializes in writing books to educate younger readers about the Holocaust, has come out with a different kind of lesson. In Memory Stones, which is beautifully illustrated by Hayley Lowe, we meet Sophie, who has just lost her beloved grandmother. We see some of the many fun things Sophie and Granny would do together, and how heartbroken Sophie is when Granny dies. Sophie brings flowers to Granny’s grave, but they never last long. When Sophie’s mom shares that people in some cultures, including Jews, place stones on loved one’s graves, Sophie figures out a special way to remember her grandmother.

Memory Stones, published by Second Story Press, is intended for readers 6 to 8 years old. Published by the Collective Book Studio, Waiting for Max is for readers 4 to 8 years old, and Mazel Toes!, for babies to toddlers.

Reminder of humanity’s light

The passage across the Øresund, the body of water that separates the Danish peninsula from Sweden, is, at its narrowest, about the same distance as Horseshoe Bay to Bowen Island. But the waters can be treacherous – especially when it’s 1943 and the waters are swarming with Gestapo Kriegsmarine boats. Yet, for two weeks at the beginning of October 1943, 7,000 Danish Jews – about 95% of Danish Jewry (including the wonderful Victor Borge) – were safely transported across the Øresund in small fishing boats to the “sacred soil” of neutral Sweden.

In his new book, A Light in the Northern Sea: Denmark’s Incredible Rescue of Their Jewish Citizens During WWII, Tim Brady, author of the popular story of the Dutch Resistance Three Ordinary Girls, uses his excellent narrative skills to outline in detail how Danish Jews were warned about Nazi deportation plans, how they escaped and how they were treated when they arrived in Sweden.

Brady has described himself as a storyteller, rather than as a professional historian, but he has done his research and he tells this story in great detail. As he did with Three Ordinary Girls, Brady brings history alive with the telling of stories through the eyes of participants, rather than simply cold facts. The eyes here are, for the most part, those of the remarkable Dutch resistance fighter Jurgen Kieler, whose recently published memoirs (encouraged by Elie Wiesel) would not have been available to earlier rescue historians.

Readers might be surprised that the “light in the northern sea” of the title refers to welcoming Sweden, not, as you might expect, given the book’s subtitle, Denmark. But, as Brady is quick to point out, the Swedish “light” was not always bright – before, and early in the war, Sweden had demanded that Germany mark the passports of Jewish emigrés with a “J” so they could be more easily refused, and Sweden refused potential Jewish immigrants who were not financially independent.

However, as Brady notes, largely due to the enormously influential intercession of the great Danish Nobelist Niels Bohr (a dedicated Nazi-hater) with the Swedish government, Sweden’s position regarding the Jewish immigrants changed radically by October 1943, when it decided to admit all 7,200 Jews fleeing the recently occupying Nazis in Denmark.

Swedes almost universally opened their homes to the Danish Jews. The refugees were also made to feel comfortable in churches, community centres, hotels and schools, as welfare agencies constructed camps, provided clothing and household items, and helped them find employment. Also, as Brady notes, during the post-rescue months of the Danish resistance, Sweden provided a 25 million kroner (about $70 million in today’s dollars) credit to help Denmark train and organize the Danish Brigade revolutionary group.

Interestingly, the “rescue of Denmark’s Jewish citizens” referred to in the book’s subtitle has a double reference for Brady. On the one hand, there is the escape across the Øresund. But there is a second “rescue” described in the ending chapters of the book. These chapters deal with the 1943-45 undertakings of the Danish resistance, including detailed accounts of both their successful and non-successful sabotage activities. However, most of these Danish fighters were ultimately captured, and Brady carefully narrates their terrible experiences in German concentration camps. But, once again, the Danish Jews were “rescued.” Thanks to a coordinated effort of the Swedish Red Cross and the Danish government, most of the Danish concentration camp prisoners were returned to Denmark in the remarkable “White Bus Rescue” that was made possible in March 1945 by negotiations instigated between the Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte and Heinrich Himmler, which Brady describes at the end of his book.

When put into historical perspective, as Brady is careful to do, the rescue of 95% of Danish Jewry, while utterly unique in Europe, was not completely surprising. At no time had Danish Jews been required to wear a yellow star. Moreover, King Christian X, while greeting his Danish subjects, would never salute the occupying Nazis, and would habitually visit Denmark’s Great Synagogue on Rosh Hashanah. (King Christian, in contradiction to popular myth, never wore the yellow star – but he would later be placed under house arrest.) As well, Jews lived comfortably in Copenhagen; for 100 years, they had enjoyed full human rights and become very active in arts, politics and philanthropy. For these reasons, as Brady explains, and also because the Danish population was, in his words, “peculiarly democratic,” Germany hesitated to “twist the arms of Denmark regarding its Jewish problem” (no less was Denmark anxious to “poke the Third Reich bear,” as Brady puts it).

But how did the Danish Jews know about the Nazis’ plans to deport them? To answer this question, Brady emphasizes the courageous actions of Nazi diplomat Georg Duckwitz, whom history should celebrate as a kind of Raoul Wallenberg- or Oskar Schindler-type figure. With his life on the line, Duckwitz tipped off Danish authorities when, in September 1943, the Nazis decided to solve the Danish “Jewish problem” in the way history shows they “solved” other problems. Duckwitz also, after tipping off Danish authorities, courageously traveled to Stockholm to tell Sweden’s prime minister about the impending roundup of Danish Jews.

As a result of Duckwitz’s actions, Danes were warned in time of the impending roundup and, when the Gestapo came calling, there was no one home. Almost all (except the very ill and disabled who did end up deported) were in neighbours’ homes or schools, churches, hospitals or safe houses, preparing for their trip to Sweden.

Once the fishing boats were assembled, the flight to Sweden began in earnest. The boats were usually crammed; children and babies were usually sedated; and the passage was often rough, as high winds would often raise waves four to six metres high.

As an aside, in 1989, the annual Holocaust Symposium at the University of British Columbia arranged by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre focused on the Danish rescue. The speakers were a Danish Jewish woman who was rescued and a Danish fisherman who was among the rescuers. In the Q&A portion of their presentation, the fisherman admitted that he and the other rescuers charged as much as 1,000 kroner ($5,000 in today’s Canadian money) per “Jewish ticket.” Brady notes this, but finds it “understandable,” since the fishermen’s livelihood was at stake in crossing the Gestapo-infested Øresund.

All in all, the Danish rescue, as Brady presents it, is truly a remarkable story – and a welcome reminder that, even in the roughest seas and at the darkest times, the basic light of humanity can shine brightly.

Graham Forst, PhD, taught literature and philosophy at Capilano University until his retirement and now teaches in the continuing education department at Simon Fraser University. From 1975 to 2010, he co-chaired the symposium committee of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

Etgar Keret comes to Vancouver

(PR photos)

Israeli author and filmmaker Etgar Keret will be at the Rothstein Theatre Oct. 30, 7 p.m., in conversation with author and columnist Marsha Lederman. The JCC Jewish Book Festival event is sponsored by the Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation.

Keret, who also teaches creative writing at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, is known for writing short stories that are lean and accessible in style, but whimsical, surrealist and darkly funny in subject. His work explores life’s smallest, most unremarkable interactions in ways that are profound and unusual, and his seventh story collection, Autocorrect: Stories (translated by Jessica Cohen and Sondra Silverston), is no different – it is vast in reach yet grounded in the bewildering absurdity of modern life. Books will be available for purchase at the Oct. 30 event and the author will be signing. For tickets ($36), go to jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

– Courtesy Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival