Books – Page 37

Glick’s one-state solution

The two-state solution was one of the most talked about issues in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Not everyone is talking about a two-state solution these days, however. As a regular reader of Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick, I was interested to read her most recent book, The Israeli Solution (Crown Forum, 2014), in which she introduces her vision of a one-state plan, and challenges the assumptions two-staters make about the demographic threats that are supposed to be inherent in a one-state future. Glick also considers what might be the international response to such a plan, as well as the risks and benefits to all the players.

In her preface, Glick makes it clear that “the time has come for American policy makers to reconsider their devotion to the two-state formula and consider an alternative policy that makes sense both for the United States and for the Middle East.”

She presents a history of Israel, then provides a look at both Yasser Arafat and current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as reviews the history of Hamas. She states her incredulity that Western leaders acknowledge Hamas as a terrorist organization but fail to see that Hamas is the same as Arafat, Abbas and others who support terrorism and advance the cause of Israel’s destruction.

Glick also discusses the origins of the often-confused term Palestina, which the Romans incorporated to wipe out the Jewish identity of the land of Israel because it connected the identity of the land to the ancient Philistines.

She analyzes Israel’s national rights to Judea and Samaria and the term “West Bank,” coined by the Jordanians, “who instigated their occupation of the areas in order to ground their claim to sovereignty on an intuited but nonexistent political link between the west bank of the Jordan River and the east bank of the river which was Jordan.”

Many people toss around the term “demographic threat” based on misinformation about the Arab population, contends Glick. She writes that “the real demographic threat that Israel faces is not that the Palestinians will become the majority west of the Jordan River. The real demographic threat is that if a Palestinian state is created, vast numbers of Palestinians will flee to Israel … and a sufficient number will emigrate to Judea and Samaria from surrounding Arab countries to overwhelm Israel.”

In conclusion, she makes her points very clear that “the Palestinian conflict with Israel is a function of the larger Arab and Islamic world’s refusal to accept that Israel has a right to exist.” The Arab states exploit their politics and foreign policies as a means to coerce the Americans into taking actions to appease them, she argues.

“The United States has a paramount national security interest in ensuring the military strength and social cohesion of the Jewish state,” writes Glick. Israel is America’s only remaining ally in the Middle East, and in her comparison of the Obama and Bush administrations’ policy speeches, Glick finds them “substantially indistinguishable.”

An extensive bibliography and notes closes the book.

Sybil Kaplan is a foreign correspondent, lecturer, book reviewer and food writer in Jerusalem. She has compiled nine kosher cookbooks. She leads weekly walks in English in the Jewish produce market, Machaneh Yehudah, and writes the restaurant features for Janglo, the oldest, largest website in Israel for English-speakers.

Christianity stands accused

The Catholic Church did not initiate diplomatic relations with the state of Israel until 1993 and, according to the Italian writer Giulio Meotti, things haven’t been all rainbows since then either.

The creation of a thriving Jewish state creates a theological conundrum for the Catholic Church, Meotti writes in The Vatican Against Israel: J’Accuse (Mantua Books, 2013), because it is a refutation of the theological view that Judaism should wither and die in the shadow of a successor religion, Christianity. The theological imperative of Jewish disappearance is now accompanied, he writes, by a geopolitical imperative that Israel should vanish.

“Replacement theology stated that Christians had inherited the covenant and replaced the Jews as the Chosen People. The concept of replacement geography similarly replaces the historical connection of one people to the land with a connection between another people and the land,” Meotti writes. “The existence of a restored Israel in the land of the Bible, proof that the Jewish people is not annihilated, assimilated and withering away, is the living refutation of the Christian myth about the Jewish end in the historical process.”

The necessity of rejecting Zionism and, in its time, Israel, bested even the liberalizing influence of the Second Vatican Council, the near-revolutionary reconsideration that took place within Catholicism in the early 1960s. This period, which saw the Church recognize Judaism and Christianity as familial theologies and renounce the millennia-old deicide charge against the Jews, nevertheless has a stream that abhors Zionism. Meotti writes that two conflicting Vatican tendencies developed at that time and still dominate: “theological dialogue with Judaism, and political support for the Arabs.” (The gushing lamentation offered by the Vatican on the death of Yasser Arafat is particularly striking.)

Meotti contends that this process has involved the Catholic Church differentiating between “good” and “docile” Jews of the Diaspora and the “bad” and “arrogant” Jews of Israel.

The book is a litany of indictments. The Church had relations with the PLO before it had relations with Israel. Top Church leaders have repeatedly accused Israel of behaving like Nazis. They routinely use crucifixion motifs in the Israeli-Palestinian context, with Jews playing the Romans and Palestinians, of course, playing the beatific victim. Israel, said one archbishop, was imposing “the sufferings of the passion of Jesus on the Arab Christians.” Another, at the time of the Palestinians’ seizure of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, declared: “Our Palestinian people in Bethlehem died like a crucified martyr.” Arafat himself jumped on the bandwagon, declaring: “Jesus Christ was the first Palestinian fedayeen who carried his sword along the road on which today the Palestinians carry their cross.”

The first translation into Arabic of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was courtesy of the Catholic Church. One archbishop was convicted of using his immunity to smuggle explosives to Palestinian terrorists and served just four years of his 12-year term after intervention by the Pope and a promise to make no more trouble. (He turned up again in 2010 on the fatal “Freedom Flotilla” that sought to bring aid to Hamas terrorists and has goaded Palestinian Christians to violence, insisting it is the only thing that will move Israelis.) Today, Catholic-affiliated nongovernmental organizations are among the leaders in the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

The Vatican’s relationship to the Holocaust is particularly dissolute. Pope John Paul II, in 1979, spoke at Auschwitz, noting that “six million Poles lost their lives during the Second World War, one-fifth of the nation,” failing to note that these were almost all Jews. Instead, he called Auschwitz “the Golgotha of the contemporary world,” Golgotha being the place in Jerusalem where Jesus is said to have been crucified.

More perversely, after visiting Mauthausen, the Pope said that the Jews “enriched the world by their suffering,” He seemed to be echoing the thoughts of John Cardinal O’Connor, then archbishop of New York, who a year earlier had visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, and asserted that “the Holocaust is an enormous gift that Judaism has given to the world.”

John Paul also infuriated Jews, among others, by conferring a papal knighthood on Kurt Waldheim, the former Austrian president, United Nations secretary-general and Nazi war criminal.

When Jews objected to a proposal to build a Carmelite convent at Auschwitz, the mother superior of the order asked: “Why do the Jews want special treatment in Auschwitz only for themselves? Do they still consider themselves the Chosen People?”

The “J’Accuse” part, which channels the moral outrage of Emile Zola, is fair enough, but this book is only partly about the Vatican. Meotti dredges up equally egregious affronts perpetrated by countless other Christian denominations.

