Books – Page 40

From nonsense, knowledge

To help readers remember what they learn, Hilarious Hebrew uses silly sentences and illustrations. (all images from Hilarious Hebrew)

“The poor monkey has a cough.” “If you’re feeling sleepy, let the lights dim, yawn and let your imagination run free.”

Through such silly sentences, readers of Hilarious Hebrew: The Fun and Fast Way to Learn the Language (Pitango Publishing) learn that, in Hebrew, the word for monkey is kof (pronounced similarly to cough) and that imagination is dim’yon (pronounced dim, yawn). If the context of the sentences isn’t enough, the illustrations should ensure you remember.

“The method in Hilarious Hebrew is aimed at teaching vocabulary rather than whole sentences because the whole point of it is to teach a Hebrew word in the context of a sentence in English that would convey the pronunciation and the meaning of the new word (in Hebrew) through a familiar, easy context (in English),” explained Hebrew teacher Yael Breuer, who co-authored the book with musician Eyal Shavit.

The writing duo is continually coming up with new teaching phrases, which they often post on the book’s Facebook page, Instagram and Twitter accounts, said Breuer.

“I’ve used the method over the years with my Hebrew students and classes and knew that the method worked well – the words stuck in the students’ minds! – and that it added an element of fun to the lessons.”

And her testing ground has been extensive. The longtime teacher has worked with a wide variety of students: “people with family members in Israel, people who planned to visit Israel, partners of Israelis who want to learn some Hebrew, people converting to Judaism, a vicar, nuns – a real interesting mix,” she said.

About the book’s origins, Breuer said she shared a list of 20 to 30 sentences that she used regularly in teaching with Shavit, who is also an Israeli expat living in Brighton, England.

“Eyal loved the idea so much and started making up new sentences and texting them to me to make me laugh. I started reciprocating with new sentences that I would make up and, for awhile, we were just making up sentences for our own amusement. A few months down the line, however, when I realized that there were about 300 sentences that taught a variety of Hebrew words from various fields and at all levels, I suggested to Eyal that we share the resource – and that’s how the idea of the book came about.

“It took us about a year from conception to publication,” she continued. “We did not approach a publisher, as we knew how we wanted the book to look and feel. It was a long and rather hard process at times, and we would regularly spend hours rewriting one sentence so that it taught the Hebrew word in the best possible way. We also had to liaise with designers, find the right illustrator, choose the right printers and make many decisions, but we completed the process, are getting fantastic feedback and are very pleased with the result!”

An important part of the book’s appeal is the drawings by cartoonist, writer and illustrator Aubrey Smith, who has contributed his art to several books and also has written How to Build a Robot with Your Dad and Screw It, both published by Michael O’Mara Books.

In addition to teaching Modern Hebrew, Breuer writes for the Jewish Chronicle; she also has had her articles on British culture published in Israeli newspapers Haaretz and Maariv. From Rehovot, Breuer moved to Brighton 27 years ago, she said. “My husband, David, is English and, although he is originally from London, he already lived in Brighton when I met him.”

Shavit, who is from Kibbutz Kfar Szold in northern Israel, has been in Brighton for nine years. “He was working elsewhere in the U.K. but someone recommended Brighton as a vibrant and arty place where he could pursue his music career, so he came here and stayed,” said Breuer. “He studied music in Brighton and has been making a living as a musician (plays the guitar and sings) ever since.”

The two friends met fellow Brightoner Smith, who is English, “by pure chance through my neighbor, Dave,” explained Breuer. “As soon as we saw his wonderful, humorous style, we knew that he was the one. Aubrey has never had a connection to Judaism or Hebrew but, through illustrating the book, he himself learned some Hebrew words and would sometimes use them in his emails to us, which was another proof that the method works!”

The Jewish community in Brighton is a few thousand strong, said Breuer, with “four active synagogues – two Orthodox, a Reform and a Progressive, and a Chabad branch, too. There is a small community of a few dozen Israelis but it is a vibrant one – we meet regularly in a pub in Brighton, celebrate festivals together and keep in touch. Many of the Israelis here and their English-speaking partners or children have been our ‘guinea pigs’ when writing the book and their feedback helped us tremendously.”

Hilarious Hebrew is available at hilarioushebrew.com, some bookshops and gift stores and also on Amazon.

Life legacies in writing

“I am now face to face with dying, but I am not finished with living,” writes Oliver Sacks as the dedication to Gratitude (Knopf Canada, 2015), a collection of four essays that were written in the two years preceding his death last August.

“I have given much of my life to the Jewish world, and I wish I had many more years to serve this noble calling,” writes Edgar Bronfman in concluding his book Why Be Jewish? A Testament (Signal, 2016), which he completed mere weeks before his death in December 2013.

Bronfman continues, “But everything has its natural end, and so now, as my time on earth draws to a close, I would thank my stars even more if you would choose to stand at Sinai; if you would choose, as I did so many years ago, to join this remarkable people who generation after generation held fast to the dream that through our individual and collective efforts we could transform the troubled world we share into a more perfect, more humane, more civilized place.”

Even though he became intrigued with Judaism late in life, Bronfman still defined himself as secular, “not comfortable” calling himself an atheist “in the face of the complexity of the universe.” He had a connection to Judaism through his grandfather, but it was weak. “My parents,” he writes, “for whatever reason, failed to instil much-needed Jewish pride in their children.”

