Engaging nonfiction reading

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

“Everyone has a story.... Part of my story is guiding others in their storytelling journeys and providing a creative forum to share their personal stories.”

This is how editor Liz Pearl begins her introduction to her second compilation of writing by contemporary Canadian Jewish women. It also describes the role of journalist Lisa Birnie and editor Seemah C. Berson in their recently published books.

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A lecture given by Sidney Sarkin, an immigrant to Montreal from Vilna, Lithuania, inspired Berson to start on what has become, almost 40 years later, I Have a Story to Tell You (Wilfrid Laurier University Press).

Berson, who spent hours taping the stories of Sarkin’s life – focusing on his involvement in the garment industry and trade unions – went on to speak with more than 30 other Jewish immigrants to Canada, who also arrived from eastern Europe in the early 20th century and had a connection to the garment industry. Many of the people she interviewed “had lived and worked in Winnipeg (a major centre of the needles trades) and had been involved in the struggles for decent wages, hours of work, job security and workplace minimum health and sanitary guarantees in that city.” For her fieldwork, Berson also spoke with people living in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

Taped in the 1970s, the stories Berson has compiled for I Have a Story to Tell You are an important historical record, as the speakers have passed away and, writes Berson, “are not here anymore to speak for themselves; but the nuances in their voices and the courage in their struggles can still be heard ... if you listen very carefully.”

The way in which Berson has written up these interviews – pretty much true to how they were told to her, it seems – makes them interesting not just for academics. Readers will hear the accents, and visions of their own bubbes and zaydes (or great-bubbes and great-zaydes) will come to mind as they read these rapid-fire stories of how this generation got to Canada and the struggles faced on arrival. Decades of a life are summarized in a page or two, sometimes in just a paragraph.

Amid basic facts and tales of hardship are wonderful gems of humor, and you can’t help but admire the spirit of these builders of Canada. For example, in the interview with Rose Gordon, the mother of former B.C. premier Dave Barrett, Gordon shares the bare-bones details of the devastating losses of both her parents, her mother from tuberculosis after two years of illness, and her father from grief that failed to lift after five years in a sanitorium. She ends the paragraph with, “Anyways, my parents went a long time ago.” And the next, and final, line of the interview is, “I would just like to say to you: being an immigrant and having a son become the premier of British Columbia is pretty damn good!”

The juxtaposition of sad or difficult situations with a funny comment or happy moment is common in this collection of stories, and reading it reminded me of something my baba always said: as long as you keep your sense of humor, you can take anything life dishes out.

For those wanting a more personal introduction to I Have a Story to Tell You, Berson will be speaking at the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 7 p.m.

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Members of the local community are also featured in editor Pearl’s Living Legacies: A Collection of Writing by Contemporary Canadian Jewish Women Volume II (PK Press). Ellen Frank, Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan, Jenny Laing and Gloria Levi are among the approximately 40 contributors to this anthology of nonfiction writing.

Sunshine Coast-based author Frank, who has written several articles for the Jewish Independent on accessibility, contributes a very moving account of the last three days of her father’s life, and her decision to stay by his bedside for as much of that time as possible, allowing her uncles to look after her mother. It was a difficult choice as, obviously, her mother was in great need of help, but her father was dying, and he was calmer and more content when she was there.

Kaplan, the rabbi of Or Shalom Synagogue, shares a bit of her spiritual and intellectual journey, from her childhood in New York City, where she was not only exposed to many religions but also to a mix of Judaism, from Orthodox shul to Zionist summer camp to Conservative Jewish day school. Eventually, Kaplan earned a PhD in philosophy and education, and started what would be a 15-year career at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte; as well, she married and had two children. As she became more involved in the Jewish community, Kaplan says she felt she didn’t know enough, so she enrolled in the ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal Rabbinic Program. Later, she writes, “One morning I dreamed that my husband and I were selling our house.... Suddenly, I was with my mother in a different, emptier house, overlooking a city on a bay.” This vision came true, when Kaplan accepted the role of rabbi at Or Shalom and relocated to Vancouver.