The book is a searing indictment of the Catholic Church, but it is also deeply flawed. At the least, the title is deceptive. The “J’Accuse” part, which channels the moral outrage of Emile Zola, is fair enough, but this book is only partly about the Vatican. Meotti dredges up equally egregious affronts perpetrated by countless other Christian denominations. By no means is Meotti’s condemnation limited to the Vatican, and it is difficult to discern why the title should suggest it is.

Meotti frequently puts uncited statements in quotations. For example, during the 1967 war, when Israel faced annihilation from the Arab states, Meotti claims the Vatican gave the order: “Cheer for the other side.” The quote marks suggest someone literally said this, but whom? On another occasion, he attributes, in quotes, the statement “Jerusalem must be Judenrein.” But who is alleged to have said it? One can also frequently sense comments being stretched out of context to fit the thesis.

Too many times to count, Meotti declares one Christian assertion or another “a blood libel.” The term’s over-usage diminishes whatever power the accusation carries. And nowhere is his over-usage more disturbing than in his casual, often flippant invocation of Nazism.

He writes, “Like Hitlerism, Palestinianism is not a national identity, but a criminal ideological construct…. Worse, the Netanya Passover bombing that killed 30 is a “mini Holocaust.” And, “The dark irony is that the Europeans who are supporting the Palestinians’ ‘right of return’ are living in homes stolen from Jews they helped to gas.”

Meotti’s book has the potential to make an important case against Christian antisemitism and anti-Zionism. While it doesn’t fail completely – the evidence being compendious – the charge to the jury is so overwrought that one feels resentful at being manipulated. The facts would speak for themselves if the author would step back a bit.

Pat Johnson is a Vancouver writer and principal in PRsuasiveMedia.com.

Ancient hatred writ large

Near the end of World Without Jews (Yale University Press, 2014), we find this passage from a letter written in June of 1943 by a Wehrmacht officer named Wilm Hosenfeld, a Catholic, a schoolteacher in civilian life who had come to know a lot about the fate of the Jews deported from the Warsaw Ghetto: “With this terrible mass murder of the Jews we have lost the war. We have brought upon ourselves an indelible disgrace, a curse that can never be lifted. We deserve no mercy, we are all guilty.” Hosenfeld was later captured by the Soviets and died in a Siberian gulag.

The remarkable thing about this letter is not just that it was written, but that its author was a member of the notorious Sturmabteilung who later became a full member of the Nazi party. One may ask: doesn’t the fact that one Nazi could feel this way repudiate the “we had no choice – we were following orders” excuse so often heard from other Holocaust perpetrators?

These are the kinds of questions posed in the meticulously researched new book by Israeli-born historian Alon Confino of Ben-Gurion University and the University of Virginia, which draws upon many non-traditional sources to present an answer to a new Holocaust question: not whether or not the Holocaust was intentional, or how it was carried out, but rather how did Germans come to conceive of a world without Jews? (And, as Confino makes clear: it was indeed a world without Jews, not a Germany without Jews, that the Nazis envisioned.)

Drawing upon untraditional sources, many of which have only recently been found or made available – wartime letters, diaries, journals, newspapers and photographs – Confino provides a shocking answer to this question: “Germany went after the Jews … not in spite of being a nation of high culture but because it was such a nation…. The Nazis perpetrated the Holocaust in the name of culture.”

Confino notes that the burning of the Bible was a Nazi obsession: thousands and thousands of Bibles were heaped on the flames, culminating in the great fires of Kristallnacht, during which not only Bibles, but 1,400 synagogues were set on fire.

Confino’s goal in World Without Jews is precisely to explore the very backgrounds and influences that created a uniquely genocidal culture. He begins his quest at a new starting point by asking, if Nazi policies were fueled by master-class racism, why were the Nazis so anxious to prioritize the burning of the Bible? Confino notes that the burning of the Bible was a Nazi obsession: thousands and thousands of Bibles were heaped on the flames, culminating in the great fires of Kristallnacht, during which not only Bibles, but 1,400 synagogues were set on fire.

Confino’s subject, then, is not Auschwitz, as it is of many Holocaust historians. Rather, it is this: how could Germans imagine a world without Jews? Where could such an absurd, fantastic notion come from? How could it become legitimized? How could it possibly be carried out?

Confino is certain of one thing: the Judeocide was fully anticipated before it began in 1941. This conviction contradicts that of most Holocaust historians, who feel that the Holocaust was an ex tempore “solution” to the “Jewish Problem” raised by the German forces’ occupation of Eastern Europe. Not so, says Confino, because the Holocaust was a result of “an accumulation of ancient [largely Christian] hatreds” fueled by 19th-century nation-building and given precedent by the mass murders perpetrated around the world in the 19th century by British, French, Dutch and Belgian colonizers. But why Jews? Why was their extermination seen as so central to German survival?

Confino’s answer to this question is that Jewish culture had always been a culture of chaim, of life; the Nazis wanted to found a culture of death. To do so, they had to “eliminate the shackles of a past tradition” to “liberate their imagination to open up new emotional, historical and moral horizons that enable them to imagine and to create their empire of death.” Thus, life-centred Jews had to go, and their books with them.

What we have here, in other words, is “the first experiment in the total creation of a new humanity achieved by extermination, a humanity liberated from the moral shackles of its past.”

On the question of who knew what was happening, Confino is uncompromising: no one in Germany could not have known – not necessarily about the mass murders, but that “something terrible” was happening.

On the question of who knew what was happening, Confino is uncompromising: no one in Germany could not have known – not necessarily about the mass murders, but that “something terrible” was happening. To prove his point, Confino cites hundreds of articles, pamphlets, radio speeches and photographs “showing what Germans saw when they walked in the street, drove on the road, or made their way to work” – all of which refer to the need to eliminate the “Jewish influence.”

In Confino’s view, the extermination of the Jews was fully intentional; all it required was a passive populace, and the active participation of the Christian Church. The Nazis got both, in spades.

Confino doesn’t hesitate to directly implicate the Christian Church in the Nazis’ program to eradicate Christianity’s Jewish origins: time and again he reasserts the “fundamental affinity” between Nazism and Christianity regarding the need to eliminate Christianity’s “Jewish roots.” The difference between them was that for the Nazis, they produced Christ; for the Church, it was because they killed him.

Nazism, then, was to be a new Bereishit, a new beginning point. Canadian scholar Northrop Frye said often that Western culture was permanently “anchored” in the Bible: the Nazi project was to cut this anchor and drop a new one, rooted in the crazed dogmas of Mein Kampf. Getting rid of Jews was, in other words, “akin to making a clean historical slate.”

One of the most unforgettable and heretofore never published photos contained in World Without Jews, shows a small statue of a crucified Christ in front of a church in Westphalia. Under the statue, in large letters, there is the sign “No Jews Allowed.” Just over the head of the Christ are the letters “INRI”: that is, in Latin, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” May this irony not be lost and, to that end, may we be thankful for books such as Confino’s World Without Jews.

