Our December Meeting

Great conversation about a broad range of books. What more could you ask for? Coffee and snacks, you say? Anything you want.

BOOKS DISCUSSED LAST NIGHT:

The Last Jew Standing, by Michael Simon. This book is a great antidote for those readers who might think that we only discuss serious books. Simon – a former college teacher, actor, playwright, and Texas probation officer – is the author of the Dan Reles crime novel series. His detective is a lieutenant in the Austin, Texas, police department. He is also the only Jew on the force, and the son of a gangster father with ties to the New York Mob. The last Jew of the title refers to Sam Zelig, who is the last of the great Jewish mobsters, following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Abe Bernstein, Lefty Rosenthal, Arnold "The Brain" Rothstein, and Harry Horowitz aka Gyp the Blood.  (Unlike the others, Sam Zelig is fictional, although there was, once upon a time, a New York mobster called Big Jack Zelig.)

When the novel opens, Lieutenant Reles’s father, Ben, shows up in Austin, with a Russian prostitute in tow, and the villainous Sam Zelig in hot pursuit. Complications ensue. According to our reviewer, the book is a fun read, quick and dirty, with lots of murder and mayhem, but also some interesting observations about race, religion, and prejudice in the “liberal” oasis of Austin, TX. Most importantly, it posits the thesis that Jews can also excel in such non-traditional endeavors as police detective or crime boss.

The Pity of It All, by Amos Elon. OK, enough levity. It would not be a Jewish coffee klatch if we did not, sooner or later, work our way around to some depressing book. The subtitle of this book is, “A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933.” It is not a happy story.

However, it is an instructive story, with useful lessons for those who might get overly complacent in the warm glow of assimilation. As Elon exhaustively documents in this fact-filled volume, German Jews, time after time, managed to persuade themselves that this time things were different, only to be rudely reminded that anti-Semitism is never too far below the glittering surface.

Recommended reading for anyone suffering from excessive delusions of human harmony.

Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew, by Neil Gillman. Rabbi Gillman is a professor of Jewish Philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He was ordained at JTS in 1960, and received his PhD in Philosophy from Columbia University in 1975. He is the author of numerous books about Jewish thought and religious practice.

This particular volume, written as a road map for those wishing to discover, delve into, or reinforce their own religious beliefs, was the winner of the 1991 National Jewish Book Award. According to our reviewer, it continues to be an outstanding resource for readers wishing to arrive at their own answers to fundamental questions about the existence and nature of God, the existence of evil in the world, the importance of ritual, and the historical and philosophical underpinnings of Conservative Judaism.

That Used To Be Us, by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum. More trenchant analysis or trite pablum (depending on your point of view) from the authors of The World Is Flat series of prescriptions for making America great again. According to the official blurb: “Thomas L. Friedman, one of our most influential columnists, and Michael Mandelbaum, one of our leading foreign policy thinkers, offer both a wake-up call and a call to collective action. They analyze the four challenges we face—globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation’s chronic deficits, and our pattern of excessive energy consumption—and spell out what we need to do now to sustain the American dream and preserve American power in the world.”

According to our reviewer, this latest installment in the series is well worth borrowing from the library.

______________________________________________

Happy Chanukah to all our members and to all our readers. We will see you all back as soon as you have recovered from all those sumptuous holiday feasts, exciting football games, thrilling parades, and strutting mummers. (Our next meeting is on Tuesday, January 3, 2012, at 7:45 pm.) Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2012.

Our November Meeting

We are privileged to have two Holocaust survivors as members of our group, Alex Redner and Norbert Zeelander. At our last meeting, we took advantage of their presence to ask them about their experiences, not during the war, but during presentations that they each regularly make at local schools and colleges. We found out that young people today know very little, if anything, about the Holocaust, but are generally eager to learn and receptive to the survivors’ presentations, underlining the importance of continuing to preserve the memories of the survivors among us, and continuing to give these recollections as wide a circulation as possible, especially among the youngsters in our schools.

To repeat George Santayana’s frequently quoted aphorism: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Of course, before we can learn from history, we must first know history, which is why those who teach about the Holocaust perform such an invaluable service.

It is fashionable nowadays, when a sports team or a business corporation sustain a devastating loss, to say that they were decimated. People do not necessarily realize that the word decimation originated with the occasional practice by especially ruthless Roman generals of punishing military units guilty of mutiny or desertion by executing every tenth man. Unfortunately, to say that European Jewry was decimated during the Holocaust is a gross understatement. A more accurate description would be to say that they were ‘halved.’ Approximately one-half of all European Jews alive during World War II were murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices.

We discuss books about the Holocaust, and we do what we can to perpetuate the stories of the survivors, to keep the promise that we have made to ourselves, to our parents, and to all Holocaust survivors: “Never again.”  