Sacks was a self-described atheist. For him, it was his mother’s strongly negative reaction to the news of his homosexuality that pushed him away from belief: “The matter was never mentioned again, but her harsh words made me hate religion’s capacity for bigotry and cruelty,” he writes.

book cover - Gratitude However, the final essay in Sacks’ Gratitude is called “Sabbath.” In it, he recalls his parents’ observance of Shabbat, a day that “was entirely different from the rest of the week.” He recalls how the family would mark the day, how he became bar mitzvah, his break with his family and community in England after he qualified as a doctor and moved to Los Angeles, his “near-suicidal addiction to amphetamines,” his recovery and how he “became a storyteller at a time when medical narrative was almost extinct.” In addition to being a neurologist, most readers know, Sacks was an author – he wrote more than a dozen books, including Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and other Clinical Tales and An Anthropologist on Mars.

Sacks comes to appreciate Shabbat: “And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life – achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.”

Gratitude is a short but powerful collection. It is masterfully written and nearly impossible to get through without crying. All of the essays have been published before, but having them together for re-reading, rethinking and re-feeling is more than worthwhile. Every read will be a cathartic experience.

The first essay, “Mercury,” was written just before Sacks’ 80th birthday in July 2013. In it, he talks about what it feels like to be turning 80, some of his regrets, but mostly how much he has left to do, “freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.”

“My Own Life” is named after the autobiography of one of Sacks’ favorite philosophers, David Hume. Sacks shares a couple of paragraphs from that 1776 work, using it to lead into a discussion of his own state of mind. “My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself.” While not without fear, he writes, “my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written.”

In the third of the four essays, “My Periodic Table,” Sacks talks of his love of the physical sciences and how, since “death is no longer an abstract concept, but a presence,” he is surrounding himself again, as he did when he was a boy, “with metals and minerals, little emblems of eternity.” On his writing table is a gift from friends for his 81st birthday, thallium, as well as lead, for his recently celebrated 82nd birthday. After discussing the treatment of his cancer, he expresses his skepticism about reaching 83, his bismuth birthday. He did, indeed, pass away at 82.

book cover - Why Be Jewish? Bronfman died at 84. It is particularly fitting to be discussing his book Why Be Jewish? as Passover nears. Two of the nine chapters are directly related to the holiday: Chapter 8 is about its rituals, the story, the symbolic aspects, its importance, while Chapter 9 presents the principles and practices of leadership as demonstrated by Moses – not Moses the manager, but rather, “Moses the man who, as flawed as he was, executed brilliant strategies that ultimately transformed much of the world. These principles are also relevant to everyday leadership, from parenting to day-to-day responsibilities at work.”

There are many lessons Bronfman derives from Moses and the Exodus story. Good leadership involves standing up for something, perseverance, vision, pragmatism, courage, celebration of accomplishment, allowing opinions (even complaints, perhaps especially complaints), awareness of one’s strengths and shortcomings, adherence to a moral code, the duty to pass the mantle. He doesn’t believe that Moses’ non-admittance into the Promised Land was a punishment – instead, from Mount Nebo, Moses is permitted to see the entire Promised Land, “God is showing Moses the future that is really what most leaders want: they want to know that their dreams and vision will live on.”

Bronfman notes about the Torah’s last word, Israel: “It seems to me that we are being told that the commitment to Israel – the people – must be the focus, not Moses. And since ‘Israel’ means wrestling with God, the Torah also seems to charge the Jewish people with the task of ‘wrestling,’ a term I take to mean a commitment to struggling with that which we find difficult to embrace and not letting go until we find the truths we seek.”

In another chapter – on the rest of the Jewish holidays – Bronfman writes that he “would like to see the institution of Yom Ha’atzmaut Circles in synagogues and communities where Jews of multiple views could come together to discuss books that put forth different ideas on Israel’s situation, from Alan Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel to David Grossman’s novel To the End of the Land.”

He also talks of Shabbat, referring to the group Reboot, “a network of young, creative Jews who have sought ways to grapple with questions of Jewish identity and community in terms that will be meaningful to their generation….” He gives examples of other youth who are engaged in a meaningful Jewish life and the book’s foreword is written by Angela Warnick Buchdahl, who was a Bronfman Fellow in Israel in 1989. The program for high school juniors was founded by Bronfman, former chief executive officer of Seagram Co. Ltd., who also was chair of the board of governors of Hillel International and president of World Jewish Congress. Bronfman has written other books, including The Bronfman Haggadah with his wife, artist Jan Aronson.

The goal of Why Be Jewish? is to encourage nonreligious Jews – especially the younger generation – to practise the elements of Judaism that speak to them, and it is written to that audience. He touches upon all the basics of Judaism from the perspective that, “Judaism does not demand belief. Instead, it asks us to practise intense behaviors whose purpose is to perfect ourselves and the world.”

Bronfman’s approach is appealing in many ways, and he offers practical advice for the non-observant on how to connect with Judaism’s tenets and traditions. Even for the somewhat-observant Jew, many of his ideas will be interesting. His outlook is positive and well conceived. It is also inclusive.

He writes, “My own feeling is that Judaism is a big family of individuals with a common bond that has stayed strong through a long history and much hardship. Those who want to become part of this story are Jews, too. I believe the tent should be open and welcoming to anyone who wishes to join.

“For younger Jews today, choosing a particular ethnicity or culture may seem too narrow a form of self-identification. But I do not see Judaism as a form of tribalism that divides rather than unites. The Jewish people are one of the many vibrant patches on the richly diverse quilt of humanity. Each patch has its own design and, together, they make a beautiful whole. Embracing your heritage deepens your understanding of who you are and where you come from and brings you into a more meaningful relationship with the multicultural world.”

