Arts & Culture – Page 124

Help Passion to Israel

Dr. Peter Gary discusses A 20th Century Passion, which is set to première in Jerusalem Oct. 17, in a documentary-in-the-making by Hilary Pryor and David Malysheff. (screenshot from a20thcenturypassion.org/documentary)

For most of his life, Dr. Peter Gary never spoke of the three years he spent in Majdanek, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen from the ages of 17-21, or that he and his mother were shot and left for dead on Christmas Eve, 1941. Yet, in 1993, after immigrating to Canada and British Columbia, he founded the Victoria Holocaust Remembrance and Education Society and began to lecture in schools up and down Vancouver Island and in coastal British Columbia. Over the years, he has spoken to more than 65,000 children and youth, college and university students – imparting his message that you can’t live with hate, you can only die with hate.

A 20th Century Passion is an oratorio Gary has composed that depicts the story of the Holocaust and the years preceding and following it, from the end of the First World War through the Nuremburg trials. It is a huge piece – the score alone is 587 pages – that requires a full orchestra, an adult and a children’s choir as well as four soloists plus the conductor. That’s more than 100 people involved in the performance, which is set to première Oct. 17 in Jerusalem – if there is enough to finance the rehearsals, logistics and everything else needed to bring it to life.

Gary’s wife, Judy Estrin, talks about the fundraising project in a video at gofundme.com/20thcenturypassion. She and others involved in the project are asking that people give today. Instead of a latte, give to the music. Challenge your friends to give. If each of the 65,000-plus students who heard Gary’s message over the last 25 years gave $2 to $5, the concert would be funded, a documentary made – Hilary Pryor, executive producer, and David Malysheff, documentarian, have already more than 14 hours of film “in the can” – and there would be funds to donate to help the dwindling number of survivors left.

Gary, a classically trained composer, wrote both the score and the libretto of A 20th Century Passion in the 1970s as a remembrance of the children murdered by the Nazis. The piece has never been performed. (For more on the work and a planned concert in British Columbia that was canceled, see jewishindependent.ca/holocaust-survivor-peter-garys-oratorio.)

In his talks to high school students, Gary speaks about hate, about bullying, about the Holocaust. He leaves them with a message: stamp out hate. This message is more important than ever, as the horrors visited upon Gary and his family are being repeated.

Here is an excerpt from the libretto of A 20th Century Passion by Gary:

Why do you hate me so much?
What have I done to you? –
You really haven’t, but you are a Jew!
For this alone you have to hate….
Why don’t you see me as human, awake?
You must have some feeling,
So many of us, not knowing – just killing….
Whether it’s many that I kill or few
Matters so little, since you are a Jew!
Look at our women, they’re mothers like yours;
Our whimpering children, the frightened old….
Don’t you have young ones, or fathers who….
Oh yes we have them, but none of them Jew!
Our leader decided for all you to die!
We are the masters and do as told….
Being big, strong and hardened and bold….
Look how I’m smiling the same smile you have,
Whenever I’m bleeding my blood is the same red.
I’m speaking the same voice,
Our hands are the same….
I told you, you fool Jew, I told you in vain….
You are not worthy, not human, that’s that!
I pity you man –
When you finish killing – you too are dead.

For more details about the concert and documentary, visit a20thcenturypassion.org. To donate, visit gofundme.com/20thcenturypassion.

Changing face of libraries

Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library librarian Helen Pinsky, left, and master’s student Alisa Lazear, who is working on the library’s audiobooks collection. (photo by Olga Livshin)

In past centuries, reading aloud was an integral part of family life. People gathered in their parlors to read books to friends and family. In the 20th century, the experience migrated towards radio. When favorite personalities read new novels or classics on the radio, it was a unique pleasure in many communities, especially where access to live entertainment was limited. Then came the TV and the internet. But reading aloud is seeing a comeback – with audiobooks.

The Wall Street Journal ran an article recently about how audiobooks are the fastest-growing sector in the book business today. In 2015, audiobook sales in the United States and Canada increased 21% from the previous year.

The Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library has reacted to this latest development by expanding their audiobook stacks.

“The modern libraries have to change to keep up with the times,” said Helen Pinsky, Waldman’s head librarian, “but they also stay the same. As ever, they answer the patrons’ curiosity, provide access to information. They are the source of knowledge, whether on their shelves or through their computers. The changes come from different angles. For example, some libraries in the Greater Vancouver area explore novel ways of organizing books: by theme or by the time of publication instead of alphabetically by the author’s name. Such a method is especially convenient for teachers – who could find books on a particular theme grouped in one spot of the library – or for researchers.”

Pinsky also expressed concern about the negative impact of technology, however. With internet search engines, in particular Google, and sites like Wikipedia, people have stopped coming to libraries for information.

“They Google their questions and get a thousand websites as the answers,” she said. “But who could guarantee that the data they find in the first 37 hits is correct? Google is dangerous. It is destroying the value of encyclopedias, while librarians know where to find the right stuff. It is specifically true for the medical or legal areas.”

Of course, there are positive technical innovations, and Pinsky emphasized those, especially the digital formats. After ebooks became a huge segment of publishing in the last decade, and audiobooks followed a few years later, public libraries had to adapt to the new demands, although print books still dominate in the Waldman Library catalogue by a ratio of approximately 20 to one.