BOOKS DISCUSSED LAST NIGHT:

Darkness Hides the Flowers, by Ida Hoffmann Firestone, et alia. When the Nazi’s invaded France in 1940, Ida Hoffmann and Alex Redner’s wife, Lilly, were two Jewish girls living in the same village in France. Miraculously, and unbeknownst to each other, they both survived the Holocaust. After the war, they both married, and they both settled in the Philadelphia area. Many years later, and completely by accident, they found each other once again.

Unfortunately, Ida died last year, but prior to her death, she was a piano teacher, a painter, a poet, and a dedicated Holocaust educator. She spoke frequently to students throughout the Philadelphia metropolitan area, teaching compassion and tolerance by sharing her personal story of survival. Her story, her paintings, and her poems all became part of this slender, but beautiful and touching volume.

On Sunday, November 20, 2011, 1-3 pm, Ida’s paintings will be displayed, and her story discussed by her co-authors, Dr. Jerry Jennings and Joanne Silver, at the Klein JCC, Polonsky Theater, 10100 Jamison Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19116. Please check out the program listing by clicking on this link, and please attend this program if you can possibly make it.

Written in Memory: Portraits of the Holocaust, by Charles Stainback and Jeffrey Wolin. Wolin is an accomplished portrait photographer, the Ruth N. Halls Professor of Fine Arts at Indiana University, Bloomington, and a second cousin of one of our faithful members, Janie Siman-Glatt. His photographs are in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Houston Museum of Fine Arts; Art Institute of Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; New York Public Library; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Bibliotèque Nationale de France, Paris; and Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Wolin has spent many years capturing, in stark black-and-white portraits, the faces, the numbers tattooed on forearms, and the character of Holocaust survivors. The photographs collected in this volume somehow manage to capture not only the painful memories etched into the faces of these people, but also the courage and determination that enabled them to emerge from the cauldron of the Holocaust into the sunshine of new and productive lives. This wonderful volume of photographs and stories not only helps to put a human face on what is otherwise such an unimaginable tragedy and crime, but it also manages to be inspirational and uplifting at the same time.

Marienbad, by Sholem Aleichem. Contrary to the impression that we may have created by the contents of this post up to this point, we at Book Nosh actually spend most of our time chatting about current events, economic and political developments, our life experiences, and most importantly, of course, books that we have read. Although we get serious once in a while, we like nothing better than laughing at a good joke, or enjoying a funny book. In a way, Sholem Aleichem is the perfect author for our group. A prolific author, he used humor to describe, and soften the hard edges of, life in the shtetls “beyond the Pale.” As he himself said once, “No matter how bad things get, you've got to go on living, even if it kills you,” and humor helps us to get there.

This particular book, written toward the end of Sholem Aleichem’s all-too-short life, is actually a departure from his usual milieu. It describes affectionately, but with his usual rapier wit, the lives of well-to-do Jewish women who escape from their traditional husbands and fathers in the Warsaw ghetto to the chic spas of Germany and Bohemia in an amusing attempt to become part of fin-de-siècle Central European “jet set.” (I guess it was the “cabriolet set” back then.)

Breaking News, by Martin Fletcher. As we discussed in our September post, Fletcher’s novel The List is the 2011-2012 One Book, One Jewish Community selection of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. According to our reviewer, this non-fiction work by the same author is really an essential companion volume to his novel. Fletcher, as most novelists, bases his fiction upon his own life experiences. It is therefore helpful to know what those life experiences were, especially for a writer who has led such an interesting life.

A Jewish boy who grew up in London, and son of Holocaust survivors, he has spent his adult life as a journalist covering wars, revolutions, and natural disasters, including the incessant conflicts in the Middle East. He brings an unusual level of understanding to the costs of war and to the psychology of the survivors left behind. Given his background and experiences, it is not surprising that he is a passionate advocate for the rights of oppressed people everywhere, including the rights of Palestinian refugees. It is also enlightening to learn about his views about the difference between the Jewish refugees of the Holocaust, who founded and built Israel, and the Palestinian refugees, who continue to live in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria today. As Fletcher puts it, the Jewish refugees did not nurse their grievances, did not demand reparations, did not talk about a right of return; they rolled up their sleeves and built a new home and a new life for themselves.

The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, by Simon Schama. Schama is another Jewish boy who grew up in London, the son of Jewish parents with roots in Lithuania, Romania, and Turkey. He is now a professor at Columbia University, and a renowned author and historian. He is perhaps best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC documentary series, A History of Britain. As behooves any proper Upper West Side New Yorker, his politics are decidedly left of center. However, to his credit, he has been a vocal critic of those academics, particularly prevalent in Great Britain, who have been calling for a boycott of Israel, supposedly because of Israel's alleged oppression of the Palestinians. Writing about academicians calling for a boycott, Schama wrote: “This is not the first boycott call directed at Jews. On 1 April 1933, a week after he came to power, Hitler ordered a boycott of Jewish shops, banks, offices and department stores.”