Laing, who is a coordinator at the Island Deaf and Hard of Hearing Centre in Victoria, as well as being a Jewish educator, writes of her strained relationship with her father. After an argument, years past; they saw each other at weddings and funerals, but he didn’t attend her children’s b’nai mitzvah and she didn’t celebrate his 60th birthday with him. “One Yom Kippur afternoon, in a moment of silent reflection, I realized that it was my arrogance and anger that were propelling me away from my father,” shares Laing. She admits it took her three months before she could apologize to him without needing him to admit his own mistakes. Laing and her father had a few valuable years of a positive relationship before he died.

Levi’s story is one of finding roots she never knew she had. She provides a brief overview of her life, beginning when she was growing up in an Orthodox home in Brooklyn, N.Y., spoke Yiddish “and lived mostly in the rhythm of Jewish time.” She then touches upon her married life, when, she writes, “Socialism was my religion and the new Democratic party was my community.... Our Jewish identity was basically secular Israeli.” After the breakdown of her 32-year marriage and the resulting distancing from her NDP friends, Levi says she tentatively explored Or Shalom and also studied with various rabbis and at yeshivot over a number of years – she helped nine of her 11 grandchildren prepare for their b’nai mitzvah. In this context, Levi describes how she found out that she is a descendant on her father’s side of the Chassic tzadik Yehudi HaKadosh, the Holy Jew. Ultimately, she discovers and translates a book written by Yehudi’s disciple, Rabbi Simcha Bunim, from whom she learns a great deal and by whom she is inspired. “Eventually,” she writes, “I learned to reconcile my rational intellectual side with the mystical depth of the heart.... In spite of all the suffering, gratuitous cruelty and misery that exists in the world, I have been able to reclaim a steadfast faith in the prevailing power of goodness.”

And these are only four of the stories in Living Legacies. While each is very personal, each offers broader insights into life in general. They should inspire readers to consider, as Pearl asks in her introduction, “What’s your story? What’s your legacy?”

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The final local author reviewed by the Independent this Rosh Hashanah is not Jewish, but her subject matter is – and her book, In Mania’s Memory (Read Leaf Book) is a fascinating read.

Lisa Birnie, 81, is a career journalist and author, who now lives in Vancouver. In 1965, she became the first woman reporter to get into China after its Communist takeover in 1949. Her best-seller about that experience was the first of nine nonfiction books, including Such a Good Boy, about Victoria teenager Darren Huenemann, who was convicted of convincing two friends to kill his mother and grandmother so he would inherit millions, and Uncommon Will, about Sue Rodriguez, who suffered from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease) and fought to have physician-assisted suicide legalized.

Having recently completed two such heavy books, Birnie admits, in the preface of In Mania’s Memory, that she was hesitant to take on a story that centred on the Holocaust. But the curiosity and desire for justice that had driven her whole career won out, and the result is an interesting mix of oral history and reporting, with the reporter forming a part of the story.

In 1976, Mania Fishel Kroll, a Polish Holocaust survivor living in Toronto, hired a cleaning woman, Johanne Müller. Kroll came to strongly believe that Müller had been the SS guard in Reichenbach labor camp who had helped her survive her imprisonment, but Müller denied any involvement with the Nazis.

Birnie found out about the story from a film agent, who connected Birnie with filmmaker Maureen Kelleher, who was doing a documentary on the case. Birnie accompanied Kelleher, a cameraman and Kroll to Europe in 2002, where it was planned that Kroll and Müller would meet again, where Reichenbach once stood, to see if that would get Müller talking.

Birnie deftly melds the interviews she conducted with Kroll and Müller, who have both since died, as well as her own observations and feelings about what she learns. With so many threads, it’s surprising how easy it is to follow, and how the tension builds to the moment when the truth finally is revealed. It really is a case of fact being stranger than fiction.

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