“It might be a different ratio for the city libraries,” Pinsky mused. “The exclusive supplier of digital books to Canadian libraries is Overdrive. There were a few smaller companies before but they’ve all gone out of business by now. Unfortunately, Overdrive doesn’t have much interest in the Jewish content, so their selection of Jewish-themed books in both epub format and audio format is rather narrow. They don’t have anything in Hebrew either. It might change in a few years, or publishers might start distributing digital content themselves.”

Still, there are some books available through Overdrive that are of specific interest to a Jewish readership, and the Waldman takes steps to broaden its digital choices.

“Audiobooks are trendy now,” said Alisa Lazear, who is working on the Waldman’s audiobook collection.

Lazear is studying for a master’s degree in library and information studies at the University of British Columbia.

“I need to do 120 hours of professional experience as part of my program. It’s an equivalent of one course,” she explained. “I approached Helen to do my professional experience at the Waldman because I love the library. It was Helen’s idea that my focus should be the audiobook collection. We already have some audiobook CDs, so I concentrated on the online streaming from Overdrive. I had to figure out how to download their books, choose which ones would interest our readers, and integrate them with the main catalogue. Then I had to design flyers to educate the patrons how to use such audiobooks.”

In Lazear’s opinion, the current popularity of audiobooks has to do with people’s chronic shortage of time.

“Audiobooks are great for multitasking,” she said. “You can drive, do chores, work out at a gym, and listen to an audiobook at the same time. A narrator also plays a huge role. He is part of the experience, almost like a friend reading to you. Some narrators have a huge following; people would listen to anything by them.”

Lazear thinks that the new digital formats are accessible across the generational spectrum.

“My young cousins enjoy listening to their favorite audiobooks before bed or in a car,” she said. “Some older people develop visual impairment, and audiobooks might be the only choice for them as a form of reading.”

Regarding this latter point, Lazear created an audiobook program, Coffee & Stories, for the Louis Brier Home and Hospital.

“We had our first meeting on Aug. 7,” she said. “Several people came to the activity room. I brought cookies and selected two different audiobooks. We listened to 10-minute clips from each and then discussed them. It was a very active discussion.”

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

Love your child as they are

The Swirsky family. Jackie Swirsky has written a children’s book, Be Yourself, which features illustrations by her eldest child, Jacob, and her sister-in-law. (photo from Jackie Swirsky)

Maybe it’s because I’m an academic, but I tend to gravitate to categories, which is why the most current discourse on gender has made me feel challenged. I am, by now, very comfortable with the increasingly understood categories of transgender and cisgender (meaning that one’s body conforms to one’s gender identity). But what about cases of individuals who identify as neither transgender nor cisgender, but operate, instead, somewhere in the middle?

Jackie Swirsky, a speech-language pathologist based in Winnipeg, is the mother of two sons, one of whom (Jacob, age 8) Swirsky describes as “gender creative.”

Swirsky is my second cousin, but we only became acquainted after she published her children’s book, Be Yourself, which features a gender creative child and focuses on acceptance. We recently spoke by phone, where I admired her eloquence and compassion and, above all, her comfort with accepting the in-between.

When Jacob was 4, he said to his parents he felt it “wasn’t fair” that he was “a boy.” That’s when we opened up a dialogue, Swirsky said. Currently, he still identifies as a boy, “but his gender expression is very feminine,” she said.

There may have been a time when, faced with a son who prefers to dress in what are conventionally thought of as “girls” clothes, a parent may have tried to force the child to change. One can imagine the emotional pain that would have enveloped those households in those generations. Instead, Swirsky puts it plainly: Jacob “is perfect the way he is.” She sees it as her job not to change her child, but rather to “educate the world” in order to “make it a happier, safer place.”

Enter her book, Be Yourself, with illustrations by Jacob and Swirsky’s sister-in-law Jaimee Appel. It can be purchased at beyourselfbook.ca.

Swirsky took her message to Camp Massad at Winnipeg Beach before camp started, as Jacob would be a camper there over the summer. Leading a workshop for counselors on how to rethink gender norms, Swirsky’s goal was to help the staff “identify their own gender stereotypes,” while encouraging them to open a dialogue with the campers – rather than scold – if they happen to encounter issues of gender stereotyping or instances of gender mocking.

And, while some camps might think of themselves as progressive on the issue of gender, given the easy availability of costumes and the playful gender-crossing that may ensue, Swirsky is clear: for Jacob, this isn’t “dress up,” it’s who he is.

Camp Massad program director Sari Waldman shared with me that, in trying to make camp as “inclusive and accessible as possible,” they are rethinking some of what they realize are overly gender-binary practices. “Simple things,” Waldman said, like do we really need to divide the chadar ochel (dining hall) along gender lines?”

They are now more sensitive to gender stereotypes when writing cabin songs. Not every boy plays sports and longs to sneak into girls’ cabins, they now realize. Waldman added that they have installed gender-neutral washrooms in various spots around camp, and would include a gender-neutral stall in the refurbished bathrooms. This year, for the first time, boys’ and girls’ cabins would no longer be on opposite sides of the field.