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

Chua and Rubenfeld attempt to explain success

Jews are the quintessential successful minority group by any economic measure. They are disproportionately represented in the top rankings in business, finance, the arts, scientific research, architecture, medicine and law.

Likewise, Mormons and new immigrants to the United States from China, Cuba, India, Lebanon, Nigeria and Iran make the A-list in several sectors of the economy. Meanwhile, black Americans and other groups are stuck in poverty with high unemployment and poor education.

Those are bold statements that many will dismiss as thoughtless stereotypes. But are the generalizations baseless?

The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America (Penguin Press, 2014) is an exploration into the murky world of these sweeping statements. Amy Chua, the “tiger mom” who gained notoriety for her harsh approach to child-rearing, teams up with her accomplished husband Jed Rubenfeld to investigate some of the reasons why some groups rise to the top of their fields, become wealthy and win awards while others seem to be stuck in a rut.

They look for similarities in the lives of numerous celebrities, corporate leaders and ordinary folks, both those who have done well and those who have failed. They dissect statistics from census tracks that identify highest income and medium household net worth for different ages within several racial, cultural and religious groups. They count CEOs and CFOs, the percentage of students at Harvard and other Ivy League schools, and the winners of Nobel Prizes, as well as cultural awards such as Pulitzers and Academy Awards. They slice and dice the numbers in numerous ways and come out with specific cultural traits – a set of values and beliefs, habits and practices – that they conclude are similar among all the overachieving groups.

• Disproportionately successful groups have a deeply internalized belief in the specialness or superiority of their group, rooted in theology, history or a social hierarchy from their homeland.

• Members of the group have a feeling of insecurity and anxiety about losing whatever they have. They feel what they do is never good enough.

• Those that succeed emphasize discipline and controlling impulses. They stand up to temptation and persevere despite difficulties.

The authors conclude that people grappling with a superiority complex and deep insecurities are often consumed with resentments that push them to overachieve. The chip-on-the-shoulder attitude feeds their ambition and creates an “I’ll show them” mentality. Impulse control mixed with strong ambition yields a toughness and resilience. Members of the group who succeed found virtue in enduring hardships, deferring gratification and standing up to adversity.

There is some truth in what they write. The biographies of prominent Jewish figures often include anecdotes reflecting those traits. Although Jews are “Chosen People,” they are haunted, at least in the world of Philip Roth and Woody Allen, by insecurities stemming from unrelenting parental pressure and social scorn, real and imagined. Impulse control has been foundational to Judaism religion, with its 613 injunctions, and its countless prescriptions for a traditional Jewish way of life. It is those forces that Chua and Rubenfeld say converge to produce success.

Jewish overachievers are not the only ones. Chua and Rubenfeld find parallels with the traits of the disproportionate number of Mormons who are top executives of Fortune 500 companies, with Asian American students with the highest grades (but reportedly the lowest self-esteem of any racial group), and Cubans in Miami who have become millionaires and hold a disproportionate number of managerial and professional positions in the city, and dominate local politics. Other immigrant groups under similar pressures also do well.

But such sweeping statements set off alarms. Caustic reviews since the book was released earlier this year dismissed their conclusions as racist, faulty social science and, some may say even worse, dull prose. Reviewers attacked Chua and Rubenfeld, two Yale University law professors, for sloppy thinking and loose use of language.

Chua and Rubenfeld are accustomed to public attention, although usually of a different sort. Chua was on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world after the release of her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother in 2011. Rubenfeld has written two international bestselling novels and two books on constitutional law.

They challenge those who assume equality is always beneficial. They suggest that promoting self-esteem, instant gratification and excessive freedom in parenting may be counter-productive.

Clearly frustrated by the response to their new book, Chua and Rubenfeld have said their work has been misunderstood and misrepresented. They believe they have been aggressively attacked because their conclusions run counter to contemporary political correctness. They challenge those who assume equality is always beneficial. They suggest that promoting self-esteem, instant gratification and excessive freedom in parenting may be counter-productive.

They attribute the uproar over the book also to an aversion to talk about opinions about various cultural, ethnic and religious groups doing significantly better than others, views that are often expressed privately but not in a public forum.

They got that right. It’s a minefield filled with explosive emotions and ugly name-calling. However, they are right in insisting that the overheated rhetoric contributes nothing to an understanding of the subject. We should not avoid discussion of hot issues, especially those that have given rise to some of the worst atrocities in the world. Chua and Rubenfeld raise matters that should engage society in dispassionate debate.

So let’s turn the spotlight on their generalizations about cultural traits to see whether they stand up.

Chua and Rubenfeld try to inoculate their conclusions from criticism with 78 pages of notes and listing the names of 50 research assistants who worked with them. They claim statements about economic performance and cultural attitudes are backed up by empirical, historical or sociological evidence. “But when there are differences between groups, we will come out and say so,” they write.

They look at characteristics of those struggling in poverty and at a variety of explanations for their situation, such as IQ levels. They conclude that the disparities between rich and poor cannot be explained by these alternatives.

They also note the transitory nature of the accomplishments achieved through the sense of superiority, insecurities and hard work. Success wipes out insecurity and eases assimilation; equality undermines personal ambition. They conclude that traits that helped disproportionately successful groups rarely survive beyond the first two generations.

They downplay the impact of politics, social institutions and education. Personal responsibility plays virtually no role in their theories. Factors that have nothing to do with religion, culture or race, such as the lack of opportunity, discrimination and the devastating impact of economic forces, are minimized. Chua and Rubenfeld gloss over examples that do not fit their theories.

Despite their extensive references to research, the book reads as if Chua and Rubenfeld started with conclusions and then went out to find evidence to back up what they wanted to say. Focusing on cultural traits has blinded them to other influences. They downplay the impact of politics, social institutions and education. Personal responsibility plays virtually no role in their theories. Factors that have nothing to do with religion, culture or race, such as the lack of opportunity, discrimination and the devastating impact of economic forces, are minimized. Chua and Rubenfeld gloss over examples that do not fit their theories. Are they cherry-picking results and leaving out conflicting evidence? An answer to that question will be left to the experts in the field.

Anticipating probably the most controversial attack, the charge of racism, the authors write they are identifying psychological attitudes, not characteristics from birth. They acknowledge that significant differences exist within every racial, cultural and religious group. Even the subgroups they identify were not monolithic. But, they say, that did not make the culture traits less real or powerful.

They also anticipate critics who say the traits they celebrate often do not lead to happiness. They acknowledge that the attributes of success come with their own distinctive pathology that misshaped lives. Deeply insecure people were often neurotic and a sense of superiority led to arrogance and easily morphed into racism. They concede that the “triple package” might not be a recipe for happiness. Indeed, the rewards of the triple package were mostly financial. However, they posit that material success can lay the foundation for a happier life.

