Books – Page 45

Jewish Book Fest in a week

More than 30 authors are featured in this year’s Cherie Smith JCCGV Book Festival, from the time it opens on Saturday night, Nov. 22, with Israeli author Zeruya Shalev (The Remains of Love) till it closes on Thursday night, Nov. 27, with Toronto emergency physician and CBC Radio host Dr. Brian Goldman (The Secret Language of Doctors). Here’s a taste of what to expect each literary day.

Sunday: Fact Meets Fiction

Speaking twice on Sunday is writer, editor and activist Nora Gold. Her late-afternoon talk will be about jewishfiction.net, an online journal that she founded and edits. In the evening, her novel Fields of Exile will be the focus. In it, the main character, Judith, faces antisemitism in the guise of anti-Israelism on the fictional campus of Dunhill University, where she is taking a master’s in social work. Gold’s opinion on the subject comes out clearly and the novel will make many Jews who have had to endure Apartheid Weeks and anti-Israel propaganda on campus feel less alone; the frustration and fear that Judith experiences will be familiar.

Judith is a knowledgeable and critical supporter of Israel, she has lived in the country, worked for peace and on human rights projects there, and only returns to Canada because her father becomes ill. Nevertheless, with few exceptions, her opinions on Israel are discounted and dismissed by professors and students alike. Ultimately, the anti-Israel words and images turn into violence because they are never put in check by the university, each professor having their own reasons for ignoring, or not speaking out, against antisemitism.

Monday: Focus on Hungarian Jewry

Joseph Kertes shares his session with Ayelet Waldman (Love and Treasure), hosted by Janos Maté. Kertes’ The Afterlife of Stars follows the Beck family’s flight from Budapest to Paris as Russia invades Hungary in 1956. The terrifying reality of the period, the human and material losses, are tempered by the story being told by 9.8-year-old Robert Beck, whose class is in the process of reviewing decimal points when the book begins. Robert and his 13.7-year-old brother Atilla don’t necessarily understand what is happening, though Atilla is wise beyond his years, always asking questions, philosophizing, taking Robert on dangerous (though they don’t usually realize it) journeys, to see a movie, to see some statues, various adventures without their parents’ knowledge.

The wonder of the brothers and their relationship provides the energy of the story, which slows and becomes pedantic in places where historical or background information is explained, especially once the family reaches Paris. Overall, though, The Afterlife of Stars is mostly a charming tale with moments of sadness and beauty, written from a unique perspective.

Tuesday: For Book Clubs and Book Lovers

Steven Galloway’s most recent novel, The Confabulist, is, in a word: fun. This tale of Houdini, as told by Houdini and Martin Strauss, the man who killed him (twice), is perfect vacation/relaxation fare. Galloway explains some of Houdini’s greatest illusions, regales with tales of Houdini working with the secret service as a spy and captivates with Houdini’s efforts to expose spiritualists for the frauds they were perpetrating – on some very powerful and influential people. Out of all the threats facing Houdini, it was an unexpected punch in a bar that killed him … or was it?

The entertainment value of The Confabulist is enriched with ponderings on the role and purpose of magic in our lives; the fallibility and malleability of memory. Both Houdini and Strauss contemplate how they have lived and what they have accomplished, and perhaps their observations will prompt readers to think about their own pleasures and regrets. Or maybe they’ll just enjoy the show.

Wednesday: The Power to Triumph

Susan Wener has had several serious health issues in her life, including two bouts of cancer. In Resilience: A Story of Courage and Triumph in the Face of Recurrent Cancer, she matter-of-factly takes readers through her experiences and how she handled them. Already a health-care system veteran when she was first diagnosed with cancer at age 36, when her children were young, Wener hoped to live long enough to see them to adulthood – she now has several grandchildren.

There are many life lessons from such a memoir, of course. One of the most powerful in this one is that it’s OK to be angry, to breakdown, to react how you react. You are not in charge of the disease but you are in charge of everything else, what tests and treatments you undergo, what therapies you try, who you ask for help, how you live your life.

Wener writes without bravado. She kept getting up every day, but she wasn’t always a fighter or optimistic. Her illnesses, especially the last serious one – years of pain and horrible treatments before being diagnosed with a functional obstruction in the colon – pushed her to the limit, as the title of that chapter openly admits. But she did push through, she took the tests, did the research, underwent the surgeries, made the decisions.

Wener shares her thoughts about and discussions with her husband and daughters, and these moments are incredibly emotional. Readers will readily imagine such conversations with their own family and friends and, despite the lack of sentimentality with which Wener writes – or perhaps because of it – most readers will not be able to get through this memoir without getting a little choked up and teary-eyed at times.

Thursday: Fix Your Diet

In the penultimate event of the festival, Dr. Yoni Freedhoff speaks about The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work, a clear, concise book that outlines the main weaknesses and myths surrounding dieting, and offers a detailed program that Freedhoff believes can result in success – i.e. long-term weight loss.

It is not a difficult program, but neither is it for the faint of heart. Be prepared to diarize, measure, goal-set and cook. And to be patient, both with the length of time it might take to lose the weight but also with yourself if you break your diet or exercise routine.

According to Freedhoff, most diets suffer from “seven deadly sins,” such as the constant need to battle hunger or resist temptation, and these sins traumatize many people, leading to depression, binge eating and other problems. His solution begins with a “10-day reset.” He does not promise you will lose a pant size or two, but, rather, the reset “is about lifting the guilt, the fear and the traumas of the past off your shoulders and giving you a brand-new relationship with your body, your weight and your health.”

The reset he lays out and the discussion of how it can be applied to any diet and in your broader life seems pragmatic. Freedhoff includes advice for people on medication that leads to weight gain, and for parents on how they can help with their children’s weight. Throughout the book, Freedhoff offers advice that makes it seem like his plan has a better chance than most of working. For example, he summarizes in the epilogue 10 points to remember, including, “If you can’t happily eat any less, you’re not going to eat any less,” and “If you can’t use food both for comfort and celebration, then you’re on a diet that you’re ultimately going to quit.”