Other camps have taken gender-awareness on board, too. As was reported in the Washington Post, Habonim Dror camps across North America, including Camp Miriam on Gabriola Island, have created a new, gender-neutral Hebrew word for camper (chanichol) for those who identify as neither male (chanich) or female (chanicha). And they have renamed each of their age-group names with a pan-gender neologism suffix (imot) rather than the male im or the female ot. It’s a mouthful (and not traditionally grammatical), but the move has created new awareness around gender identity and the categories into which we put each other.

No doubt, attending Jewish camp won’t be without its challenges for someone like Jacob. It’s hard to get around separate sleeping and showering arrangements, even if privacy is granted for changing. And, when it comes to ritual garb, Jacob doesn’t feel comfortable wearing a kippah, for example. Swirsky hoped that the staff would either let him choose whether or not to wear one, or else ask everyone – boys and girls – to cover their head.

As for school, Swirsky finds that the teachers at her son’s school are excellent in supporting Jacob where he is. She also has much praise for the Winnipeg One School Division, which recently issued a new “safe and caring policy on transgender and gender-diverse students.”

Occasionally, though, there are setbacks. One day, a substitute teacher asked the kids to divide up according to gender. Relaying the day’s events to Swirsky that evening, Jacob revealed that he didn’t know which side to stand on. “I just sort of wandered,” he said.

While Swirsky finds that some people she encounters lavish praise on her for her apparent open-mindedness, she insisted that this is basic to who she is as a parent.

“I love and accept my child for who they are; not who I expect them to be,” she said.

And, when talking with Jacob, Swirsky always makes sure to ask open-ended questions. “If you’re really listening to your kid,” Swirsky said, “you’re going to help support them to be on a path that makes them happy.”

It’s a wonderful message about love and acceptance, parenting our kids where they are, and helping society evolve to embrace diversity – even if that diversity is much more finely grained than we may have realized.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She is a columnist for Canadian Jewish News and contributes to Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward, among other publications.

Milken launches site

This two-album anthology was created to celebrate the launch of the Milken Archive’s new website. It features a sample track from each of the archive’s 20 thematic volumes.

The Milken Archive of Jewish Music: The American Experience has launched a new website (milkenarchive.org) that allows visitors to experience virtually every piece of music and every composer that the archive has recorded since its founding in 1990.

The extensive collection – which includes more than 600 works comprising 1,800 individual tracks, 200 composers and 800 hours of oral histories – is organized into webpages that contain links to all of the available related media content collected and created in the course of the archive’s historic work.

“This new site is a vast repository of a musical culture that has continually redefined and reinvented itself as it has responded to the opportunities and challenges of life in a land of freedom,” according to Milken Archive curator Jeff Janeczko.

The new mobile-friendly platform offers a rich experience on a variety of devices to accommodate the diverse needs of Milken Archive’s audiences. From documentary videos and photographs to extended oral histories and articles, each page exists within the context of the cultural and historical narratives that have defined Jewish life in America for the past three-and-a-half centuries.

In celebration of the new site, a digital anthology is available free to all individuals who sign up at the archive’s website. Ten winners will also receive five albums of their choice; five winners will choose 10 albums. A grand-prize winner, chosen at random, will have unprecedented access to all 1,800-plus tracks contained within the archive’s 20 thematic volumes. The deadline to sign up for the free album and contest is Sept. 26.

The Milken Archive repertoire on the free two-album anthology features one sample track from each of the archive’s 20 thematic volumes.

On Album 1, there is: 1. Ikh Bin a “Boarder” Bay Mayn Vayb (I’m a Boarder at My Wife’s) by Rubin Doctor; 2. Celestial Dialogues: IV, Adonai Melekh (The Lord is King) by Ofer Ben-Amots; 3. L’kha Dodi (Welcome, Sabbath Bride) by Aaron Bensoussan; 4. Eshet Hayil by Benzion Shenker (arranged by Stanley Sperber); 5. Hear O Israel: IV, Sh’ma, by Jonathan Klein; 6. Violin Concerto in C Minor, “Nushkaoth,” by Sholom Secunda; 7. Two Hannah Szenesh Poems: II, Ashrei Ha-garfur, by Max Helfman; 8. Amar Rabbi, Elazar, by Moishe Oysher; 9. Stempenyu Suite: III, Freilechs, by Joseph Achron; and 10. Di Naye Hagode: Riboyne-Sheloylem (The New Haggadah: Master of the Universe) by Max Helfman.

Album two comprises: 1. Mayn Rue Platz (My Resting Place), anonymous, arranged by R. Williams; 2. Canticles for Jerusalem by Vivian Fine; 3. Kol Nidrei, Op. 47, by Max Bruch; 4. Ki K’shimkha by Paul Discount; 5. Shofar Service: I, Malkhuyyot, by Herman Berlinski; 6. Genesis Suite: IV, Cain and Abel, by Darius Milhaud; 7. The Day of Rest by Sholom Kalib; 8. Aleikhem Eda K’dosha, traditional; 9. Akavya ben Mahal’el Omer by Lazar Weiner; 10. The Merchant and the Pauper, Act II, Scene 4 (excerpt) by Paul Schoenfield.