So, what are we left with after so many qualifications? As pop sociology, the book provides numerous provocative sparks for conversation around the Shabbat table. They identify some traits of some people who have achieved much. But many would insist their glib generalizations are just plain wrong. At times, they seem to give the strongest arguments against their own conclusions. And, even if you accept what they say, it is doubtful that many parents would want their children to follow the direction that Chua and Rubenfeld have set out.

Media consultant Robert Matas, a former Globe and Mail journalist, still reads books. The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America is available at the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library. To reserve this book, or any other, call 604-257-5181 or email [email protected]. To view the catalogue, visit jccgv.com and click on Isaac Waldman Library.

PhD research sparks fiction

Shirley Graetz’s She Wrote on Clay (Hadley Rille Books, 2013) is so intriguing, so mesmerizing, so unique, so well-written, I could not put it down!

Graetz was born in Dusseldorf, Germany. She came to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and never left Israel. Her master’s degree and her doctorate are in ancient Near Eastern studies, and she is a licensed tour guide and a teacher, married and mother of three young children.

She explains that, while conducting her PhD research at Ben-Gurion University in 2011, she was working on letters written by women who were naditu, monastic women who lived around 1800 BCE, about the time of Abraham, in Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq).

She had never written fiction before but, she says, “The women started to talk to me in my head. I had just given birth to my third child (the other two were 2 and 4), it was the second year of my PhD, but I sat down and wrote for three days. It was as if the story wrote itself.”

The texts were originally in cuneiform on clay tablets, in Akkadian, an ancient language. Some of these women were scribes. They lived in the equivalent of a walled compound called a gagu, but each woman had her own house or room. They all came from wealthy families, and there were different gagus in different cities. By becoming a naditu, each woman foreswore marriage and children, but her family provided her with food and clothing. However, the women had to be successful in business in order to remain financially independent.

The most prominent gagu was in Sippar, Meospotamia, a city on the banks of the Euphrates River, from which we have the most texts.

The novel revolves around 16-year-old Iltani, whose goal in life is to become a scribe. The best way to achieve this is to become a naditu and go to a gagu, which she will do in three months; her aunt and a childhood friend also live there. Her father has paid a naditu there to teach her to be a scribe. Once she enters, she will not visit her family for two years.

When she enters, there is a ceremony as she leaves her family and is welcomed by the priests, the making of temple offerings and her initiation. Her life then begins, and this forms the bulk of the book – focusing on her day-to-day life, the process of learning to be a scribe, her relationships with her aunt and friend, as well as conflicts within the gagu and her other relationships, until she is 25, already nine years in the gagu.

The surprising turns add much to the enjoyment of this read, and the meticulous details described about the home life, the clothes, the food, the customs in Sippar, are also part of the fascination of this story about what I would call “feminist women of 4,000 years ago.”

Learning from tragedy

It was Aug. 9, 2001. I was in Jerusalem after 19 years absence, to attend a convention and do research on a memoir, Witness to History: Ten Years as a Woman Foreign Correspondent in Israel (still unpublished). I was staying at the Sheraton (now the Leonardo). I left the hotel to meet my good friend and personal guide, Pat (z”l). She and I were going to the Bible Lands Museum for a reunion with a mutual acquaintance. All the traffic from the hotel down King George into town was blocked. We heard there had been a terrorist attack, but decided to go on with our plans.

Later, when we returned to the hotel, national board members were waiting for us and told us to go and call our families and tell them we were OK. One by one, Hadassah women came in with stories of having been on Ben Yehudah … of hearing an explosion and ambulances. It was the Sbarro restaurant terrorist attack.

***

Dr. Zieva Dauber Konvisser is a fellow of the Institute for Social Innovation at Fielding Graduate University in California. In 2003, she was at the Israel Centre for the Treatment of Psychotrauma in Jerusalem, beginning research on the “possibility of post-traumatic growth coexisting with post-traumatic stress.” Earlier this year, her book Living Beyond Terrorism (Gefen Publishing, 2014) was published.

Founding director of the centre, Prof. Danny Brom, writes in the book’s foreword that Konvisser contributes to “the study of politically motivated violence by documenting many of the challenges that confront people who experience such violence and by elucidating the many ways people find to overcome the horrors of their encounter with deadly violence. Equally, this book contributes to the development of the concept of post-traumatic growth.”

Konvisser herself explains in the preface that the focus of this book is on “resilience or recovery and post-traumatic growth.”

Konvisser is a second-generation Holocaust survivor, having lost more than 30 relatives in Vilna. During a trip to Israel in 2002, she reflected how survivors of terrorist bombings moved beyond their traumas. Subsequently, she visited Israel eight times between 2004 and 2010 to speak with such survivors.

She spoke with 24 survivors in 2004, who made up the research study sample for her doctoral dissertation, then revisited them in 2007, interviewed seven more plus 15 Arab Israelis. In 2013, she again asked them to reflect upon and describe changes in “their family, work, health and/or outlook in life since the previous interviews. The result is 36 stories as told by 48 survivors and family members with 33 incidents described.

The book is a tribute “to those who survived attacks with or without disability or loss, as well as family members of those who perished…. By telling and retelling their stories, we celebrate their lives as people – as human beings.”

Among the most amazing aspects of the book is one of the three appendices, which lists 58 organizations supporting terror survivors and families. There is also a glossary and a selected bibliography.

This is a very difficult book to read. Every story is upsetting and painful, whether one has personally experienced a terrorist attack, is related to someone or is acquainted with a victim. However, Konvisser notes 12 qualities common to these survivors, which could be “cultivate[d] to master any crisis.” These include:

• They struggle, confront and ultimately integrate painful thoughts and emotions.

• They adjust their future expectations to fit their new reality.

• They call on their inner strength, core beliefs and values.

• They are helped to move forward by strength gained from their past experiences and prior adversity.

• They are helped by spirituality or grappling with fundamental existential questions.

• They stay healthy and focus on their fitness level.

• They are creative, find the silver lining and give back, moving forward with action.

• They stay connected and seek outside resources to help them through rough times.

• They tell their stories and try to make sense of their lives.

• They are hopeful, optimistic and celebrate life.

May we all learn from their experiences.

New book is first Jacob Dinezon work in English

Jacob Dinezon (1856-1919) was a Yiddish novelist and short-story writer, as famous during his lifetime as were his contemporaries, the three pillars of late-19th- and early-20th-century Yiddish literature, Mendele Mocher Sforim, Y.L. Peretz and Sholem Aleichem. All of these masters knew and were impressed with Dinezon’s work.