The book ends with recipes for snacks and meals, as well as suggested reading and other resources, including smartphone apps.

Zeruya Shalev opens Jewish Book Fest

Zeruya Shalev (photo by Naomi Tokatly)

In The Remains of Love, her latest novel to be translated into English, Zeruya Shalev once again explores (and crosses) intimate emotional boundaries. In this novel, however, she also overtly explores territory that she has actively resisted – Israel, where she was born and still lives.

“In my previous works, I avoided relating to the Israeli reality in a straightforward way,” Shalev told the Independent in an email interview. “The readers could have sensed it only indirectly – through the reckless pace, the intensity and perhaps even the pessimism. In this book, however, I felt an urge to open more windows to the Israeli reality – such as the history of the kibbutz and the burning issues of human rights. Each book has its own needs. Many issues that did not fit right in the previous books with the previous protagonists found themselves fitting perfectly into this one and its characters; this is because the Israeli reality affects them in a deeper and a more profound manner. And yet, still I am wrestling with the dominance of this reality, and try not to let it take over my books – it’s enough that it controls my life.”

Shalev included a winking emoticon after this last comment, indicating that the remark should be taken with a grain of salt, or at least not as seriously as it reads. She has an engaging manner and a sense of humor, which comes through in her writing (amid the serious, emotional and provocative material) and especially in interviews (there are several available on YouTube). In addition to her talent as a writer – her novels are critically acclaimed and have garnered various awards – Shalev is a thoughtful, friendly and relaxed interviewee. She is a great choice to launch this year’s Cherie Smith JCCGV Jewish Book Festival on Nov. 22.

The Remains of Love (Bloomsbury, 2013) centres around a dying woman, Hemda Horovitz, and her two adult children, who each have families, foibles and problems of their own. Her favorite, Avner, is a human rights lawyer; he is questioning everything about his life, whether he has made a dent in the inequality and injustice in the world, as well as his relationship with his wife and sons. Hemda’s daughter, Dina, has devoted herself to her own daughter, Nitzan – giving her the love she never received from Hemda – but, like most teenagers, Nitzan is pulling away, so Dina looks to adopting a child to fill the void, even though her husband and daughter are against it.

The focus on three protagonists required a change in style for Shalev.

“In my previous novels, I concentrated on one protagonist, and followed her stream of consciousness in the first person, which creates immediate intimacy,” she explained. “The first person traps the readers in the inner world of the character, and even when he or she depicts other characters, they often seem like a projection of his or her own qualities. In this book, I wandered between three minds, three streams of consciousness, and the third person enables me much space and flexibility. At first, I was afraid that the third person might hurt the intimacy of the voice, but in retrospect it seems (or at least I hope) it didn’t. The first person is completely monogamous, and the third person gives you more freedom, which I and my protagonists needed for this book.”

The literal translation of the novel’s title is “the shards of life.” In the French version – and perhaps in other languages, too – chayyim is translated as “life.” However, Philip Simpson, who does a skilled job of translating the book’s content, style and emotion, chooses the word “love.”

“The French title of the book is more loyal to the original title in Hebrew (The Remains of Life) than the English one,” acknowledged Shalev. “Yet my English publisher (in the U.K. and U.S.A.) turned to me and explained that this name does not possess enough beauty and lyric in English; I therefore agreed to change it. We tried together to find a new title that would fit the themes in the book, and also be of poetic value, and this is how we got to this name. It is indeed interesting to realize how easily one can substitute the word ‘life’ for the word ‘love.’ All three protagonists of this book are indeed longing for love, all are experiencing it as a drug-of-life, each in their own unique way. Life without love seems to them tasteless, and they are all willing to go a long way to find it; not only in the footsteps of romantic love, but the love for a child, a brother, for life itself.”

Shalev’s Vancouver visit is part of a tour that begins in Houston and which also stops in Detroit, New York and Chicago.

“Unlike the dozens of tours I have done in Europe, I haven’t had many professional visits in the U.S. and Canada,” she said. “I am very much looking forward, especially to seeing Vancouver, which I heard is amazingly beautiful. As someone who has lived her entire life in a warm and desert land, I admire the cold weather, the mountains and lakes.”

Hopefully, she also likes rain.

***

The Sol & Shirley Kort Author Series will feature Zeruya Shalev in conversation with the Globe’s Marsha Lederman on Nov. 22, 7:30 p.m., in the Rothstein Theatre. Tickets ($20) are available from ticketpeak.com/jccgv or the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, in person or by calling 604-257-5111. For the full Cherie Smith JCCGV Jewish Book Festival lineup, visit jewishbookfestival.ca.

Fragmented childhood

In a recently published memoir, A Childhood on the Move: Memoirs of a Child Survivor of the Holocaust, René Goldman, professor emeritus of Chinese history at the University of British Columbia, pieces together a fragmented and tragic childhood and adolescence.

Having migrated to Luxembourg from Poland, Goldman’s parents then fled the advance of the Nazis into the Benelux countries. The family made their way through occupied France hoping to sail from a Mediterranean port to South America. While their passage was interrupted, the family at least found themselves in France’s “free zone,” the southern area governed by the German-puppet Vichy regime, but not directly administered by the Nazis. While granted a period of comparative normalcy – unlike, Goldman notes, Jews in the north like Anne Frank and her family – eventually there was a roundup.

Goldman was awakened by his mother and told that police were demanding they go to the train station. Why his father was not with them at that time Goldman does not know. Nor does he know why he was spared the fate of his mother.

“The entire station was a scene of bedlam, with men, women and children being pulled, shoved and hurled into the train,” writes Goldman. “Just as the commissar was about to throw me into the train as well, two gendarmes in khaki uniforms appeared in the nick of time to stop him. Without a word he let go of me…. That was the last time I saw my Mama.”

An aunt arranged for Goldman to be hidden in a rural village, which would become the first of countless temporary shelters for him. In an excruciating series of hasty moves, Goldman was transferred from the protection of one adult or institution to another. In some instances, the adults and his fellow children were amiable, in others far less so. Despite the instability and constant uprooting, he usually managed to attain some education in almost every one of his hiding places. At a Catholic institution, he and other Jewish children were assigned new identities and warned never to let anyone see their private parts, “since in France only Jews were circumcised.”