Since its creation by philanthropist-businessman Lowell Milken, the Milken Archive has achieved a reputation that extends internationally. The 50 CDs released by Naxos American Classics between 2003 and 2006 gained widespread recognition, including Grammy and ASCAP awards, and the nationally broadcast radio series hosted by Leonard Nimoy has introduced the archive to countless listeners.

“The Milken Archive of Jewish Music is a living project, one that we hope will cultivate and nourish musicians and enthusiasts of this richly varied musical genre,” said Milken. “The sacred and secular body of work that has developed over the centuries since Jews first arrived on these shores provides a powerful means of expressing the multi-layered saga of American Jewry.”

Saga of hunting Nazis

Andrew Nagorski will talk at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre on Nov. 29, as part of the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. (photo by Andrew Rudakov)

The night before the legendary operation that captured Adolf Eichmann, Isser Harel, the head of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, told the small cadre of men set to accomplish one of the most storied espionage missions ever: “For the first time in history, the Jews would judge their assassins.”

Harel articulated the historical momentousness of what was, in reality, a surprisingly mundane capture. Eichmann, one of the foremost masterminds of the Holocaust, had been living in Argentina under an assumed name but, apparently confident of his security, had sloppily left breadcrumbs that allowed professional and avocational Nazi hunters to track him down. Eichmann was also a creature of habit, descending from the bus each evening near his suburban home reliably around the same time. For an action with such monumental consequences, the capture was barely more dramatic than a typical mugging.

The story of Eichmann’s capture, extra-judicial extradition to Israel, trial and execution is retold in The Nazi Hunters, a book by author and former Newsweek journalist Andrew Nagroski, who will be in Vancouver this fall as part of the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival.

Harel’s words to the agents who captured the SS leader apply not solely to the Nazi hunters’ greatest catch, but to the larger phenomenon of the quest to bring the perpetrators of the Shoah to justice. The concept of the Jewish people being in a position to judge those who perpetrate antisemitic terror is a uniquely post-Holocaust phenomenon, made possible because of the existence of the state of Israel and its judicial and intelligence mechanisms.

At the same time, hunting down Nazi war criminals was not a priority of the young state of Israel, as a senior Israeli official told Nagroski. Israel’s early governments had plenty on their plates coaxing a country from the desert and looking to the future without devoting resources to tracking down the Hamans of the recent past.

As a result, as Nagorski illustrates engagingly, pursuing the perpetrators fell to an assortment of figures, some official, others self-appointed, who made up a curious collection of personalities.

There were the government investigators and prosecutors, like Fritz Bauer, a German jurist whose attention to Nazi war crimes helped the German people confront and address their past. But others among the most famous Nazi hunters, including Simon Wiesenthal and Tuvia Friedman, were lone wolves (or, at least, started out that way before recruiting their teams) to do the job that governments did not.

The Nuremberg trials, Nagorski notes, were crucial not only for bringing Nazis to justice but in helping create the initial repository of eyewitness testimony and the first draft of what would become Holocaust history. Even so, after that major initiative, which captured the attention of the world and set the Holocaust apart as an event concurrent to but separate from the broader carnage of the Second World War, official interest in the subject waned.

Europe was rebuilding, Israel had plenty of challenges, the countries of the Soviet-dominated Eastern bloc were happy to distance themselves from the events of the Shoah by imagining their socialism as the diametrical ideological opposite of the fascism that had nearly erased Jewish civilization in Europe. Canada, the United States and other Allied countries began looking ahead to a cold peace and the economic prosperity of the 1950s, the sad past being something best left behind.

Thus, it fell to some self-appointed individuals to do the work. This book shares their often gripping, diverse and idiosyncratic stories.

A rise in Holocaust denial during the 1970s spurred a renewed attention to the facts of the Holocaust. A new urgency was driven both by the need to remind the world of the truth but also the reality that time was running out to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Should God be put second?

For Donniel Hartman, putting God second is a way of maintaining a religious life and faith in God, but without God undermining our responsibility to our fellow human beings. (photo from Donniel Hartman)

Donniel Hartman, an Orthodox rabbi and president of Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute, an educational powerhouse dedicated to invigorating Judaism, has recently published his second book. It is called Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself (Beacon Press, 2016).

“Religious people very often argue that religion is fine and that the only problem is that religious people are flawed and are distorting our religious life,” Hartman told the Independent. “Yet, the people who harm, maim and hurt in the name of religion come armed with chapter and verse. They seem to be quite accurate about their religious life. And atheists make similar arguments. The only problem with atheists is they seem to get something wrong as well; they argue that there’s nothing valuable in religion.”

Hartman thinks there is something missing in this discourse, which he explores in this book: queries like, what about religion can be powerful, profound and constructive, and might the issue simply be that people are getting it wrong?

“The idea that I was testing for 10 years – that was researched, taught about and thought about – was that religion suffers from an internal autoimmune disease wherein it attacks its own goals,” said Hartman.

“Religion has noble goals,” he contends, and is not only a source for evil, as some atheists say. “I think religion is, in fact, trying to produce kind individuals. There’s something inherent within the system, which can cause it to underachieve and fail to meet its aspiration. In short, the cause of that autoimmune disease is God – in particular, when God is put first.