During his period of literary activity in the latter half of the 19th century, Dinezon at times even outshadowed the three founding fathers because his books touched thousands of readers and were more widely sold. In fact, one of his novels sold more than 200,000 copies, an unheard of success in Yiddish literature. Dinezon achieved fame at the age of 20 with the publication of his first novel and remained famous until the day he died. He was so well known and beloved that every major figure of Yiddish literature came to his funeral in 1919.

Even encyclopedias in English recognized him. The early 20th-century Jewish Encyclopedia lists Dinezon as an important Yiddish writer (like other classical Yiddish writers, he also established a reputation as a Hebrew author), praise that is echoed in the contemporary Encyclopedia Judaica.

Sometimes mazel plays a role in literary fame but, in Dinezon’s case, it seemed to express itself in income and not in posthumous regard. And now that the worldwide Yiddish-reading community is vanishing, a writer’s lot can be determined by translation, which can bring fame, and to discovery, which in turn can prompt translation. If a writer doesn’t find his translator/editor in another language, he suffers the misfortune of neglect, which is what happened with Dinezon. If you ask any knowledgeable reader familiar with Aleichem and other famous Yiddish writers if he has ever heard of Dinezon, the answer would probably be no.

Until now, we have not had any work by Dinezon in English. But this lacuna has been successfully filled with the wonderful book of 11 Dinezon stories, beautifully translated by Tina Lunson and edited by Scott Davis, who has also provided an illuminating introduction: Memories and Scenes: Shtetl, Childhood, Writers (Jewish Storyteller Press, 2014).

Dinezon was a social realist, accurately depicting small-town (shtetl) Jewish life. With a cinematic eye, he zeroes in on his characters, deftly telling fascinating stories while at the same time giving an accurate portrait of the mores, attitudes, speech and foibles of the men, women and children whom he depicts.

Like Dickens, Denizon wrote about the downtrodden and about poorly treated students in Hebrew schools with such realism that he actually brought about reforms. A cross section of Jewish society in Poland lives in his pages: the young and old, Chassidim and enlightened Jews, simple workingmen and rich householders. Every single one of his stories breathes with life and verisimilitude.

In this book of 11 stories, a collection published after Dinezon’s death in 1919, we have finely crafted tales – so in keeping with Jewish short-story writing at the turn of the 20th century – that recall vividly portrayed shtetl characters from Dinezon’s childhood years and memories of such literary figures as Mendele Mocher Sforim (Mendele the Bookseller, aka Sholem Abramovich), Peretz, and the playwright Avrom Goldfaden.

Dinezon also played an important historical role in the development of Yiddish as a literary language. In fact, he mentored, advised and befriended almost every major Jewish writer of his day. The list reads like a who’s who of late-19th- and early-20th-century modern Yiddish literature, including the writers mentioned above, as well as S. Ansky, David Frishman, Shimon Frug, Sholem Asch, David Pinski and Abraham Reisen.

In one of the superb stories, Mayer Yeke, we see how a boy’s great fear of the shtetl’s most righteous Jew, Mayer Yeke, turns to love and respect after he witnesses Mayer’s mitzvah assisting the town drunk. Sholem Yoyne Flask depicts a mild-mannered tailor transformed by the liquor in his flask into a fiery defender of the town’s poor folk – then something happens when a surprising discovery is made about his flask. With Motl Farber, Purimshpieler, we are introduced to a housepainter who languishes during the winter when he cannot work, but at Purim, he becomes the leader of a band of Purim players. When the troupe is arrested by the new Russian police chief, an unlikely “Esther” comes to their rescue.

A story that achieves the psychological depth of a Dostoevsky tale is Yosl Algebrenik and His Student. It tells the story of Yosl, an outstanding Talmud scholar, a genius some said, destined to become a great rabbi, who has a passion for mathematics. At age 30, for reasons no one remembers, he tosses away the Talmud and its commentaries for the study of algebra and algebraic logic. From then on, he spends all his time studying algebra, except for the few hours a week he devotes to tutoring children to eke out a living.

Another moving and profound story is called Borekh, after the name of the hero, a poor orphan living in the yeshivah. He doesn’t do well in talmudic studies but he has a talent for woodcarving, making dreidls, Purim groggers and toy animals for the children of the town. One day, he decides to leave the yeshivah and start anew, with hopes of making a great holy ark, “one that people have never seen before.” When he achieves that, he will send it to his friend in the yeshivah, who he knows will become a great scholar. He leaves without saying goodbye.

Some of Dinezon’s autobiographical sketches are as engaging as his fiction. In My First Work, he relates the childhood experience of reading his first Yiddish novel, a Jewish version of Robinson Crusoe. He is so taken by the book, he writes his own adventure story. In Sholem Yankev Abramovich, Dinezon tells how his debut novel, The Dark Young Man, was published and how he acquired his first copy in Moscow. At the same time, he learns that the Yiddish writer Mendele Mocher Sforim and the Hebrew author Sholem Abramovich are actually the same person.

It is not often that we are privileged to make a literary discovery of our own. With this book by Dinezon, the first in English, we happily encounter a master writer who deserves to be ranked with the great Yiddish writers whom he befriended and who admired him.

Curt Leviant’s most recent book is the short story collection Zix Zexy Ztories.

According to halachah, women’s role can be broad

While I have a very good Jewish background, enhanced by the hundreds of books I have reviewed over the years, I am, by no means, a scholar. However, when I heard about The Status of Women in Jewish Law: Responsa by Rabbi David Golinkin (Centre for Women in Jewish Law at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, 2012), I wanted to read and review it because there are a number of issues – that appear both in the news and in other books I’ve read – that are expounded and discussed by Golinkin.

When I read Rashi’s Daughters, for example, I was intrigued by the author, Maggie Anton, writing that the daughters laid tefillin, studied Talmud and commented on their father’s responsa. The violent, aggressive behavior of certain Orthodox men and women toward the Women of the Wall, who have tried for more than 25 years to have a respectful minyan on Rosh Chodesh each month, observing their personal traditions, further motivated my reading of this book.

Rabbi Reuven Hammer, former president of the International Rabbinical Assembly, in one of his columns last year in the Jerusalem Post, wrote: “I cannot help but wonder what the problem is with the desire of some women to wear tallitot, tefillin and read from the Torah at the Western Wall. I am further amazed at the extreme statements made by the rabbi in charge of the site and by other leaders of the Charedi (ultra-Orthodox) community calling on their followers to come out and protest, as well as by the silence of moderate Orthodox authorities on this issue. I cannot believe that they really think that what these women are doing is in violation of Jewish law.

“Surely they know as well as anyone else that all of this is permitted.

“Women may not be required to do these things within traditional halachah [Jewish law], but nowhere are they prohibited from doing them, any more than they are prohibited from sitting in a sukkah!”