When finally the allies reached the village where Goldman was hidden, and he reconnected with his aunt, she told him that his father had joined the Free French forces and would return after the war. It’s not clear if she believed this. “Alas, even as Paris was about to be liberated, [Klaus] Barbie [the Nazi known as the ‘Butcher of Lyon’] hurriedly filled up one last train with victims destined for the death camps, a train which the Resistance vainly sought to derail, or otherwise prevent from reaching Germany,” writes Goldman. “Decades later I learned that my beloved Papa was among them.”

Though now liberated, things did not, of course, return to normal for Goldman. The winter of 1944-45 was a harsh one and food was scarce. Meanwhile, the war continued and the allies suffered setbacks in the Battle of the Bulge. “That unanticipated delay caused the Allies heavy losses, while thousands more victims, among them my father, perished in the Nazi death camps,” he writes.

Moreover, Goldman’s surviving aunt and uncle in France, with three children of their own, found they could not care for him. They sent him to a colony run by a Zionist organization, where he received a Zionist education, including a bit of Hebrew, to prepare the young people for aliyah. When the war finally ended, the children at the colony waited for news of their parents. “Daily I hung around the little railway station after school hours, sometimes alone, sometimes with others, scrutinizing the passengers who came off the afternoon train from Grenoble in the vain hope that Papa might turn up among them,” he writes.

The Jewish community in Grenoble hosted a photographic exhibition of the Shoah. “I felt my head spinning with shock and disbelief as I stared at the photos of emaciated, skeletal looking ‘déportés’ in striped uniforms; of heaps of corpses stacked like cord wood; and of the gas chambers and crematoria, in which millions were burnt to ashes.”

Goldman was entrusted to the Commission Centrale de l’Enfance (CCE), a product of the underground groups that had hidden Jewish children and that was now attempting to reunite them with surviving relatives or adopt them if they were orphaned. At the CCE homes, the children were indoctrinated with communist ideals. Some did not take to them, but Goldman emphatically did. He was enraptured with the idea of the socialist experiment taking place in Poland, the land of his parents’ ancestry. He opted against joining his maternal aunt and uncle in migrating to Canada, instead moving to Poland, where his huge extended family on both sides, save one paternal uncle, had all been killed in the Shoah.

He worked at the Polish national radio station, reading news and commentary and translating material for broadcast to France and Belgium, while struggling to master the notoriously complex Polish language. Disenchantment with communism began when he was chosen to participate in a summer program for boys at a beautiful resort town at the southern end of Poland in the Karkonosze mountains. The program was primarily aimed at the children of Polish émigrés in the West. While Goldman was excited to speak French again with some of the campers, the “counselors” were warned not to let on that they understood the languages the youngsters spoke. The director of the colony demanded of the boys who knew French to translate into Polish the letters the children were writing home to ensure the news from the old country met the standards of propaganda. Goldman refused to be a spy, however, and the other French-speakers followed suit. The protest was effective, and the boys could again enjoy the camaraderie of their guests.

Goldman was also aware of the antisemitic purges in Czechoslovakia and Moscow at the time, in which Jewish party activists were convicted as “agents of American imperialism and Zionism.”

In 1953, a delegation visited Goldman’s school, inviting students to apply to study abroad, primarily in the Soviet Union. Being an excellent student, he applied and was accepted to a program to study in China, where he would spend five years, during which time his enchantment with communism would come to an end. He was there during the period when Mao Zedong declared that China would “let 100 flowers bloom, let 100 schools of thought contend.” This was a trap, luring people into expressing their true beliefs and then dragging them into “struggle meetings” in which they were denounced, beaten, humiliated and forced to incriminate others. Then, in 1958 began the Great Leap Forward, the collectivization and forced industrialization of rural Chinese society, which resulted in a famine that claimed between 30 and 40 million lives.

Abandoning China, Poland and communism, Goldman received a scholarship to Columbia University, and reconnected with what was left of his family, in Canada, and eventually spent a long career as a professor of Chinese history at UBC. “The wonderful port city of Vancouver became the end destination of a life of wandering from country to country,” Goldman writes.

While his life on the move finally ended, he would never find solace. It would take decades for Goldman to piece together what he could of his parents’ fates. In 1965, he met a man in whose arms his father had died during a death march from Auschwitz in 1945. He never found any witnesses to his mother’s death, but he found a record of the convoy she had been on to Auschwitz-Birkenau: “Of the 407 women who arrived at Birkanau on that train, only 147 were registered and had a number tattooed on their forearm; the others were sent directly to the gas chambers,” he writes. “I can only assume that my mother, being small and frail, was among the latter, unless she died because of the atrocious conditions in which the doomed passengers of that train traveled. I never learned for certain what happened to her; there will never be closure for me.”

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

Knishes: “Jewish soul food”

When I lived in New York for 10 years in the 1960s, going to the Lower East Side was a very regular part of my Sunday routine. However, while the name Yonah Schimmel might sound familiar to anyone traveling the same circuit during that time, regrettably, I never came across Mrs. Stahl. That’s because knishes were not part of my regular eating regimen.

That said, being a food writer and cookbook author, Knish (Brandeis, 2014) by Laura Silver was a fascinating read – because I learned more about the “pillow of filling tucked into a skin of dough” – but even more so because I learned about Silver’s favorite source of knishes: Mrs. Stahl in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood. When Mrs. Stahl went out of business, Silver’s “mourning” took the form of her search for “Jewish soul food.”

Silver has written on food and culture for the New York Times and the Forward, and she is the author of what her publisher calls “the one and only absolutely definitive biography of the knish,” making her the world de facto authority on the Jewish pastry.

Mrs. Stahl’s produced “baked round mounts, each plump with a stuffing, savory or sweet. Each piece – the size of a fist or just bigger – revealed a hint of filling on the top, a bald spot, as if for a yarmulke…. If you cut the knish in half, the cross-section revealed a membrane of dough that split the innards into chambers, like those of the human heart.”