“The idea is that monotheism creates a being of such transcendence and scope that when God enters the room, it shifts the human consciousness away from their moral responsibility for other people.”

For Hartman, putting God second is a way of maintaining a religious life and faith in God, but without God undermining our responsibility to our fellow human beings.

“This one transcendent God is something that I feel human beings have great difficulty assimilating into their system, into their lives, and that God has a potential to warp our consciousness,” said Hartman. “I call it ‘God intoxication,’ wherein everything else becomes unimportant.

“It’s the encounter with God that can create this distortion. Who is more important, a human being or God? Human beings will again distort that message because, when it gets instilled into their minds, what can possibly be more important?

“We see religious people, in the name of faith, harming, judging and insulting people, showing a lack of tolerance, pluralism – the same people who could, in their everyday lives, act decently, kindly. The minute religion is in the equation, there’s potential for it to get distorted,” he said.

“God intoxication is not a flaw within religion, it’s embedded in the idea of monotheism. Some people argue we should get rid of God. My book tries to reestablish a life of faith. It doesn’t say to get rid of God or to put God 14th or 15th. At the end of the book is when you put God second, but you put God’s will first toward developing a religious life with God that immunizes us from this autoimmune disease.

“One of the essential concepts in the book,” he continued, “is how you treat other human beings – this being the core of how we assess the value of our lives. I think there is a very profound spreading of faithlessness precisely because of the consequences of what God seems to bring to humankind. My goal in putting God second is to help more people establish a deeper relationship with God, one with a God they can respect…. If God needs to be first, people feel it’s a God they don’t want to believe in. I believe that the language of putting God second is what will enable a language of faith to be far more pervasive within our modern community and the modern world.”

Hartman hopes that Putting God Second will reach a diverse readership. “The target audience,” he said, “is thoughtful people searching for a decent world and a meaningful religious life, and I hope this book will be conducive to moving us in the right direction. Most importantly, I like to help people and, if this book is too upsetting for you, just put this book second, it’s not meant for you…. I hope there’s a broad range of people that, through this book and this religious language, can try connecting with it, both with God and with their tradition.”

Hartman, who was born in the United States and spent 11 years in Montreal, is currently working on a Hebrew translation of the book.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Did Franz Kafka have a son?

Before you begin reading Curt Leviant’s latest novel, Kafka’s Son (Dzanc Books, 2016), you are confronted with a curious bit of information. There are a dozen quotes from French reviews before the title page. Why? Because the book first appeared in French translation a few years ago before its publication earlier this year in the original English, and garnered incredible reviews. One reviewer on French national TV called Kafka’s Son “a work of genius.”

Kafka’s Son is a roller-coaster ride of a novel that is a mystery, travelogue, love story, literary analysis (Metamorphosis as comedy) and, most important, a challenge to our sense of historical timelines.

As our narrator meets one memorable character after another, the action rushes forward until the last page, which will astonish and surprise the narrator and delight the reader.

The big question is, did Franz Kafka have a son?

Leviant opens the novel with no fewer than seven beginnings, and concludes with an equal number of endings.

Beginning #1 is a nod to Herman Melville and Moby Dick: “Call me Amschl. All right, so don’t call me Amschl. Nobody does anyway. Except when I’m called up to the Torah by my Hebrew name: Amschl ben Moshe.” He is our narrator.

Beginning #2 tells readers they are entering a world where imagination and suspension of disbelief will launch them on a great adventure: “This is a true story. True story!? Humbug…. Either a narrative is true or it’s a story. It cannot be both. Period. End of story.”

Let me unfold the plot just enough to get you started. Giving you too many details will spoil the fun. You will want to be puzzled, startled and enlightened as you travel along with our questing narrator.

Amschl, a documentary filmmaker, is prompted by an elderly Czech Jew he meets in Eldridge Street Synagogue in New York to go to Prague and make a film about the true history of his idol, Kafka.

Everything seems possible in Prague, a mystical city. With camera in hand, he visits the oldest synagogue, Altneuschul, where the legendary Golem is said to be asleep in the attic. Another character says he survived the German invasion in that same attic.

Amschl’s other encounters include a man with a “golem’s” face; the old beadle of the synagogue who insists there never was an attic; Katya, the beautiful girl in the blue beret who knows more than she tells our narrator, agrees to go to a concert with him and then disappears for a spell; a man who swears he is Kafka’s son and then he too disappears; and the enigmatic Mr. Klein, who does not disappear.

Mr. Klein becomes a companion, but raises additional questions. His very high energy level and obvious old age is puzzling. Katya reappears and leads our narrator to a synagogue not listed in the Jewish sites brochure, where he spots Mr. Klein praying quietly. The plaster lions guarding the holy ark leap off and come alive. Amschl is both frightened and frustrated because he does not have his camera to record this fantastic scene. Katya and Mr. Klein share knowing glances and a few words to add to the puzzle.

“The whole thing didn’t make sense” to Amschl but he plods on hoping to clear up one implausible “fact” after another. At one point, the absurdities pile up and he thinks, “It reminded me of what I learned in geometry, maybe algebra: multiply two negative numbers and you get a positive…. You add up two absurds and get one truth.”

The puzzle is compounded by the fact that all of these characters are breathing, rational, real people. Along with our narrator, you want to believe them. You will also note that most of them have a “K” beginning their first or last name.