Hammer continued: “My only conclusion is that this … has nothing to do with Jewish law and nothing to do with the sanctity of the Wall and nothing to do with offending others, and everything to do with protecting an insular way of life…. These groups have every right to want to live that way…. But they have absolutely no right to force their practices upon others and to make the totally false claim that what they say represents the official position of traditional Judaism. It simply does not.”

He noted, “The sages in the second century CE exempted [women] from certain mitzvot, but did not prohibit them from performing them. There is no excuse for us, nearly 2,000 years later, forbidding what neither the Torah nor the sages forbade. Let us put an end to all this fuss and support the right of women to perform these mitzvot within the framework of traditional Judaism.”

In Golinkin’s book, we learn that, while there are Orthodox rabbis who have made innovations for women, many Orthodox rabbis ignore not only non-Orthodox rulings on women in Judaism but also Orthodox rulings. We also learn that change isn’t a linear process between or within denominations.

In the book’s introduction, “The Participation of Jewish Women in Public Rituals and Torah Study,” Golinkin surveys 41 events between 1845 and 2010, regarding women in Judaism. He finds that changes did not necessarily move from Reform to Conservative to Orthodox. For example, the bat mitzvah ceremony, credited to Conservative Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan in 1922, was preceded by rabbis in Italy, France and Baghdad and by Reform Rabbi Yechezkel Karo in 1902. Women have been ordained by the Reform movement in the United States since 1972, but Regina Jonas, who could not be called Reform, was ordained as a rabbi in Germany in 1935. Women have had aliyot since 1893, including Henrietta Szold in 1922, but it was not until 1995 that 88 percent of Conservative synagogues allowed aliyot for women. Orthodox rabbis began to allow separate women’s prayer groups in the 1970s but some Conservative rabbis had done so since 1949. In broad strokes, main efforts to change women’s roles in Reform Judaism lasted from 1846 to 1972; Conservative, from 1874 to 2001; and Orthodox, from 1978 to 2010.

Golinkin writes, “The tension between halachah and modernity has caused, is causing and will continue to cause division and disagreement within the Jewish people.”

He also notes, “The status of women in halachah has begun to cause division between Modern Orthodox and the Charedi (ultra-Orthodox) camp in Israel and abroad.”

He then lists nine approaches to changing halachah: 1) those who oppose any change in Judaism; 2) opposition specifically to changes in the synagogue; 3) acknowledging equal status between men and women, expressing it through different roles and mitzvot; 4) willingness to accept certain changes so as to not drive women from Judaism; 5) change within the framework of traditional halachah; 6) adjusting discriminatory halachot according to contemporary times; 7) changing halachah with equality for women; 8) feeling halachah is not binding, and men and women are equal in Judaism; and 9) suggesting a halachic revolution.

The remaining 15 chapters of The Status of Women in Jewish Law consist of responsa to critical questions. In each case, Golinkin surveys the rabbis who wrote responsa on a particular issue – for and against – and then concludes with what he terms “practical halachah.” There is a complete bibliography after each responsa’s conclusion. In brief, they are:

Responsa 1: women and tefillin. In Golinkin’s view, the responsa show “ample halachic justification” for allowing women to wear tefillin, as long as they are worn with “the same devotion and halachic requirements which apply to men.”

Responsa 2: women and singing. Golinkin writes, “… there is no general prohibition against women singing in classic Jewish law based on the Talmud and subsequent codes and commentaries until the early 19th century.” And there is “no halachic justification for anyone walking out when women sing … it is forbidden to walk out, in order not to insult the female performers.”

Responsa 3: women in the minyan and as shlichot tzibbur (prayer leaders). Golinkin concludes that women may be counted in the minyan for shacharit, minchah, ma’ariv, musaf and ne’ilah, and may serve as shlichot tzibbur in all of these services.

Responsa 4: adding the Imahot (Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, Leah) to the Amidah (central prayer of the prayer book). Golinkin writes that the correct and traditional way is to compose a short piyyut (liturgical poem) recited in the middle of the Amidah blessings.

Responsa 5: reciting Baruch Sheptarani (the Parents’ Blessing) at a bat mitzvah. Golinkin writes that this blessing, traditionally said by the father to mark his son’s turning 13, can be recited by both parents for their daughter.

Responsa 6: aliyot for women and hearing Torah read in public. Golinkin determines that women are obligated to hear the Torah read in public and can be called for an aliyah.

Responsa 7: women reading the Megillah. Golinkin believes that women are obligated to read the Megillah in public and be counted in the minyan for the reading.

Responsa 8: reciting verses honoring Esther during the Megillah reading. Golinkin writes that this is permissible.

Responsa 9: women as mohalot (circumcisers). Golinkin believes that this is permissible.

Responsa 10: participation of women in funerals. Golinkin writes that there is no need for the separation of men and women during a eulogy, and that women should be encouraged to participate in the eulogy, funeral procession and burial, as well as the escort to the cemetery.

Responsa 11: women reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish. Golinkin finds no halachic reason to prohibit women from reciting this prayer.

Responsa 12: women participating in a marriage ceremony and the Sheva Brachot (Seven Blessings). Golinkin says that women may hold the chuppah poles, sing, read the ketubah (marriage contract), give a drash (explanation or sermon), recite the betrothal blessing and Sheva Brachot, and be counted as a “new face,” according to wishes of those involved.

Responsa 13: women on a law committee, rendering halachic decisions and writing responsa. Golinkin concludes that women may render halachic decisions, they may study halachah, teach and discuss halachah and write responsa.

Responsa 14: having a mechitza (partition dividing men and women in synagogue). Golinkin writes that it is permissible to abolish this custom.

Responsa 15: ordination of women as rabbis, holding public office, studying Torah, serving as witness. Golinkin writes that women may be ordained as rabbis “on condition that … they undertake upon themselves all PTBC (positive time-bound commandments) and to refrain from participating in batei din [rabbinical courts] for conversion or to serve as witnesses at marriages and divorces.” According to Golinkin, women are permitted “to study and teach Torah and all subjects related to the Torah” and “it is permissible for a woman to serve in public office.”

For anyone interested in the sources and issues regarding the role of women in Judaism, this book is an informative, absorbing and remarkable read. It concludes with a collection of eulogies delivered by Golinkin and a glossary.

A family underworld – Bossin and Lansky

Children rarely pay much attention to what their parents are doing. Children of parents on the wrong side of the law are no different. They may overhear conversations around the house, they may see headlines in the media but they do not really connect the dots. Two books this spring offer portraits from the criminal world: years after their fathers died, the daughter of notorious New York mobster Meyer Lansky and the son of Toronto bookie Davy Bossin look back with fondness for their dads.

Both men were in illegal gambling. In fact, stories about some characters mentioned in one of these books are fleshed out in the other. However, the families led extremely different lives. Lansky, who organized “organized crime,” lived in unbound luxury, while Bossin, a bookie who worked for people who were Lansky associates, had a more modest life. Yet both fathers were sons of Jewish immigrant families who came to North America in the early 20th century. Born three years apart, their Jewish roots were never far from the surface, regardless of what else they did.