A loveless family saga

A powerful family saga, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (Thomas Dunne Books, 2016) by Sarit Yishai-Levi is brutally honest. It starts with the narrator, Gabriela, talking about her childhood in 1950s Jerusalem. Her relationship with her mother, Luna, is strained at best; more accurately, a mutual aversion. Luna is a dismal mother and a horrid wife, a cold, spiteful woman. Disliking her immensely, I wanted to know what happened to Gabriela, but the book didn’t go in that direction.

Instead of moving the action forward, the author goes back in time, almost to the banishment of the Jews from Spain. From there, she follows several generations of the Ermosas, a family of merchants in Jerusalem. The story that emerges is an anatomy of animus, a fictional dissertation on the topic of what happens to people who deny love – because they all deny it.

Rafael doesn’t love his wife Mercada. He married her at the behest of his mother, an obedient Jewish son doing his duty, while his heart belonged to another for all of his life. He doesn’t allow himself even to acknowledge his torn soul, but his unloving marriage poisons the family for generations to come. Some describe it as a curse, and Mercada becomes a bitter, hateful woman.

When Mercada and Rafael’s sunny-natured son Gabriel falls in love with a woman not approved by his family, his mother punishes him by marrying him off to the worst bride she can find. She ruthlessly ruins her son’s life and never regrets it.

The curse passes on to Rosa, Gabriel’s wife and one of the few nice characters in the book. Rosa is not beautiful or educated. Poor and orphaned when she was young, she took care of her younger brother from the age of 10. She is kind, with a heart full of emotions she doesn’t know how to express. She would have loved Gabriel, if he were even a little bit willing, a tad more tolerant of her faults, but instead, Gabriel despises her. No matter how hard Rosa tries, Gabriel doesn’t accept her, and his antipathy fills his life with venom and sadness.

Of course, their daughter Luna, born of such a union, doesn’t know how to love at all. The most beautiful woman in Jerusalem, the beauty queen of the title, Luna is frigid and uncaring. She adores clothing and makeup but the only person she truly loves is herself. Repulsed by her husband’s touch, she hates his sexual advances. She doesn’t even try to understand his pains or his interests, and her treatment of their young daughter is cruel. She is a horrible character but, for some reason, the author dedicates most of the book to her. Perhaps she was exploring Luna as the embodiment of self-absorption, but there is little or no pleasure in reading these ruminations.

Only in the last fifth of the book does the story return to Gabriela, showing how hard it was for her to break the curse, to learn to love. Forgiveness, like love, is something the Ermosa family lacked, too, and it takes Gabriela years of self-hatred to even grasp the concept.

Overall, none of the major players in the tale is likable, and it’s difficult to understand their stubborn resistance to love. This difficulty colored my perception of the novel as a whole, and I didn’t enjoy the jumps back and forth in time either. They made the story feel like a jigsaw puzzle, and even when I assembled the entire picture, the squiggly lines between the tiles were blurry.

Fortunately, the Ermosa family drama unfolded on the background of Israeli history, and the historical aspect of this book was fascinating. The Turkish rule of Palestine and the British Mandate, the Zionist movement and the Declaration of Independence, the war of 1948 and the siege of Jerusalem by the Arabs – the Ermosa family lived through it all.

They lived through the Holocaust, never even noticing it. While Jews died by the millions in Europe, the Ermosas’ petty concerns focused on their small shop and their unloving spouses. While the Etzel (aka the Irgun) unleashed bloody terror on the British, with constant bombings and shootings, the Ermosas only cared about their personal safety and their neighbors’ approval.

Some of the younger generation, Luna’s sisters in particular, try to participate, but never Luna or her parents. Gabriel forbids his daughters anything nontraditional, and filial obedience was mandatory in this family of narrow-minded people who didn’t know how to love.

The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem was originally published in 2013 in Hebrew. The English version was translated by Anthony Berris.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Secrets from best chefs

Leah Schapira and Victoria Dwek work together often. Instalments of their Made Easy cookbook series have been featured in the Jewish Independent, with positive reviews. And now, the pair have co-authored Everyday Secret Restaurant Recipes (ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications, 2015).

Here are not just 103 recipes, but they all come from restaurants, many from across the United States, but also from Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, England, Israel, Panama, Thailand and Uruguay. For each recipe, there is information on the restaurant, a large introduction and photo(s), ingredients, instructions, tidbits or hints for the home cook, and sometimes comments from the chef.

There is also an essay on kosher food trends by Elan Kornblum, founder of Great Kosher Restaurants Magazine, and an interview with him, followed by some basics that prep cooks do. Another essay covers the topic of sweets in the prep kitchen, and yet another, the smoking of foods.

There are 21 starters and sides, like avocado egg rolls from Bocca Steakhouse in Los Angeles; 16 soups and salads, such as a green salad from Milk N Honey in Melbourne; 12 sandwiches, including Philly steak sandwich from Retro Grill in Brooklyn; 17 chicken and meat recipes, such as gong bao chicken from Dini’s in Beijing; 10 fish recipes, like a salmon from Fresko in Aventura, Fla.; 14 brunch and lunch suggestions, including fettuccine with pesto from Deleite in Rio de Janeiro; and 12 baked goods and desserts, such as a halva from Lula by Darna in Panama City.

There are 148 mouth-watering color photographs, both full-page and stamp-size. Whereas a previous version of the cookbook focused on upscale restaurants, this cookbook’s subtitle is “From Your Favorite Kosher Cafés, Takeouts & Restaurants.”

If you know someone who enjoys traveling and eating, or just trying new recipes, this would make a great gift. The cookbook is more than just recipes, it is also a wealth of information.