The narrator keeps moving forward, looking for the breakthrough, and takes the reader, who becomes a willing partner on this whirlwind journey, to the startling ending I promised in my third paragraph.

Kafka’s Son is a superb novel that can be enjoyed on many levels. It keeps you guessing and turning pages to uncover the truth, and I agree with the French reviewer from Lire, a leading literary journal, who is unequivocal in his praise: “As to whether Kafka had an heir, the answer is obvious. His name is Curt Leviant.”

End of story!

Sidney Kessler, z”l, was a freelance writer in Glen Allen, Va. His articles appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the Richmond Times-Dispatch, among other publications.

From cardboard to folktales

Books can take you to the most captivating places. Not always happy places, but places worth exploring, places where the people, environment, challenges and culture are different. A place you can have adventures, learn from what has happened to others or just escape from your daily routine, all for the relatively low price of a book. Oh, and maybe a cardboard box.

The beautifully and creatively illustrated What to do with a Box (Creative Editions, 2016) features the rhythmic writing of Jane Yolen and the inspired art of Chris Sheban. The book is a tribute to the power of the imagination – a way to impart to the younger set that fun doesn’t necessarily need batteries. It’s also a reminder to parents that expensive toys aren’t at the root of what makes playtime enjoyable, and they may even be enticed to join their kids in a cardboard box adventure – if they’re invited to come along, that is.

The writing is simple, as it is for most picture books. That box, “can be a library, palace, or nook,” or a place you can “invite your dolls to come in for tea”; it can be a racecar, a ship, and so much more. And the art by Sheban looks as if he took Yolen’s advice: “You can paint a landscape with sun, sand and sky or crayon an egret that’s flying right by.” It is described as cardboardesque and, indeed, it looks as if he drew the illustrations on different types of boxes.

For slightly older readers (or listeners), Richard Unger has written and illustrated a more traditional story with Chagallesque art, Yitzi and the Giant Menorah (Penguin Random House, 2016). It is a picture book, but with a substantive amount of text on each page. It, too, is beautifully and creatively put together, with most of the text printed on a plain page that includes a black-and-white sketch that doesn’t overlap it in any way, making the reading easier. More importantly, it leaves most of the colorful, vibrant and expressive artwork on the opposite page free from writing. At the end of the book is the brief story of Chanukah.

While set on the eve of Chanukah in the shtetl of Chelm, this tale bears a similar message to What to do with a Box: money isn’t everything. It adds to that the lesson of gratitude.

In the story, the mayor of Lublin gives the people of the Chelm “the biggest menorah” Yitzi has ever seen and the villagers are so grateful, they want to thank the mayor in a way that matches the grandeur of his gift. This being Chelm, the solution doesn’t come easily but, after a few failed efforts, they succeed in a heartwarming way.

* * *

For young adult readers, the stories are much more serious in both subject matter and tone.

Eva Wiseman’s Another Me (Tundra Books, 2016) is set in the mid-1300s in Strasbourg, France. It starts with the main character’s death at the hands of the men poisoning the town’s water – an act the Jews were accused of committing not only in Strasbourg, but other cities in Europe, as well. It was thought that poisoned water was causing the plague and, since fewer Jews were dying, the rumors began that they were causing the illness. In reality, Jews were also dying, but in fewer numbers because Jewish law required much more handwashing than was customary in medieval times.

Wiseman also elaborates upon less tangible Jewish beliefs in Another Me. When Natan, 17, dies, his story doesn’t end. He becomes an ibbur – his soul enters the body of another man; in this instance, that of Hans the draper.

Hans works for Wilhelm, with whose daughter, Elena, Natan has fallen in love. Natan has come to know all of these non-Jews from helping his father in the shmatte business. Wilhelm is one of the very few Strasbourgians who is not antisemitic. Hans is also a good person, though he is jealous of Elena’s affection for Natan. When Natan – to whom she’s attracted – becomes Hans – who she finds ugly – Elena struggles to see beyond the exterior.

While mostly told from Natan’s perspective, Wiseman also allows Elena to tell a substantial part of the story. It is sometimes hard as a reader to change gears, but the dual voices offer a deeper understanding of the situation of the Jews in the city (and beyond), and those who would help them. Being historical fiction, while Wiseman can play with magic, there is, sadly, no chance for a happy ending.

Magic – or, at least, ghosts – also informs the storytelling in Eugene Yelchin’s The Haunting of Falcon House (Henry Holt and Co., 2016).

Ostensibly, this book is a translation Yelchin has made from a bundle of decaying pages bound with twine that he came across as a schoolboy in Russia. He brought them with him when he immigrated to the United States, but let them sit for years. Apparently written and illustrated by “a young Russian nobleman, Prince Lev Lvov,” who was born in 1879, there were many pages missing or unreadable.

“I managed to establish a chronological order of the events and then divided them into chapters, matched the drawings to the chapters, and discarded those I could not match,” writes Yelchin in the translator’s note that begins the book. So “inwardly connected to the young prince” did Yelchin become, he writes, “I can’t be certain, but as I typed Prince Lev’s inner thoughts, I felt cool fingers firmly guiding mine across the keys.”