Canadian folksinger Bob Bossin tells the story of his father in Davy the Punk: A Story of Bookies, Toronto the Good, the Mob and My Dad (Porcupine’s Quill). Bossin was 17 years old when his father died in 1963. He searches to understand what his father did, piecing together an image from recollections of family and friends, newspaper clippings and official government records. With his talent for storytelling and sense of wry humor, Bossin provides a cinematically rich narrative that allows readers to feel they are eavesdropping on conversations among close friends who are not such bad guys. It’s easy to picture the circle of seasoned Jewish men sitting around a coffee-stained table, telling tales.

book cover - Davy the Punk — Bob Bossin tells the story of his father in *Davy the Punk*.

Bossin frankly admits that some of the anecdotes he recounts may be not completely true. He comes from a family of storytellers who, he says, quoting U.S. journalist A.J. Liebling, diverge from recorded history “only to improve upon it.” In this world, a good story trumps just about anything else.

Bossin begins at a Toronto ballpark, Maple Leaf Stadium, where his father’s cronies swap stories, argue politics and only incidentally watch baseball. They talk about Benny the Shoykhet, who was a bookie and kept a few kosher chickens in case of a police raid, and Arnie “the Shnook” Schneider, who was busted for bookmaking 67 times but was never sent to jail. Mysteriously, the court lost records of previous incidents and considered each arrest as a first offence.

With stories about his grandparents, Bossin places his family inside the historical moments of a generation of Jews who emigrated to North America from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century. Davy was born a few months later, in 1905, on a ship taking his grandmother to reunite with his grandfather in Toronto.

The Bossins remained poor and continued to feel the sting of antisemitism in Canada – Eaton’s and other stores would not hire Jews, for example. But, in Canada, there were no pogroms. The Bossins, like other Jews, were left alone to live their lives.

Bossin believes that his father quickly abandoned his Judaism in the New World, but a small spark remained. Every week, his father went back to his parents’ home for Shabbat dinner.

The family finally escaped poverty and prejudice through horses. Bossin cautions that his account may not be exactly true but, if it is, his father was 11 years old when legendary racetrack owner Abram Orpen brought him into the gambling business. By the age of 17, his father was a “tout,” who hung around the racetrack offering tips to betters. Eventually, he became “a lay-off artist.” Bossin explains that bookies spread their risk of unexpected losses by laying off bets, similar to re-insurance in the insurance industry. Arnold Rothstein, a powerful U.S. gangster best known as the man who fixed the 1919 World Series, developed the system for bookies across North America.

As “a bookie’s bookie,” his father avoided run-ins with the law for almost 20 years. His father was also involved in broadcasting horse-race results for bookmakers from tracks across the country. He ran the Toronto operation for U.S. gangsters, eventually having more than 50 phones in his home. Police repeatedly tried to close him down, beginning in 1939, but the only penalty he ever paid was a $10 fine for running a business out of his home.

Every incident mentioned in the book leads to another engaging story about his father’s circle of friends, punters, gangsters or the occasional crackdown on gambling. Bossin’s father, who is lovingly portrayed as a quiet, generous man, moved from horses to nightclubs in the early 1950s, running Theatrical Attractions, a talent agency that booked stars such as Sammy Davis Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald. He managed the Crew Cuts before they had big hits. Davy died at the age of 58.

Excellent storyteller that he is, Bossin saves one of his best stories for the closing. He discovers his mother had an affair shortly before he was born. Was Davy really his father? He decides, yes. “It was on Davy’s knee, or beside him at Maple Leaf Stadium, or tucked between him and his cronies at a delicatessen, that I learned that nothing beats a good story. No question about it, I am Davy’s son.”

***

In Daughter of the King: Growing Up in Gangland (Weinstein Books), Sandra Lansky, assisted by writer William Stadiem, writes mostly about her own life. Along the way, she offers a complimentary portrait of her father.

Meyer Lansky got his start in booze and illegal gambling during Prohibition. Once liquor became legal, he became a nightclub impresario. At the front of the house, he had A-list entertainers; at the back, he ran glamorous but illegal gambling dens. He operated clubs with partners across the country. He was accused, but never convicted, of establishing his businesses through a network of associates who relied on graft, bribery and murder.

book cover - Daughter of the King — Similar to Bob Bossin, Sandra Lansky was also unaware of her father’s activities as she was growing up.

In the late 1950s, shortly before the Cuban Revolution, Lansky opened a luxurious casino in Havana. The good life evaporated after Fidel Castro shut down the casino in 1960. Once Lansky returned to Miami, Robert Kennedy and the FBI launched an aggressive crackdown on organized crime, with Lansky clearly a target. However, when he was finally brought to trial in 1973, he was acquitted.

Similar to Bossin, Lansky was also unaware of her father’s activities as she was growing up. She was a teenager before she heard anything about his reputation, and she never confronted him to find out if the accusations were true. A loyal and loving daughter, she portrays government efforts to stop gangland murders and illegal gambling as unwarranted campaigns against a hardworking businessman. For her, gangsters Frank Costello and Bugsy Siegel were uncles, not the kingpins of criminal networks.

Although she knew many of the mobsters, she includes no new revelations about the mob. Instead, she offers Oprah-type admissions about her upbringing as a spoiled rich kid, her torrid affairs with Dean Martin and others, her disastrous marriage and her drug addiction. With its irritatingly sassy tone and sordid tales of decadence, the book makes it difficult to like, or even be sympathetic, to any of the people in her life.

Her father moved much further away from his Jewish heritage than did Davy Bossin, so far that his daughter did not realize she was Jewish until she was a teenager. She writes that her parents did not see themselves as Jewish. But she relates that she found out her father in the late 1930s used his muscle men to break up Nazi rallies on the Upper East Side and helped mobilize dockworkers to root out Nazi sympathizers during the war. He also provided arms and money to Israel in 1948.

When authorities came after him in the 1950s, he responded viscerally to the barely concealed antisemitic and anti-immigrant bigotry of the crusaders. “I will not let you prosecute me because I am a Jew,” he defiantly told them. In the 1970s, he tried – unsuccessfully – to escape U.S. crime busters by claiming citizenship in Israel, where his grandparents were buried.

Meyer Lansky died of lung cancer at 81. Forbes had estimated his net worth at $300 million. But where was the money? The family never found it. At least, that’s what his daughter says.

Media consultant Robert Matas, a former Globe and Mail journalist, still reads books. Both of the books reviewed here are available at the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library. To reserve them, or any other, call 604-257-5181 or email [email protected]. To view the catalogue, visit jccgv.com and click on Isaac Waldman Library.