ARTICHOKES, ROMAN-STYLE
Tevere 84, New York City, Lattanzi brothers (owners/chefs)

6 medium or 2 pounds baby artichokes
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
additional oil for frying
12 minced garlic cloves
sea salt

Cut off the top of each artichoke just above the middle. Remove some of the outer leaves and the interior immature and hair-like leaves.
Using a peeler, peel the stems of each artichoke.
In a bowl, toss artichokes with lemon juice.
Heat olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add garlic. Add artichokes and sprinkle with sea salt. Cook, side by side, stem side up. Cook until artichokes are tender, turning several times for overall browning, 15-20 minutes. Using a wooden spoon, press each artichoke firmly to the bottom of the pan so that the leaves flatten out. Cook for 10 minutes. (Optionally, for very soft and hot artichokes, you can also transfer to the oven and bake at 400˚F for an additional 10 minutes.
Before serving, heat additional oil in a sauté pan. Flatten artichokes to the flower shape and fry for two to four minutes before serving. Makes one to two servings.

ISRAELI BREAKFAST
Café Tamara, Jerusalem Technology Park, Ohad Vansuv (chef)

2 finely diced Persian cucumbers
2 finely diced tomatoes
1/2 finely diced red onion
handful chopped parsley
2 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
salt to taste
pepper to taste
olive oil for frying
4 beaten eggs
1 tbsp preserved lemon/lemon spread
1 tbsp harissa
1 cup yogurt
2 tbsp tahini

In a bowl, combine cucumbers, tomatoes, onion, parsley, olive oil and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper.
Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add eggs, preserved lemon, harissa, salt and pepper. Scramble eggs until cooked.
Place salad onto a plate. Top with eggs, yogurt and tahini. Garnish with parsley. Makes two servings. Serve immediately.

Sybil Kaplan is a journalist, foreign correspondent, lecturer, food writer and book reviewer who lives in Jerusalem. She also does the restaurant features for janglo.net and leads weekly walks in English in Jerusalem’s market.

On becoming a great leader

Sydney Finkelstein’s most recent book is Superbosses. (photo from Penguin/Random House Canada)

While the target audience for Sydney Finkelstein’s newest book, Superbosses: How Exceptional Bosses Master the Flow of Talent, is businesspeople, it is clear that his ideas carry well into many aspects of life, not just work, and not just business.

Finkelstein, who is a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., is originally from Montreal. He has authored 21 books and more than 80 academic articles.

“Pretty early on, I was interested in why people did what they did and in people who seem to have a lot of power and influence in society,” said Finkelstein. “I was actually very interested, and still am, in not just business leaders, but political leaders.”

Ten years ago, Finkelstein struck a note with his book Why Smart Executives Fail, and he was invited to give keynote speeches and to consult for several companies.

“Everybody pretty much had the same question, which was how to avoid getting into my sequel,” he said. “In the book, I talked about a lot of things you could do to avoid falling into the trap that led to failure but, over time, I came to realize that there was something else more important – the ability to generate and regenerate talent on a continuous basis. That’s the only way to survive and thrive in the long-term.”

After coming to this realization, Finkelstein set out to learn who possessed this ability. This is what led him to learn of those he came to call “superbosses.”

The Jewish Independent spoke with Finkelstein around the time of his March 8 talk and book signing at Concordia University in Montreal.

“The big difference was the ‘why smart executives fail’ leaders look at people around them – other managers and team members – as people to be used and exploited for their own purposes…. They didn’t really appreciate the fact that the people around them – team members – are actually probably the most important part of what you are doing, because they help you get better.”

Superbosses, on the other hand, wholly prioritized the idea of having great teams and great organizations of great people, understanding that this is the best way to succeed, he said. “The WSEF leaders didn’t understand that. So, that’s a gigantic difference in mindset – thinking about other people and what role they can play.

“Then, when you look at the details of how they run their businesses, there are many, many differences – from how they identify talent, to how they motivate people, how they develop teams, the role of vision and [of] inspiration.”

While most leaders, good or bad, carry with them a certain amount of ego due to their previous endeavors’ successes, Finkelstein said superbosses find ways to put that ego aside.

“This may be the best first thing for people to work on – having a degree of humility about yourself, your own accomplishments and your own personality even,” he said. “Humility doesn’t mean you’re afraid to take on challenges. It means you understand that there are other people who play a role and that you can’t let your ego run away with things.

“By the same token, listening is one of the most important managerial skills I’ve ever seen – the ability to really listen, to understand, not to critique. A lot of people are listening to find a flaw in their argument or to justify a point of view they already have. I’m talking about listening that’s designed to learn something. That’s a tremendous skill and mindset.”

Another important skill Finkelstein advised honing is open-mindedness, ranked highly with its close cousin, curiosity. These are attributes he regularly discusses with boards of directors and management teams.

“You need to have that curiosity about life, about what you’re doing,” he said. “When you have curiosity, you’re asking why a lot. Kids do that, but when we’re older, we don’t do that so much. You learn so much more by doing that.”

Courage is on the list, too – the kind of courage that challenges convention, and the ability to raise your voice when something is not going the way you think it should. “This doesn’t mean you’re going to win the argument or get your way,” said Finkelstein. “It’s about trying to improve the eventual outcome or situation you’re in.

“Many people often remain silent. They just nod their heads. As a result, they’re not engaged in what’s going on. Later, they spend their time complaining and back-biting, rather than being part of the solution. Sometimes, of course, managers or leaders create an environment where, if you challenge, you get punished, so it can be difficult, but I think courage is a critical factor.”