In the story, 12-year-old Lev’s hands are similarly guided by a mysterious force when he is drawing. Arriving at Falcon House from St. Petersburg to take his place as heir to his family’s estate, Lev – who bears a striking resemblance to his grandfather – dreams of being a hero and nobleman like his grandfather and preceding ancestors. But, with some mystical guidance from Falcon House’s resident ghost, Lev begins to understand that being nobility doesn’t necessarily mean being noble, and his family’s secrets, which are slowly revealed, make him rethink his aspirations.

The ghost, a scary aunt and the disturbing illustrations combine to good effect in The Haunting of Falcon House, even though the story takes a little too long to unfold. The detailed notes at the book’s end provide valuable historical context and add greatly to the reading experience.

Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose: A Novel of the Holocaust (Tor Teen, 2016) is also a retelling – an adaptation of Sleeping Beauty. And, it is a reissue, having originally been published almost 15 years ago in a series created by Terri Windling, which comprised novels by various authors that reinterpreted classic fairy tales.

In Yolen’s reimagining, Briar Rose (aka Sleeping Beauty) is Gemma, Rebecca’s grandmother. Unlike her cynical and competitive older sisters, Rebecca never tires of listening to Gemma’s version of the tale, which doesn’t quite match up with the traditional folktale. When Gemma dies, leaving behind a box containing a few documents and photos that don’t quite match up with what she has told her family about her history, Becca sets off to find the truth.

Her search – done in the days before Google – starts slowly, with the help of her editor, Stan, on whom she has a crush. It takes them from their hometown of Holyoke, Mass., to Oswego, N.Y., where refugees were sheltered at Fort Oswego: “Roosevelt made it a camp and, in August 1944, some 1,000 people were brought over and interned [there]. From Naples, Italy. Mostly Jews and about 100 Christians,” explains the reporter at the Palladium Times to Becca.

What she learns at Oswego leads her on a journey to Poland and to Chelmno. Of the more than 152,000 killed by gas (or shooting) at the Nazi extermination camp that was there, only seven Jewish men are known to have escaped. This allows Yolen to imagine that one woman survived the killing centre, which was established on an old estate in a forest clearing that had a schloss (castle, or manor house).

In Gemma’s cryptic telling of her survival, she is saved from the castle by a “prince,” who we find out was himself saved by partisans after his escape from Sachsenhausen concentration camp and then joined the resistance; in her story, briars take the place of barbed wire, the wicked fairy the Nazis. As Becca discovers the reality of her grandmother’s past and finds her own voice and identity through the journey, we also witness Poles’ difficulties in dealing with what took place during the Holocaust and we meet others – including Gemma’s prince – who are still trying to heal from the destruction the Nazis’ wrought.

Interweaving the “real” story with Gemma’s fairy tale is very effective at building the anticipation and, once Becca arrives in Poland, Briar Rose is a page-turner. One almost doesn’t realize how much they’re learning while they’re reading. Almost.

Quirky fiction meets history

Two quirky books. Both historically based, both written with humor, both dark and light. But there the similarities end.

The quiet and quirky Fever at Dawn by Péter Gárdos is based on letters his parents sent to each other immediately following the Holocaust, as they recovered from their physical ailments in Sweden. The raucous and quirky Two-Gun & Sun by June Hutton takes its inspiration from Morris “Two-Gun” Cohen and Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who actually did know each other, and Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, to tell the story of a young woman who heads to a northern B.C. mining town in 1922 to revitalize her uncle’s newspaper, which he left her in his will.

Fever at Dawn (House of Anansi Press, 2016) begins with a note from Gárdos about the letters his parents – Miklós and Lili – sent to each other from September 1945 to February 1946. Until his father died, Gárdos had no idea of their existence, though his mother had told him, “Your father swept me off my feet with his letters.”

The main quirky thing about this story (there are others) is that Miklós tried to sweep no fewer than 117 women off their feet with his letters. Told by his doctor that he would not survive his tuberculosis, Miklós defiantly decides he wants to get married. He inquires for the names and addresses of all the women survivors being treated in Sweden, and sends all of them the exact same letter. He determines pretty quickly that Lili is “the one,” though 18 women respond.

The secondary characters are well-conceived and play important parts in Miklós and Lili’s developing relationship. It is a beautiful and uplifting story – love and hope from hatred and tragedy. It brings up many issues, in Lili’s wanting to renounce her faith and in how the survivors are treated, for example. The translation into English from Hungarian by Elizabeth Szász is a bit awkward in parts, but otherwise does justice to the work. And some of the awkwardness might be due to the fact that Gárdos, who is a filmmaker and theatre director, originally envisioned the story as a film – which was released last year – but also wrote it as a novel.

Two-Gun & Sun (Caitlin Press Inc., 2015) might also make a good film. It brings to mind Joss Whedon’s Firefly, mixing science fiction (specifically steampunk) with opera’s larger-than-life and often unbelievable drama with history. It’s a very stylized novel, which, more than other books, means that it will be loved by some readers, and not so much by others.

While loosely historical, it does strongly evoke the era and how hard it must have been to survive back then, especially in a remote town, especially if you were a minority, and very especially if you were a woman. The central character, Lila Sinclair, arrives in Black Mountain from Nelson, given by her uncle’s death a more adventuresome, “manly” economic opportunity than marriage, teaching or prostitution, which seem to have been women’s main choices at the time.