From this, we divert to two of the strong influences in Silver’s life: her Riga-born grandmother who arrived in New York in 1906 and their relationship until her death, as well as the 2005 closing (after 70 years) of the infamous Mrs. Stahl’s, which started her on the journey. “Knishes,” she writes, “were my family’s religion.”

Beginning with the Brighton Beach Neighborhood Association, Silver investigates many New York connections to the knish; she travels to Israel, Paris, Warsaw, Bialystok and Knyszyn, Poland, where she found her family’s roots. She goes to Banff and St. Paul, where she finds groups of seniors making knishes, and San Francisco where she meets Mrs. Stahl’s granddaughter.

Closing her book, she lists the best spots for knishes today, including New York, Michigan, Baltimore, Boston, Florida, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Minnesota. The book also contains many pages of interesting notes, an extensive bibliography, an index and acknowledgments. In between, she recounts her visit to such knish hot spots as the Pasta Factory in Vineland, N.J., which purchased Mrs. Stahl’s bakery knish recipes. Then she tells the story of Gussie Schwebel, a New York knish maker, who learned that Eleanor Roosevelt was going to be in town and wanted to introduce her to the knish, several of which were dispatched at 5 p.m. on Jan. 27, 1942, to the first lady’s New York apartment.

Even if you’ve never been a big fan of knishes, this is an utterly charming book that recreates a bygone world and captures Silver’s hope that “Jewish soul food” is ready for its second renaissance.

In San Francisco, Silver met Toby Engelberg, Mrs. Stahl’s granddaughter and includes the famuos family recipe.

TOBY ENGELBERG’S POTATO KNISHES

Dough
3 1⁄4 cups flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1⁄2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup lukewarm water

Turn oven on low until dough is ready. Mix flour, sugar and salt. Add oil and water. Mix with a spoon until the dough pulls together, or use a food processor or stand mixer (with a dough hook). Turn out on board and knead, incorporating all pieces. Knead until dough is one piece and is smooth and glossy. Turn off oven. Oil dough and place in oiled, covered bowl. Place in oven until ready to use. Let rest at least two hours; the dough should barely rise, if at all. Keeping the dough overnight in the refrigerator is fine. Bring back to room temperature before use.

Potato filling
6 lbs russet or new potatoes
1 cup oil
1⁄4 cup salt, or to taste
1 1⁄2 tsp pepper
8 cups raw thinly sliced onions

Scrub potatoes and peel (except if using new potatoes with very thin, unblemished skins). Boil about 20 minutes until knife tender and drain. Mash with a potato masher. Add oil, salt (not adding all at once and tasting as you add) and pepper, and mix. Stir in the onion.

Assembling and baking:
Vegetable oil and flour as needed

Preheat oven to 450°F. Roll out about half the dough on a lightly floured counter or table top. Roll with a handle-less, rod-style rolling pin out from the centre until dough is thin enough to see through, about 1/16-inch thick.

Oil top edge of dough with a pastry brush. Place two-inch diameter line of filling about two inches from top edge. Pick up top edge and drape over filling. Brush oil on dough in a two-inch strip on the bottom edge of the filling. Pick up the dough with filling and roll again onto the oiled dough, compressing the filled dough as you turn it. Repeat until the dough covers filling three to four times, being sure to always brush oil on the dough first. Cut to separate the filled potato knish log from the remaining dough. Cut off edges of filled dough. Cut the filled roll into pieces about six- to eight-inches long and coil like a snail, tucking last end under the coil. Alternatively, place roll onto ungreased cookie sheet, and slash with a knife crosswise every two inches. Either rolls or snails should be placed on the pan with an inch of space between. Repeat with remaining dough on countertop. When that is used up, repeat with reserved dough.

Bake 20-25 minutes (starting knishes on lowest oven rack and raising to top rack after about 10-12 minutes) until tops are browned and knishes are cooked through. Cool in pan. If cooked in rolls, cut into serving pieces. Knishes can be reheated in the oven or in a skillet on the stove top.

Makes 16-18 knishes.

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

Calderon begins discussion with Bride

Newly elected Knesset member Ruth Calderon caused a sensation last year when she engaged a member of the Sephardi religious party Shas in a discussion of Talmud during her inaugural speech in the Knesset. She had brought her copy of the Talmud to the podium and read a short excerpt about Rav Rehumi, who stayed at the yeshivah to study on Yom Kipper eve. He fell to his death at the moment that his wife realized he was not coming home.

Calderon read the cryptic tale first in Aramaic “for the music” and then in Hebrew. The story is one of 17 included in A Bride for One Night, an English translation (by Ilana Kurshan) published earlier this year by the Jewish Public Society. The book was originally published in Hebrew, in 2001.

image - A Bride for One Night cover — In the lingo of these modern times, this book is a “disruptor.”

Although the talmudic tale focuses on Rav Rehumi, Calderon in the book re-imagines the event from the perspective of his unnamed wife. The vivid first-person account portrays the wife’s challenging life, from her joy in marriage to her anxiety as she waits.

Similar to the format of the Talmud, Calderon also offers commentary on the story. “Just between us,” she writes in her breezy style, “Rev Rehumi was a rather mediocre scholar.”

Calderon draws a parallel to the legends of Odysseus, who took 10 years to return home after the Trojan War. “The time has come to turn to the true hero of the story, she who carries Rav Rehumi on her shoulders. She is like Odysseus’ Penelope,” Calderon says, referring to the wife of the wandering warrior. “If Rav Rehumi achieved any fame, it is thanks to his wife.”

The commentary, with footnotes, offers some observations about the Rav’s emotional life, romance and morals. Calderon also provides sources for further readings.

In the lingo of these modern times, this book is a “disruptor.” Calderon has flung open the doors to the study halls. She has liberated the ancient texts, taken them out of the exclusive preserve of religious male scholars and made them accessible to anyone who is interested in learning about how to be a good human being.

Calderon brings a strong woman’s voice to talmudic vignettes about a world that is, in her words, “topsy-turvy, frightening and funny. It is a world in which the impossible happens.”