The next item on the list is accountability – recognizing you need to be responsible for your own actions and behavior, as well as instilling a sense of accountability in others.

“I think, by the way, that most people prefer not to be held personally accountable,” said Finkelstein. “I don’t think people should assume people would automatically be accountable. I think people enjoy it when it happens, but they don’t automatically do it. This is particularly relevant in volunteer organizations.

“Being a teacher, a nurturer of talent, is something anyone can do, no matter what their job is,” he continued. “You don’t have to be a famous CEO. You can be an average person doing whatever you’re doing. But, if you spend some time and energy acting to help others get better, often through teaching, sharing and listening … I think that’s a giant differentiator and extremely meaningful in people’s lives. If you have an impact in helping other people, it makes you feel good, too.

“Younger people, earlier in their career, who are ambitious, have high expectations, want to accomplish great things. How do you find people to work with, to work for? I talk a little about that in the book, but I also think that trying to work for someone who is more like a superboss, rather than less like one, is a great way to learn, develop and accelerate your career.”

As the book’s subtitle suggests, Finkelstein sees managing the flow of talent as one of the most important things for superbosses to do, and he segments this aspect into three categories.

“One is finding good people,” he said. “Everyone needs to hire when you’re growing, you need to hire and find people…. That’s the first stage in this flow of talent.

“The second stage, which not everyone engages in, is developing that talent, helping them get better. That’s managing the flow of that talent in a team/organization for a number of years.

“The third stage is managing the flow of talent sometimes even outside your own region, division or role in the company. Very few managers, leaders or bosses think a lot about … how they should manage people out of the organization. I’m talking about good and very good performers.

“The typical assumption among most leaders is to keep those people forever,” he said. “But, those who work for superbosses, people that really enhance their skills or have this vision, they won’t be satisfied with that small piece of pie. They want a bigger role themselves so, in fact, many of them will end up wanting to leave anyways. Managing the flow of talent should also consider this kind of radical or counterintuitive idea – managing people out of the company itself.”

Finkelstein said, “The best people know they will move around, look for those opportunities. If you know that will happen, the questions become how can you take advantage of that, how can you be strategic in that, how can you create a win-win out of that situation?’ That’s what superbosses do. They make a spinout business. One example from the book is the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). The CEO used to create big opportunities for senior executives who were going to leave anyways. He would create a spinout company in a mental health clinic, surgical centre or what have you. That former team member would be given the opportunity to be CEO of that spinout business but, because you’re doing the spinout, you get to participate in a financial sense.”

To see where you sit on the superbosses scale, Finkelstein invites readers to visit superbosses.com and take a 10-12 question quiz.

“The quiz is because people find it interesting to see how they rank,” he said. “The book can help them get better.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Cooking healthy, eating well

Rose Reisman’s newest cookbook is Rush Hour Meals: Recipes for the Entire Family. (photo from Rose Reisman)

Cookbook author, chef, television personality and columnist Rose Reisman helps people make better lifestyle choices.

After self-publishing a cookbook in 1988, she focused on healthy eating with Rose Reisman Brings Home Light Cooking (1993), which sold more than 400,000 copies. Since then, she’s been an oft-quoted expert on eating well, has appeared on TV and radio, worked as a teacher, and acted as a health and wellness consultant to businesses.

Reisman attended the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition to become a registered nutritional consultant. The mother of four ran a cooking school for four years, and then launched Rose Reisman Catering in 2004. She is also a nutritionist and adjunct professor at York University’s faculty of health, where she is a founding member of the university’s obesity task force.

Reisman also helps people eat well through the Personal Gourmet, a daily food delivery service launched in 2008 that offers both weight loss and healthy living plans she developed with the help of dieticians and weight management doctors. She has been a spokesperson for the national campaign of Breakfast for Learning and the national awareness campaign for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, and has been an ambassador for the Canadian Diabetes Association.

In coming weeks, Reisman’s newest cookbook will be released, Rush Hour Meals: Recipes for the Entire Family. It will be her 18th – chai – book guiding readers to a better life.

When she first started cooking, she told the Independent, she was making “very delicious, high-fat foods when everybody flocked to my home. I continued to do that and I became a good cook using loads of butter and cream and chocolate…. But then I found my own family history wasn’t that healthy. I had lost my dad to heart disease in his 50s, my grandmother at 52 to diabetes type 2. Everybody had high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity, and I was an overweight child.

“This was all going on in my early 30s. I was slim and running every day, and I had lost the weight I had as a kid, and I figured I was fine. But then I went for a routine physical and my cholesterol was literally off the charts like somebody in their 60s or 70s who’d been eating steak every day.

“I realized that what I ate, even though I exercised and maintained a healthy weight, was still clogging my arteries, and my family history was such that I couldn’t afford to do it. It was then that I turned around, in 1993. I started researching healthier cooking, and I started to write my first book in healthy cooking. I’d written three or four books before that in higher fat meals.”

Like Reisman once did, many people equate being thin with being healthy.

“If you have skinny children, you kind of turn away as they’re eating junk because you think it’s not going to hurt them,” she said. “But what I started to learn is that cholesterol, diabetes, all of these things start when they’re children. Today, they’re finding kids in their early teens who have already got blocked arteries, high blood pressure, diabetes.”

She said that one child out of three born after 2000 will have diabetes type 2.

“I really encourage parents to be the role models at home,” she said. “I used to set the most delicious meals on the table, and they were good. I wasn’t talking vegan style, poached or steamed, but it was heart-healthy fat, and my kids would often turn up their noses. But, over the years, they picked it up, it was in the back of their minds and, today, all four of them, they’re adults, they’re really good eaters, they exercise.