Some of the more fascinating aspects of this novel are the daily-life moments, what people ate, how they earned a living, the excitement a traveling troupe generated, the dangers posed by a lack of law. Anyone in the publishing industry will also appreciate Lila’s struggle to get the printing press up and running, and how newspapers once operated. As well, while her relationship with Vincent, a Chinese printer, runs a predictable course, it offers a chance for Hutton to address the racism of the day.

Two-Gun & Sun is a unique twist on the traditional western and, while the ending wasn’t quite satisfactory for this reader, its originality and oddness were entertaining and energizing.

Some of the magic of Israel

In writing Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) with Steven Cook, Michael Solomonov hopes to share with other cooks “some of the magic” found in Israel.

Israeli-born Solomonov grew up from the age of 2 to 15 in Pittsburgh, then the family returned to Israel. After awhile, when his Bulgarian father and American mother divorced, he returned to the United States, eventually learning to be a chef, graduating from culinary school in 2001. He returned to Israel, where his brother had grown up and was on leave from the army; sadly, his brother was killed soon after, and Solomonov once again left the country.

Returning to Pittsburgh, Solomonov met Cook and, in 2005, became chef of their first restaurant, Marigold Kitchen. In 2008, Solomonov and Cook opened the restaurant Zahav in Philadelphia. They also co-own restaurants Percy Street Barbeque, Federal Donuts, Dizengoff and Abe Fisher, all in Philadelphia. In 2011, Solomonov was awarded the James Beard Award for best chef mid-Atlantic.

After the death of his brother, as he and Cook worked together at Marigold Kitchen, Solomonov writes, “I began to see cooking as a powerful way to honor David’s memory. I could expose people to a side of Israel that had nothing to do with politics and didn’t ever make the evening papers.”

This was the inspiration for Zahav, which opened in May 2008, as well as the cookbook Zahav, whose style is unique.

The nine chapters include one on tahini, which has 34 recipes, including seared chicken livers with caramelized onion tahini and tahini shortbread cookies. There are 20 salad recipes, showing that vegetables are everything, including Israeli pickles and spicy fennel salad. There is a chapter on smaller dishes, with recipes for items like fried cauliflower with herbed labneh. The soup chapter has 16 recipes from around the world, such as celery root soup. The next chapter – “Grandmother’s Borekas, Tradition Was My Teacher” – has 20 recipes, such as fried leek patties. “Live Fire, As Close to Magic as I’ll Come” has 16 recipes, like Bulgarian kebabs and pomegranate-glazed salmon, including mujadara. Then there’s the chapter called “Ben-Gurion’s Rice,” with 11 different recipes. “Mesibah, It’s Party Time” has seven recipes, such as whole fish in grape leaves, and “Milk & Honey is a Glimpse of the Divine” has 17 recipes, including konafi and carrot basboosa.

After an introductory essay in each chapter, there are the recipes, and each is also introduced, with casual (and fun-to-read) remarks and easy-to-follow instructions. There are also sidebars with fascinating information about such things as sumac, date molasses, freekah and rose water.

There is no doubt that this book has “a world of Israeli cooking,” and the recipes below reflect that idea.

CHICKPEA BRITTLE
makes three cups

2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas, rinsed
1 tbsp canola oil
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

Toss the chickpeas with the oil, transfer to another baking sheet, and roast until crisp, 25 to 30 minutes.

Combine the brown sugar, butter and cream in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring, until the mixture darkens in color slightly and large, lava-like bubbles cover the surface, about 10 minutes. Add the chickpeas and stir to combine.

Working quickly and using a rubber spatula, spread the mixture out in an even layer on the prepared baking sheet. Let cool to room temperature. Break into two-inch pieces to serve. The brittle will keep a week in a sealed container.

ROASTED OKRA
serves six

6 cups small whole okra
5 tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup basic tomato sauce
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp grated dried lime
1/2 tsp kosher salt
handful cilantro leaves, chopped

Preheat the oven to 400˚F. Toss the okra with two tablespoons olive oil and arrange on a baking sheet. Bake until the okra turns brown, about 25 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and toss the okra with the remaining three tablespoons of olive oil and the tomato sauce, lemon juice, dried lime and salt. Top with the cilantro. Serve hot or chilled.

GLUTEN-FREE CHOCOLATE ALMOND SITUATION

8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
big pinch salt
2 scant cups chopped dark chocolate (at least 60% cacao), melted and cooled slightly
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup almond flour

Preheat the oven to 375˚F, with a rack in the middle. Oil a nine-inch round or square cake pan. Line the bottom with a round of parchment paper, and oil the parchment.

Combine the butter, sugar and salt in a mixer or other bowl. Beat on medium high until pale and fluffy, about two minutes. Add melted chocolate and mix just until combined. Scrape down the sides and mix for another few seconds. With the mixer on low speed, add eggs, one at a time, beating until each one is incorporated before adding the next. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then add almond flour. Mix on low until just incorporated, about 10 seconds.

Pour batter into prepared pan and smooth top with spatula. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool completely.

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 walks in English in Jerusalem’s market.