A mortal steals the knife of the Angel of Death, God asks to be blessed by a human being, the wife of a Torah scholar dresses up as a prostitute and seduces her husband, a rabbi sets a test for his wife that leads to her suicide. Legend, creative literature, relationship advice, folk sayings, guideposts for a moral life – Calderon turns the kaleidoscope just a little bit and the ancient Talmud becomes a text for modern times.

The title of the book, A Bride for One Night, comes from a text in the Babylonia Talmud. In two different passages, highly respected itinerant rabbis ask, Who will be mine for a day? The question is associated with a woman selected by the community as a “wife” for the duration of the rabbi’s stay. Calderon imagines these situations from the perspective of a widow who has been asked to be a bride for one night.

“I don’t know how one learns a story like this in a yeshivah,” she writes in her reflections on this scandalous passage. “I read it with mixed feelings.”

After considering several possible ways to understand the tale, she concludes that the concept of marriage for a day is intended as a test of Western conventions about love.

Calderon approaches the sacred text with the belief that the contemporary Jewish bookshelf should include the Talmud, Midrash, kabbalist works and other religious texts, as well as Jewish literature and Torah.

The Talmud and other sacred texts are the common denominators of all the Jews of the world, she said recently during an address to graduates of Hebrew College in Boston. More than half of the Jews in the world are secular.

Calderon was raised in a secular family and neither her school nor the local library had a copy of the Talmud. She had to search for copies of sacred texts. She began to study Talmud after her army service.

“This is something that belongs to me, is part of me and I had to reclaim it,” she told the graduates.

Long before she entered politics, Calderon was involved in studying Talmud and bringing sacred Jewish texts to all Jews, regardless of religious affiliations or their level of learning. She founded Elul in Jerusalem, Israel’s first “secular yeshivah” for men and women, religious and non-religious. She also started Alma, a Home for Hebrew Culture, in Tel Aviv.

For many years, she studied daf yomi, a daily page of the Talmud, with a chavruta, a study partner. She has a doctorate in talmudic literature from Hebrew University.

With this book, Calderon challenges the reader to imagine the life and inner thoughts of religious leaders, to see beyond the text on the page and flesh out all those mentioned in the tale. She takes ancient theology, often with outdated and distasteful concepts, and reinterprets them for the modern age.

Similar to Talmud, her book is best read with a study partner. She has said during the U.S. promotional tour for the book that the imaginative tales reflect what she was thinking at the time she wrote them, and that she might offer an entirely different point of view if she were to become engaged once again in studying those passages. Yes, she is right there. A Bride for One Night is just the beginning of the discussion.

Media consultant Robert Matas, a former Globe and Mail journalist, still reads books. A Bride for One Night is available at the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library. To reserve it, or any other book, call 604-257-5181 or email library@jccgv.bc.ca. To view the catalogue, visit jccgv.com and click on Isaac Waldman Library.

The indefatigable people

With antisemitism on the rise in France, England and around the world, and Israel once again facing strong headwinds, it seems like a good time to turn to history in search of some perspective on current events.

Earlier this year, PBS aired a popular two-part series on Jewish history written and presented by historian Simon Schama. The account was based largely on his book The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD (ecco, 2013), published last year in Great Britain. The second volume – from 1492 to the present – is expected this fall.

Schama, a highly accomplished, award-winning historian, has written 16 books and 40 television documentaries, focusing mostly on art histories and histories of France, the Netherlands, Britain and the United States. He has also written a book about Israel and the Rothschilds.

In The Story of the Jews, he abandons the distance of an academic historian right at the start. This is the story of his people, not an abstract theoretical exercise of writing history. He is emotionally invested in this project and his passion spills out on every page.

It is also clear from the beginning that he is foremost a storyteller. With incredible details, Schama delights the reader with engaging vignettes about both ordinary and powerful people. He recreates pivotal moments in history by describing the events in the life of individuals, from Sheloman, a young Jewish mercenary in service of the Persian authorities in 475 BCE, to Abraham Zacuto, a talmudist and astronomer who put together the almanac used by Christopher Columbus in 1492.

His chatty approach to history occasionally drifts sideways, as if he just thought about something else he has to tell you. It is sometimes difficult to keep up with him, as he jumps across centuries, from country to country, commenting about historical figures without much of an introduction.

Yet, the story he tells is compelling. Schama wanders through numerous far-flung Jewish communities offering fascinating glimpses of their lives and surprising perspectives on Jewish worship, relations with non-Jews and violence against Jews.

More than is usually acknowledged, the Jewish community has lived in harmony with paganism, Christianity and Muslim societies. Yet the portrait of Jewish history, as he presents it, is not pretty.

Despite periods of well-being, sometimes stretching over hundreds of years, the story of the Jews is an account of a people caught in a Sisyphean cycle of settlement, prosperity, persecution and devastation, over and over again, beginning in Egypt in the 13th century BCE.

Schama delves deep into the brutal rhetoric and cruel fantasies that provoked the recurring waves of murder and expulsion. Over two millennia, the venom spread from Egypt to Palestine and throughout the empires of Persia, Greece, Rome and Constantinople, through the Near East and the Iberian peninsula.

He shines an especially bright light on the vile attacks by the disciples and followers of Jesus, who turned Jews into god-killers and child murderers. He writes about Jewish moneylenders, international traders, tax collectors and confidantes of royalty who were once in favor and then were not.

Schama begins his story in Elephantine, an island in the Nile. The Persians in 525 BCE found a thriving, well-established Jewish community in Elephantine, with a temple that had many similarities to the First Temple in Jerusalem that had been destroyed 61 years earlier.

Documents describing Elephantine provide the first hard evidence of daily life of Jews in antiquity. The Elephantine community was wiped out by the mid-fourth century BCE.

Again and again, Jewish communities were decimated. England expelled its Jews in 1290; France issued edicts expelling Jews in 1306 and again in 1394. Spain followed in 1492 and Portugal in 1497. Schama identifies 29 towns under Christian rule across Europe that kicked out Jews between 1010 and 1540.

Many civilizations have thrived and then disappeared. But Judaism has always found a way to thrive and survive. Schama attributes the durability of Judaism to its devotion to words.