“That’s one of the reasons that I launched into the books, the media, the catering company, the restaurant consulting,” she said, “because it’s really a great way to spread your message.”

It’s also a great way to spread less healthy messages. There are dozens of TV shows on food – a whole network, in fact.

“They call it ‘food porn,’” said Reisman. “It started back when I was entering the food world. I had my own TV show in 1998 to 2002. That was when the Food Network was just starting to get launched. I thought a show like that would never be successful, I thought no one would watch 24 hours a day of food. Boy, was I wrong. People loved it. And the shows got crazier and crazier, and more reality and more extreme.

“They’ve done these studies from Harvard that people who watch these shows are actually heavier than other people. Nobody really wants to watch a healthy cooking show. There’s only one or two healthy cooking shows…. It’s ridiculous. You’re piling up butter to your elbow when you’re mixing, and people just love watching that decadence.

“But, when Paula Deen came out, and she was diabetic, all of a sudden people went, ‘you know, you can’t be that heavy.’

“You don’t see in seniors homes obesity in people in their 80s. If you notice that, people die off in their 70s, 60s, from cancer, heart disease or stroke, or diabetes when you’re obese.”

For people just starting to cook for themselves, a mistake they make, said Reisman is “they can just whip something off, and not measure and not read the recipe.” She said that’s not really possible, “unless you really have a food gene,” and there are only “a handful of people like that. I’d say 99% of us can’t do that.”

Even with years of experience, Reisman still finds new foods that she both enjoys and that are healthy.

“A couple of foods that I like, that allow me to maintain a really healthy body weight, are quinoa and Greek yogurt,” she said. “Quinoa is the only seed-grain that’s considered a complete protein: a half a cup is equal to three ounces of chicken or fish. So, on the day that you don’t want to eat the hormone-injected chicken or the farm-raised fish, you can have quinoa. Put dressing on it, make it with tomato sauce, and it is a powerhouse of nutrients.

“But, the most important thing is, after you eat a bowl of quinoa versus say white rice in a Chinese food situation, [where] you burp, you eat again, you burp … with quinoa, you walk away full and you’ll find you won’t get hungry for about three hours. That’s because the glycemic index, your blood sugar, is rising very slowly, whereas with white rice or with white starch, what I call an empty grain, it’s rising quickly and then it crashes, which means you need more of that food.”

As for Greek yogurt, she said, “you can have it plain or mix it with berries for breakfast. You can even have Greek yogurt with quinoa. Greek yogurt has 18 grams of protein for three-quarters of a cup, which is unbelievable, more than you could ever imagine in eating fish or chicken in the morning, so it’s a super breakfast.”

And what about that morning coffee?

“I think coffee by itself is great, and the studies now prove more and more that it lowers cholesterol, it’s got some great antioxidant powers,” said Reisman. “The key is, you can’t be drinking coffee after coffee after coffee. If you’re starting to get anxious, or you’re not sleeping at night, you’re drinking too much!

“The problem is that coffee shops are mixing in whipping cream and syrup and tons of sugar,” she added. “If you have two double doubles every day, you’ll gain something like 12 to 13 pounds in a year, just from the cream and sugar in those two drinks. It’s not coffee. It’s candy.”

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work can be found in more than 100 publications globally. His is managing editor of landmarkreport.com.

More than physical strength

Leah Goldstein shares her life story in No Limits. (photo from Leah Goldstein)

Leah Goldstein put the “severe” into persevere. The physical demands and rigors she has experienced in her life include being a kickboxing champion, a Taekwondo champion, a professional road-racing cyclist, an officer in the Israeli commando and elite police unit, and a participant on the Race Across America, a 3,000-mile bike trek. The B.C. local recently published her memoir, No Limits, outlining the triumphs and the tragedies of her athletic life.

Lessons in fortitude and grit began with her grandparents – survivors of the Shoah – trickling down to her parents, who arrived in Canada from Israel with very little English and a hundred dollars to their name. To make ends meet, her parents worked opposite shifts.

“It’s just the determination of somebody wanting something that bad, and would do anything to get there,” Goldstein told the Independent.

That would be something of a mantra throughout her life, beginning with Taekwondo lessons at age 9. By 16, she achieved a black belt as National Junior Champion. She then moved on to kickboxing. While jugging high school classes, she became World Bantamweight Kickboxing Champion.

As a teenager, her coach had her follow a strict regimen of “no smoking, no drinking, no friends, no phone, no junk food, and seven days a week of training. I did exactly what he said and I didn’t have a teenage life,” recalled Goldstein, now 47.

She went on to win a slew of championships provincially, nationally and in the United States. “Those sacrifices were worth the payoff at the end,” she conceded.

That distilled willpower carried into her Israeli military service. She became one of a handful of women instructors of the elite commando division and, later, a krav maga self-defence trainer for special unit soldiers.

Goldstein was one of only two women to successfully complete the harsh commando training of Course Madaseem, and the only woman out of about 30 recruits to graduate from a then newly established special program at the Israeli Police Academy. She went on to work in the undercover narcotics division, the intelligence services, anti-terrorism department, violent crime investigations, and was an instructor for officials and field workers.

In one 20-hour long grueling military training session that she describes, recruits subsisted on 30 minutes of sleep, then had to repeat the exercise. While many “dropped like flies,” she learned that survival depended largely on what “happens in our mind.”

That was a lesson that went back to her tournament days as a youth. As a second-degree black-belt kickboxer, she had won virtually every bout, but an admitted inflated ego led her to be distracted, and badly defeated, in one match in particular.