New biography of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander focuses on her work

In 1963, landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander was appalled when she saw park workers at Jericho Beach burning logs that had broken away from booms. She called up Bill Livingston, the Vancouver Park Board superintendent, and suggested placing the logs along the sandy beaches for people to sit on. Livingston thought it was a good idea.

Fifty years later, it’s often hard during the summer months to find a vacant spot along one of the logs lining Vancouver’s beaches. Changing the landscape of the city’s beaches is one of many ways in which Oberlander has contributed to making Vancouver one of the world’s most livable cities. However, despite being Canada’s preeminent landscape architect, Oberlander remains unknown to most of the people who enjoy the benefits of her work, and Susan Herrington, professor of architecture and landscape architecture at the University of British Columbia, sets out to raise Oberlander’s profile with the recently released biography Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, Making the Modern Landscape.

image - Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, Making the Modern Landscape book cover — *Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, Making the Modern Landscape* comes after several public tributes and publications about Oberlander’s achievements.

The book comes after several public tributes and publications about Oberlander’s achievements, including an extensive oral history available online at the Cultural Landscape Foundation (tclf.org) and a biography for teens called Live Every Leaf: The Life of Landscape Architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander (2008). Oberlander has also co-authored two books: Trees in the City (1977) and Green Roof: A Design Guide and Review of Relevant Technologies (2002).

Herrington’s fascinating book goes one step further, unraveling the numerous influences throughout Oberlander’s life that shaped her professional development. Herrington places her innovative urban designs, her use of plants and her commitment to sustainability in the context of trends in landscape architecture over the past six decades. The biography is, as Herrington asserts, as much a history of modern landscape as a portrait of Oberlander’s life.

An impressive collection of photos and landscape sketches are sprinkled throughout the book to flesh out the scholarly account. The list of stunning accomplishments in a stellar career is balanced with references to some of her grand ideas that did not work out.

But the book will disappoint those looking for a popular biography with a window into her personal life; Herrington has taken an academic approach to Oberlander’s life. We become well acquainted with what the landscape architect accomplished. We are told a few delightful anecdotes about her life. But we do not learn much about her feelings or her personal relationships. If you want to get to know her in a more personal way, check out the oral history at the Cultural Landscape Foundation.

Also, the book does not pay much attention to Oberlander’s commitment to Israel and her work within the Jewish community. One of the founding members of Temple Sholom, she held a place of honor at High Holiday services for many years, reading the story of Jonah with her late husband, architect and urban planner Peter Oberlander. She designed the synagogue’s garden as well as the biblical garden at King David High School with its plants reflecting the various species and geographic regions of the Land of Israel, as described in the Torah.

Oberlander has been involved in more than 500 projects, including the design of more than 70 playgrounds. Her mother Beate Hahn was a professional horticulturalist and author of several books about gardening with children. Oberlander from an early age did drawings for her mother’s books. She has said she decided at the age of 11 that she wanted to design gardens.

Herrington includes a design of a wooded-parkland that Oberlander completed when she was 15 years old. Already at that time, Oberlander was busy in the garden, learning from firsthand experiences about the benefits of organic gardening, companion plants and attracting birds and insects to mitigate pests.

Oberlander was born in 1921 in Mulheim, Germany, a small city along the Rhine River. Herrington’s book ignores the prominence of her grandfather in Germany (a politician and professor and the University of Berlin) and the hurdles the family faced before leaving Germany in the late 1930s. The family emigrated to the United States and Oberlander in 1940 went to Smith College, a women’s college in western Massachusetts, to study architecture and landscape architecture. By coincidence, she stayed in a room across the hall from Betty Friedan, who went on to write The Feminine Mystique. However Oberlander’s contact with strong feminists did not turn her into an outspoken crusader for women’s rights.

Herrington emphasizes the significance of Oberlander as one of the first women in a male-dominated profession, but Oberlander never claimed to be a feminist. She told Herrington she never questioned whether a woman could pursue a professional career outside the home while raising her children, she just did it.

Herrington emphasizes the significance of Oberlander as one of the first women in a male-dominated profession, but Oberlander never claimed to be a feminist. She told Herrington she never questioned whether a woman could pursue a professional career outside the home while raising her children, she just did it.

Oberlander went on to Harvard in 1943. A year later, her mother, without Oberlander’s knowledge, asked the university to allow her to take a year off to work in an architectural office. Her mother thought her drafting skills were inadequate. Together, they decided she would take a year off. (The book does not tell us how that intervention affected her relationship with her mother.) Oberlander found a drafting job but was fired three months later and returned to complete her studies. She moved to Vancouver in 1953 after marrying Peter Oberlander.

Bringing together much that has been written with original research, Herrington shows how the landscape of some of Vancouver’s most familiar places (Robson Square and the Museum of Anthropology), as well as prominent national and international landmarks (the New York Times building, National Gallery in Ottawa and chanceries for embassies in Washington and Berlin) came out of Oberlander’s experiences as a child in the Weimer Republic, her exposure to seminal thinkers in school and her contact with leading figures in the profession.

Oberlander’s commitment to exhaustive research, modern design with abstract shapes and unadorned lines, and community involvement in planning were evident from the start of her career in Philadelphia. In design work for public housing, private residents and playgrounds, she saw the role of landscape architects as working for the community, not the wealthy. She shaped spaces to spark the imagination and creativity of their users. Her innovative work on playgrounds, with informal play areas and separated spaces for different age groups and activities, became a standard for progressive play areas across North America.

Even in the early 1950s, her plans reflected strong ecological values, attributes that would become her trademark in later years. Her designs integrated current strands of trees and plants as much as possible and followed the contours of the land. Years later, she set standards of excellence with her work on green roofs and green buildings.

Oberlander paid close attention to how people reacted to landscape design, what feelings were stirred by design and color, to understand how they used the space. She created areas intended to foster creativity and imagination while relating to the local context.

Herrington tracks Oberlander’s professional development as she shapes design to incorporate ideas from psychology, art and ecology. Oberlander paid close attention to how people reacted to landscape design, what feelings were stirred by design and color, to understand how they used the space. She created areas intended to foster creativity and imagination while relating to the local context.

By the mid-1970s, she had moved from playgrounds to urban landscapes that became havens for adults in densely populated areas. Herrington writes about Oberlander’s 30-year collaboration with Arthur Erickson and influences that had an impact on her high-profile projects.

Throughout it all, Herrington writes that Oberlander never lost her commitment to serve all of society. She continued to work on modest gardens for private homes, public-housing projects, playgrounds and landscapes for people with special needs. And, Oberlander has never forgotten her past. “Why would I disregard the very reasons why I joined this profession in the first place?” she told Herrington.

Media consultant Robert Matas, a former Globe and Mail journalist, still reads books. Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, Making the Modern Landscape is available at the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library. To reserve this book, or any other, call 604-257-5181 or email [email protected]. To view the catalogue, visit jccgv.com and click on Isaac Waldman Library.