Judaism depends neither on its leaders, its places of worship nor its institutions. The Jewish people are the People of the Book; words are the invisible thread that binds Jews together over the millennia, Schama posits. And, according to his perspective, the Torah is the work of the religious and intellectual elite in the eighth to fifth century BCE, nearly 500 years after the Exodus was supposed to have happened.

Reverting to his role as academic, he notes that no evidence – archeological or otherwise – has turned up to substantiate the Exodus story. By his account, the Hebrew Bible is a picture of Israel’s imagined origins and ancestry that converges at some point with the reality of Jewish history.

The genius of the priests, prophets and writers, intellectual elites, was to make their writing sacred, in standardized Hebrew, as the exclusive carrier of YHWH’s law and historic vision, Schama writes. “Thus encoded and set down, the spoken (and memorized) scroll could and would outlive monuments and military forces of empires.”

The Hebrew Bible was fashioned to be the common possession of elite and ordinary people, he writes. The divinity was reflected in the words of the Torah, not in an image of a divine creature or a person. And the message of the Torah was not confined to a holy sanctuary. It is to be posted on the doorpost of every Jew and bound on the head and arms of all Jews as they prayed.

“No part of life, no dwelling or body, was to be free of the scroll-book … the Torah was compact, transferable history, law, wisdom, poetic chant, prophecy, consolation and counsel…. The speaking scroll was designed to survive incineration … the people of YHWH could be broken and slaughtered, but their book would be indefatigable.”

In other words, survival depends on, as his subtitle says, “finding the words” for Torah study and the story of the Jews.

Media consultant Robert Matas, a former Globe and Mail journalist, still reads books. Simon Schama’s book is available at the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library. To reserve it, or any other, call 604-257-5181 or email [email protected]. To view the catalogue, visit jccgv.com and click on Isaac Waldman Library.

Memoir more than family history

Alison Pick (photo by Emma-Lee Photography)

Award-winning author and poet Alison Pick comes to Vancouver later this month to participate in two panels at the Vancouver Writers Fest, one of which is already sold out.

As a teenager, Pick discovered that her father’s parents were Jewish. As she tells a rabbi in the first chapter of her memoir, Between Gods (Doubleday Canada), “My grandparents escaped Czechoslovakia in 1939. They bribed a Nazi for visas, came to Canada and renounced their Judaism. They spent their lives posing as Christians…. As a kid I was forbidden from discussing it. But now I’m going back and asking questions.”

In her 30s, struggling with depression, about to be married, and writing the novel that would become Far to Go, Between Gods is about Pick’s life during this period in which she lays claim to her Jewish identity. She spoke with the Jewish Independent via email.

JI: The title of the book is Between Gods. With what vision of God did you begin your spiritual/cultural journey, and how now do you grapple with or appreciate God/Source? Did your concepts/beliefs change when you had a child?

AP: Between Gods tells the story of my conversion from Christianity to Judaism. That said, the conversion was mostly cultural for me – an attempt to reclaim my family’s hidden Judaism. My personal concept of God, ironically, is probably most Buddhist in nature: the idea that there is a presence larger than us; that is it benign or even loving. It seems to me there is something akin to an energy field, and that we can choose to ignore it or to engage with it, and that, in engaging with it, we foster our relationship with it. I like the image of two hands. One is moving, grasping, reaching, touching – that hand is the ego, or the personality. The other hand remains still – it is the witness, both personal and theological.

These concepts didn’t change when I had a child, although I am very conscious of fostering a sense of the divine for and with her. The most important part of our week is Friday evening, when we have Shabbat dinner – seeing her take that for granted (in the best kind of way) is hugely gratifying.

JI: In the acknowledgements, you note that you’ve taken artistic liberty with some of the details, but still, it must have been difficult to write about family, friends. From where came the desire to write such a book at this point in your life?

AP: It didn’t really feel like a choice. Between Gods began as a set of notes I was taking at the same time as I was writing Far to Go. At first I thought the two projects were the same book – then it became clear that they were different. By the time I had finished writing Far to Go, I had converted to Judaism. I just knew that Between Gods was the next book I had to write. As a writer, you have to trust where the artistic energy lays, and so my practice is comprised at least partially of listening to what wants to be written as opposed to what my ego wants to write.

JI: Reading the memoir, your frustration with the conversion “policy” is completely understandable. With the distance of time, how do you feel about it?

AP: I had difficulty converting to Reform Judaism in Toronto because my fiancé was not Jewish. At the time, it was hard to not take this personally, to not feel rejected. It still, in retrospect, seems odd to me that I was already half Jewish and yet encountered many more obstacles than the other women in my class who were engaged to Jewish men. That said, I do see the very clear benefits that having an entirely Jewish nuclear family offers, not just individually, of course, but collectively. My experience made me more compassionate towards others, in that way that our personal suffering always shines a light on the suffering of the world, and has influenced my decisions around how to practise Judaism with my daughter – we are involved in communities that are inclusive and progressive while at the same time honoring tradition.

JI: Why did you choose, in a memoir mainly about your becoming Jewish, to also write so openly about your struggle with depression?

AP: It seemed to me that the two were intimately related. The more I learned about my family background the more I began to think that my depression was something inherited and that, in some ways, it was the result of the legacy of the Holocaust. I’m not saying that the relationship was directly causal, but that the two things fed off each other, culminating in an existential darkness.

JI: The absence of your mother and sister in the memoir is felt, even though they are mentioned, you share that they were supportive and you address why they don’t figure more prominently. The rabbi was concerned with creating an interfaith nuclear family, but extending this concern, how has your family’s being Jewish fit in/worked with your larger family (and even friends)?

AP: It was a conscious decision to not include very much of my mother, although you’re not the first person to say they would have liked more of her. She was generally extremely supportive, as was my sister. I have heard many other conversion stories in which at least one member of the potential convert’s family was upset, or at least in which the family dynamic was fraught. I experienced none of that. My mother, my sister, and my extended family and friends have really been behind me. Of course, I had many in-depth conversations along the way, but all of them had positive outcomes.