“Refocus, and be humble,” she recalled her coach insisting. “And, with every opponent that I had, or any challenges, treat it like it’s your biggest threat.”

When she left policing, she shifted to professional cycling. While her law enforcement career left her emotionally tattered, it was cycling that left her the most battered and bruised physically.

In a Pennsylvania race just prior to the 2004 Olympics, she fell off the bike, breaking her hand. And then, in 2005, after winning nine of her first 11 races, she was involved in what she calls “the mother of all crashes” during the Cascade Classic – she landed on her face at 80 kilometres an hour, “breaking practically every bone in my body, ripping my face right off.”

Doctors were astounded she survived at all, she said.

More astounding was her outlook on the situation: “I actually came back out of that stronger than I was prior.”

It was in 2007 approximately when she started to consider taking David Spanner’s advice – he wrote a feature on her for the Province newspaper – to write a book for the purpose of inspiring others.

“I didn’t understand that at the time because, when you’re an athlete, you’re very self-absorbed and everything is about you,” she said.

The decision to write a book solidified as she did more public speaking engagements. Attendees were quite moved by her stories of resilience.

“I said, ‘Woah, if my story is really that powerful, and I can potentially change lives and help inspire, motivate people, then this book has to be written,’” she explained. “For many of us, it’s easy to be safe. We’re so afraid to fail. But part of succeeding is facing failure. I think it’s just having movement in life, and not watching great things that other people do, but starting to do great things and wowing yourself.”

Goldstein walked her talk or, rather, pedaled her talk, returning to the racing circuit in 2011, winning the women’s solo category of Race Across America, breaking the previous record by 12 hours.

“It’s really using your mind,” she said of perseverance. “When you feel every element of pain, and you’re exhausted and tired, and you just don’t want to be there – and then it starts raining and it’s minus-two degrees – it’s just all about being able to keep it together.”

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work can be found in more than 100 publications globally. His is managing editor of landmarkreport.com.

Barbershop memories

Christopher Best’s recent book, My Greek Barber’s Diary, is a biography of George Chronopoulos, told in the barber’s own words. In recent years, Best has been writing about history and people. Not celebrities but regular citizens who have made Canada a thriving multicultural country. His goal as a writer and as a publisher is to preserve precious memories.

Best will talk about My Greek Barber’s Diary at the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library on March 2.

The book follows Chronopoulos’ life from his childhood in Greece, through wars, hardships and immigration to Canada, to the modern day. Through the years, he has tried his hands at various business ventures, from restaurants to real estate, but he always comes back to being a barber. His hair salon has always been a hub of friendships and conversations, confidences and laughter.

Chronopoulos’ bright, ebullient personality, his courage and insatiable curiosity to try new things, to learn new skills, attracted the young entrepreneurial crowd of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Many of Vancouver’s industry leaders started out during those years, and many of them became Chronopoulos’ personal friends and golf buddies.

My Greek Barber’s Diary is a series of more or less chronological stories as remembered by Chronopoulos. A large part of the book is dedicated to the barber’s extended family and their adventures. He sponsored many of his relatives into Canada and helped many others with their first jobs or first homes. A man of big heart, he also was one of the founders of the Gold Plate Dinner charity event in Vancouver in 1977, which was later picked up by the Hellenic communities all across Canada. Today, the events are considered the most important fundraiser in the Canadian Greek community.

Chronopoulos talks in the book about the many people he got to know from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Among his many Jewish clients and friends are business tycoons and philanthropists Joe Segal, Bob Golden, Syd Belzberg and Max Fugman. Everyone first came to his shop because of Chronopoulos’ well-known talent for styling men’s hair, but they stayed for their barber’s charisma and the joy of his friendship. The book includes tributes to Chronopoulos, friends sharing their memories of good times and bad times together, of triumphs and losses.

As did the others, author Best first met his subject at the barbershop. “We started talking,” Best recalled of that haircut a couple of years ago. “George asked me what I do, and I said I’m a writer. He said he always wanted to write a book – his life story. Afterwards, we met many times, and George told me about his life and about the people he knew.”

It took Best a year to record and transcribe Chronopoulos’ memoirs, and about six months to edit the book, which he published in 2015.

My Greek Barber’s Diary is not Best’s first book. The writer owns his own publishing company, Warfleet Press, and, since 2007, has published eight books, all of them on local history, including one about Canadian Airlines.

His first publication was By Jove What a Band, about Arthur Delamont and the Vancouver Boys Band. Before becoming a writer and publisher, Best was a musician and a music teacher and, in the 1960s, he was a member of Vancouver Boys Band. He recorded his memories and those of others about the band and its legendary leader, Delamont, who became a member of the Order of Canada in 1980 and even had a park in Vancouver named in his honor. It took three decades and the founding of Warfleet Press before the memoirs became a published book in 2007. Best writes about By Jove What a Band: “It is a story about the band which never grew old. The band that won over 200 trophies and awards during its unprecedented 50-year history. The band that made 15 European tours and attended five world fairs. The band that dined with royalty but never lost the common touch.”

Best’s talk on My Greek Barber’s Diary at Waldman Library on March 2 starts at 7:30 p.m.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

New Western awards

The Western Canada Jewish Book Awards are a new initiative of the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. The initiative is designed to celebrate excellence in writing on Jewish themes and showcase the achievements of authors residing west of the Ontario-Manitoba border. The awards aim to recognize the contribution to Jewish culture by these writers, and prizes will be awarded in several categories.