At the Writers Fest, which takes place Oct. 21-26 on Granville Island, Alison Pick participates in two panels about writing based on personal experience, one of which – Writing Back to the Self on Oct. 24 – still had tickets for sale at press time. In addition to Pick, Jewish community members participating in the festival include Cory Doctorow, Esther Freud, Herman Koch, Christopher Levenson, Daniel Leviton and Tom Rachman. For tickets: vancouvertix.com, 604-629-8849 or the box office at 1398 Cartwright St.

Asper vision spurred action

(photo by Rebeca Kuropatwa)

Miracle at the Forks: The Museum that Dares Make a Difference, which chronicles the 14-year journey to plan, build and open the Canadian Museum of Human Rights (CMHR), was launched on Sept. 22 at the museum with Gail Asper, Moe Levi, Stuart Murray, and co-authors Peter C. Newman and Allan Levine. The 200-page book, released by Figure 1 Publishing, officially hit the bookstands on Sept. 23.

In her remarks at the launch, Asper said that she was pleased with the volume’s title. “I love it because it is miraculous … being inside this museum we’ve talked about for 14 years … this is a really great time for Winnipeg, Manitoba and the world.”

She continued, “We started on this journey to find a way to educate our youth about our human rights violations that occurred in our history and to inspire people to take action. This has been a long, often challenging, and many times miraculous journey from dream to reality. That’s why we’re thrilled that non-fiction writers Peter C. Newman and Allan Levine are here and have written a compelling book, recounting the story from the day Dad – Israel (Izzy) Asper – dreamed of a centre for human rights and gave Moe Levi the mandate to make it happen, to the completion of the building this year.

“During the dark days after my dad’s passing, it was Moe’s support, his ridiculous optimism and resolve, that kept us going…. And, of course, thank you to the federal government under the leadership of Stephen Harper, this maverick person whose courageous decision to make this a national museum ensured our going forward. Also, thanks to our 8,200 donors who’ve made this day possible.”

Newman described the book’s overarching purpose. “Canada was built on dreams as well as appetites. This country was founded by waves of immigrants with big ideas and big dreams. The [Canadian] Museum of Human Rights will dramatically alter Winnipeg’s skyline. But its name is a misnomer; museum is too limiting a description. That’s a venue people visit to remind one another of past lives … memories that can light up a rainy Sunday afternoon.

“This museum is to make a difference. This book is about how this idea, which seemed far too risky to be Canadian, actually came about. Its purpose is more significant than its contents…. If you consider this notion, it really defines what this is all about. Its existence will turn focus on its mission. The key to this great achievement is the image you get of a long time ago.”

Co-author Levine said, “I was fortunate to spend a lot of time with Izzy Asper and listen to him talk…. He told me often, one of the secrets of success came down to perseverance. He just never gave up on anything he did.

“The CMHR project gave new meanings to that. As Peter and I were researching and writing the book, I was struck by the amazing perseverance of Gail and Moe, and other members of the Asper family and foundation. They refused to quit, and are standing in the museum today.”

Levine read aloud excerpts from the book’s section “A Magnificent Conception,” about the delay in getting the museum off the ground.

“You see, Asper was not a journey-to-the-destination type of person. He was a just-get-to-the-destination kind of guy. So, if you’d told him in 2003, prior to his death, that more than a decade later the Museum for Human Rights would not be open, he would have been appalled.

“Back in 2000, once the initial idea of the Museum of Tolerance, as it was first referred to, began to germinate, and after Asper had found a spot at the Forks where he wanted to build it, plans advanced methodically and purposefully.

“Asper’s vision, although not clearly articulated initially, was to establish a museum that would teach the lessons of the Holocaust as well as examine human rights in a Canadian context against the backdrop of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There was a part of Canada’s history that had never been told, and he spoke really with as much passion about the Holocaust as he did about the Japanese, Chinese and Aboriginal societies, in particular.

“The project Asper envisioned was unique for several other reasons, factors that would prove a stumbling block difficult to hurdle, the grandeur of the museum Asper had in mind was akin to the Guggenheim Museum in Spain.

“One misconception that stands out is how people believe that he intended this to be a private museum … the opposite is true. Right from the beginning, he stated that he only wanted to spearhead this project, not run it or control the agenda.

“In the early years, Asper had underestimated the opposition he was to face from just about every corner – skeptical politicians who questioned the need for such a mammoth and expensive museum, academics and journalists who did not believe the museum of human rights could be done properly, or whether it was even necessary.

“Ottawa bureaucrats protested loudly about placing a national rights museum anywhere but in Ottawa, and a collection of naysayers who questioned the use of the Asper Foundation’s use of tax-payer money as part of an alleged scheme to advance so-called Jewish interests.

“Yet, even if he had known of the obstacles that stood in his path, Izzy would never have quit. Always he had persevered. As Gail recalls about her father, there’s a great quote that comes ‘Do it: do or do not. There is no try. Let’s just get the job done.’

“At the same time, there had been times when he had tried and tried and tried, and he failed. But the bottom line is, if you keep trying, the perseverance will pay off somewhere.”

When finished reading the first book excerpt, Levine shared, “Izzy, by the way, dictated things. Gail was instructed by her father that she was to dedicate half her day, every day, to the museum.

“So this, I quote, from Izzy’s letter to his daughter: ‘You must get up and end every day and ask yourself, what did I achieve in finding 60 million needed from the private sector for the museum? You are not to take any calls, answer any letters, or have any meetings with people who are seeking donations from the Asper Foundation. That is Moe’s job, and not to be duplicated.

‘I’m spelling all of this out because this is your opportunity to prove that you can act like a senior executive, and not to be distracted by everything that happens to go by. I hope you can exercise for us and discipline the outlined above.

‘This is the way I’ve operated all my life and, in my opinion, the only way you can accomplish things that everyone thinks can’t be done.’” Levine added, “And Gail obviously followed that [instruction].”