In the inaugural year of the awards (2016), books published in 2014 and 2015 will be accepted. A jury comprised of distinguished members of the literary community will examine the eligible submissions, which will be accepted until Feb. 29, 2016.

It is possible to submit to more than one category. The categories are the Diamond Foundation Prize for fiction, the Pinsky Family Prize for non-fiction, the Betty Averbach Foundation Prize for poetry, the Jonathan and Heather Berkowitz Prize for children and youth books, and the Marsid Foundation Prize for writing on the Holocaust.

Currently, there are two other Jewish book awards in Canada. One is in Montreal, dedicated to writing in Yiddish, and one in Toronto. Although the book awards in Toronto are national, it is the JCC Jewish Book Festival’s hope that Western Canada-based awards will encourage more authors to enter books into competition. By being geographically based, one goal is to enhance the literary scene in Western Canada, which, for the intentions of this award, is considered as being from west of the Manitoba-Ontario border, including the northern regions, to the B.C. coast.

The submitting author must have lived in Western Canada for the past 12 months or have lived in Western Canada for at least three of the past five years. A book written by a non-Jewish author is eligible if in accordance with the following criteria. Eligible books contain significant Jewish content or theme; they are written by an eligible author (see above); they are written in English or are available in English; they are published in English or in English translation between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 of the year of the award and the year previous to it; they have a 13-digit ISBN, including eBooks; and graphic books are eligible.

The books submitted will be judged by independent industry professionals. The jury will be comprised of five judges, including a chair, to be drawn from a larger pool including judges from all Western provinces. The winners will be announced by mid-April. An awards soirée and event will take place at a later date in the spring. There will be a monetary award of $2,000 for each winning author.

To submit a book for the award, download the form via jewishbookfestival.ca. Mail or deliver in person the following items for each book submitted: a completed entry form, five copies of the book and the $36 entry fee per prize category. Send the package to JCC Jewish Book Festival, attn: Dana Camil Hewitt, at 950 West 41st Ave., Vancouver, B.C., V5Z 2N7.

Contact Camil Hewitt, JBF director, at 604-257-5156 or jbf@jccgv.bc.ca, with any questions.

Canada’s 1936 Olympic decision

Rarely has a book worked me up as much as More Than Just Games: Canada and the 1936 Olympics by professors Richard Menkis (University of British Columbia) and Harold Troper (University of Toronto).

More Than Just Games was published by U of T Press in the spring. I got my copy from Menkis, who, biases known, I consider a friend. Even so, it took me months to open. The cover image is of members of Canada’s 1936 Olympic team vying for Adolf Hitler’s autograph. Other than some high-quality archival images grouped in the centre of the book, the text is academic, looking almost as imposing as the topic itself. So I was surprised that, when I finally did start reading, I pretty much couldn’t stop. In just over a week, I had read the 230ish-page book, not counting the notes, bibliography and index.

That the scholarship of academics with the credentials of Menkis and Troper would be impeccable I had no doubt. What I hadn’t anticipated was the immediacy they could evoke with their writing. The amount of detail they provide, though on rare occasion overwhelming, serves to bring readers into the period leading up to Canada’s decision to send athletes to the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, when there could be no doubt as to the Nazis’ actions and intentions.

Through ample use of citations from letters, articles and speeches of the pro- and anti-Olympic forces, readers witness almost firsthand the debates that took place prior to the Games, they get a glimpse of the almost dizzying number of internal conflicts within the boycott movement, and they get an idea of the amount of propaganda that was being disseminated by Germany in Canada (and other countries). They even learn of some of the differences of opinion between the German Olympic Committee and the Nazi party as to the value of hosting the Games, when the event’s ideal – no discrimination on “grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise” – ran contrary to the Nazis’ belief in the superiority of the Aryan race, and their efforts to annihilate those they considered inferior.

There were a few outspoken people who tried to waken Canadians to the reality of the Nazi regime – notably journalist Matthew Halton and Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath – but their voices couldn’t rise above the Games’ advocates nor break through the apathy of most of the population. Canada, we are reminded, had closed the doors to Jewish immigration in 1923 – “In distinguishing Jews from non-Jews of the same citizenship, Canada predated Nazi regulations denying Jews and non-Jews equal status under the law by more than 10 years,” write Menkis and Troper.

This is one of the principal reminders of this book, which came out of an exhibit that the professors put together at the behest of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, and which opened several months before the 2010 Winter Olympics were held in the city. Canada might have become a model of multiculturalism, but it was not always so.

Another reminder that stands out is that it doesn’t necessarily take evil people for bad things to happen. Many of the supporters – including athletes – of sending Canadians to the 1936 Games sincerely believed in their position on the importance of sport above all, and seem to have been genuinely confused as to why anyone would disagree. Canada’s position was that of a good colony, following the lead of Britain, which saw no reason not to send competitors. It’s not even obvious in hindsight as to whether Canada’s absence at those Games would have made a difference to the Nazis’ progression of violence to war, to genocide.

Sensibly, Menkis and Troper don’t try to examine the issues with the benefit of hindsight. They present numerous viewpoints and historical facts, mostly without judgment. Their opinions, however, pop out here and there via their choice of adjective or use of sarcasm. I found this comforting because they generally reflected my mood at those points in the book. I would be getting all worked up about what was being said at the time and their jibe would make me smile, and not feel like the crazy one. Because that’s what it felt like reading about it – I can only imagine how people like Halton and Eisendrath felt, actually being there, trying to fight against such ignorance, selfishness, pettiness, narrow-mindedness, greed and indifference.

More Than Just Games is an important contribution to Canadian history, and it is not only a must-read but a very good read.