“Working with Allan and Peter has been one of the joys of putting this whole project together,” Levi added in his remarks. “It made me reminisce with Gail, and many times we laughed and cried thinking back [on] this incredible journey. I think it’s a great book. The key thing here is all the proceeds of this book go to the Friends [of the CMHR]. Anytime you buy it, you’re helping a child come to visit the museum in Winnipeg.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Life lessons in many forms

It is amazing how many common themes run through even the most disparate books. The selection reviewed by the Jewish Independent this year includes both picture books and novels for teens; the topics range from genocide and oppression, to a grandmother dying and a family getting a dog; the stories take place in fictional worlds and all too real places. Yet, the vast majority of lessons or values imparted are the same.

The importance of family, friendship, resilience, responsibility, creativity, compassion, caring for those less fortunate or more vulnerable, accepting the reality of death – all make an appearance in the books that follow.

From the wonderfully imaginative mind of Joan Betty Stuchner, who sadly passed away earlier this year, Bagels Come Home (Orca Echoes, 2014) is the story of Bagels, a behavior-challenged but friendly dog that the Bernsteins adopt from a shelter. He joins the family’s goldfish, Lox, and their cat, Creamcheese. However, when it proves almost impossible to train him, 8-year-old Josh (who suggested getting a dog in the first place) and his 5-year-old sister Becky must work together (keenly on her part, not so much on his) to keep their parents from returning Bagels. The black and white illustrations by Dave Whamond complement the jovial energy and mood of Stuchner’s tale.

Inspired by a discussion that author Michelle Gilman had with her children after their grandma (bubbie) died, What Grandma Built (Gilman Press, 2014) deals with death straight on. The book – with colorful, childlike drawings by Jazmin Sasky – introduces readers to Grandma when she falls in love with Grandpa. We share in a few of the highlights of their lives, building a house, having children, becoming grandparents. Much of the story is about the fun times that their grandchildren have with them. But then Grandma becomes ill and, despite all the love and care she receives, passes away. The house that Grandma helped build may not last forever, but the home she built, her “cathedral,” will, “especially in the hearts and memories of our family.”

The Magician of Auschwitz (Second Story Press, 2014) by Kathy Kacer is also based on a true story. During the Holocaust, young Werner – whose father died years ago, whose older sister went into hiding with a Christian family two years earlier and who last saw his mother at the police station where he was held before being sent to the concentration camp – is fortunate to meet Herr Levin, whose wife and son are also in the camp, “somewhere.” A gentle soul, Levin treats Werner with kindness so, when Levin is awakened one night, Werner is afraid he may lose his only friend. However, the guards order Levin: “Do your magic!” And he does. Levin’s magic not only saves his life, but Werner’s – a gift Werner never forgets.

The illustrations by Gillian Newland are in dark, rich tones, appropriate for the subject matter, and brightening for the image of an elder Werner teaching his sons the card trick Levin taught him. The book includes a section about the real-life Werner and Levin (the Great Nivelli).

Lynne Kositsky’s The Plagues of Kondar (Dundurn Press, 2014) takes readers to a planet divided by a dense wall of fog: the sun shines on Lightside, while only darkness prevails on Oscura. Arien, 14 cycles old, lives in Lightside, but her life goes from brightness to hardship soon after we meet her. Short on food supplies, her parents set off to see if another settlement has grain to spare, but they don’t make it back. Sold into slavery to pay her parents’ alleged debts, Arien must be strong, confident, resourceful – and kind – to survive. When some Oscurans inadvertently bring a plague to Lightside, Arien is at the centre of the efforts to cure it, and not just for her own people but for the Oscurans, despite the long-told tales that describe them as “ghosts and ghouls.”

Silvana Goldemberg’s Victoria (Turnaround, 2013) is translated from the Spanish by Emilie Smith. Victoria’s title character and her younger twin brothers live with their aunt until the aunt’s boyfriend attempts to sexually assault the 14-year-old. Victoria flees to the streets of Paraná, Argentina, where she must fend for herself among drug dealers and other dangers. Taking control, and keeping to her personal values, Victoria works hard, makes new friends and builds a life that promises better things for her and her brothers.

Building a new life is also central to Rachel’s Hope (Second Story Press, 2014), the third in Shelly Sanders’ Rachel trilogy. We first met Rachel at age 14, in Kishinev, Russia. Her dreams of being a writer are put on hold, as the murder of a Christian man leads to pogroms and chaos, beginning Easter Sunday 1903; however, among all the bad, she is helped by Sergei, a non-Jewish boy.

The unrest in Russia continues and the next time we meet Rachel, her father has been killed and she and the rest of her family flee to Shanghai, where they save money for a ship to America; Sergei remains in Russia, becoming a factory worker, but the horrid conditions lead him to join the rebellions.

Rachel’s Hope begins in winter 1905: Rachel, her sister and brother-in-law, and their young charge, Menahem, have made it to San Francisco (her mother dies in Shanghai); Sergei is still in Russia, part of the revolutionaries. This part of the trilogy introduces readers to the many challenges immigrants face when coming to a new country, encountering a new language, a new culture. But, as hard as life may be in the United States, as unequal as women’s or immigrants’ rights may be, as hard as it is to recover from a natural disaster (the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco), the comparison with Russia at that point in its history is stark. The devastating effects of violent oppression last well beyond the attainment of freedom.

Sweet holiday story for kids

In Apple Days: A Rosh Hashanah Story by Allison Sarnoff Soffer (Kar-Ben Publishing, 2014), Katy and her classmates share what they like best about Rosh Hashanah with their teacher. Katy recalls how each year she and her mom go apple picking, return home, and then Katy helps her mom make applesauce.

This year’s day goes on the calendar, and it seems like the whole community is looking forward to it, when a family “crisis” arises.

Soon the word spreads that apple-picking day is not going to happen but, soon enough, friends, community members and Katy’s father become involved, leading to a happy ending for all.

This book for children ages 2 to 7 is not only fun to read but it teaches important lessons about what happens when a family has to have flexibility and what can happen when you share your problems with your friends and community for support.

Sarnoff Soffer teaches at a preschool school in Chevy Chase, Md., where she lives with her husband and children. This is her first book. Illustrator Bob McMahon provides cartoon-like, colorful drawings. A recipe for applesauce is included.

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.