Schama’s writing is always incredibly learned and erudite, always very commercial, and usually contentious and intriguing. However, his thinking can veer from brilliant (see, e.g., his introduction to Jews/America: A Representation ) to muddled (see, e.g. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution).

This particular work, The Embarrassment of Riches, comes down on the brilliant end of the spectrum, according to our reviewer. It is an economic history of 17^th century Holland, a time when the Dutch were the leading commercial empire in the world, enjoying unprecedented material wealth and culture, indulging in unrestrained consumerism and unfettered speculation. It was a time of the tulip mania and other speculative bubbles, a time of fortunes quickly made and lost, a time when speculators and con artists gradually took over from the manufacturers and traders who had made the nation great. It was also, especially in hindsight, a time of gradual but irreversible decline. In other words, it was a time that might be instructive to those of us living in the United States in the early 21^st century. Certainly a book that it would behoove us to read.

_______________________

The discussions during our meeting were so interesting and far-ranging that we ran out of time long before we had a chance to discuss all the other books that our members brought to the meeting, including:

The Next Decade: Where We've Been . . . and Where We're Going, by George Friedman

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century, by George Friedman

The Coffee Trader: A Novel, by David Liss

Who Wrote the Bible, by Richard Elliott Friedman

The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933, by Amos Elon

With any luck at all, we will discuss all those books, and many more, at our upcoming meetings.

Our October Meeting

The TBI Book Nosh started off the new year with a far-ranging discussion of issues great and small. The books that launched our debates are listed below. But first, on behalf of all of us, let me thank Rabbi Kalev for graciously offering the use of his study for our meeting. The cozy confines of his office were a nice change of pace for our group.

BOOKS DISCUSSED LAST NIGHT:

To the End of the Land, by David Grossman, the well-known Israeli author and noted left-wing critic of Israeli policy toward Palestinians. This is a work of fiction, ostensibly about a love triangle, and about a long walk by two of the protagonists, up north to the Sea of Galilee, and then back south to the Negev. But the real meat of the novel is the running discussion by the two hikers about the emotional strains that family members of soldiers experience when their loved ones are deployed into combat. Grossman’s writing is informed by his own experiences as an IDF member, working in military intelligence during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and as a father who lost a son during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon Conflict. According to our reviewer, even though Grossman is a controversial writer, this book is an engrossing – and fast – read (despite weighing in at over 600 pages), which offers incisive insights on the long-term psychological effects of Israel’s many wars on the soldiers who actually fought in them, and on their families.

Recommended by our reviewer.

Also mentioned: Lion’s Honey: The Myth of Samson, by David Grossman. Look for a review during one of our future blogs.

People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks. Created in the 14th century, the Sarajevo Hagaddah is one of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illuminated with images. It has somehow survived through centuries of book burnings and anti-Semitic purges, and most recently survived the 1992-95 Bosnia-Herzegovina War. Geraldine Brooks was inspired by the story of the Hagaddah to write a fictional account of how it might have come to be.

In Brooks’s novel, a rare-book expert is asked to authenticate and restore the book in 1996, after the most recent war’s end. In the process of her work, the expert finds various clues about the book’s origin and travels: An insect wing; a white hair; a wine stain; a salt crystal; and so on. From each clue, the author unfolds vignettes about what happened to the book. She takes us to: 14th century Muslim-ruled Andalusia; Inquisition-era Venice; decadent 19th-century Vienna; and finally, Nazi-era Sarajevo. With each vignette, the author shows us a glimpse of the Jewish predicament at that time. However, her message is rather hopeful, as she illustrates how right-thinking people of many different faiths put themselves at risk to save the book.

According to our reviewer, this book, which is part DaVinci Code mystery, part historical travelogue, is an entertaining and quick read.

Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor E. Frankl. When the Third Reich annexed Austria in 1938, the author was a prominent Viennese psychiatrist. In 1942, he, along with his wife, and his parents, was deported to the Theresienstadt. Thereafter, they were transported to Auschwitz, followed by several other concentration camps. Of his family, Frankl was the only one to survive. He was liberated by the United States Army on April 27, 1945.

After the war, Frankl returned to Vienna, and became the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of Existential Analysis, also known as the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy. The first part of the book, which was first published (under a different title) in 1946, chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate. The second part of the books describes the psychotherapeutic method that Frankl developed as a result of his experiences, called “logotherapy.” Frankl, unlike Freud (who founded the first Viennese school of psychotherapy), did not believe that sexual instincts and urges were the driving force of life; rather, he believed that a person's deepest desire was to search for meaning and purpose.

Our reviewer highly recommends this deeply felt, personal, and inspirational volume.

Also mentioned:  Born Jewish: A Childhood in Occupied Europe, by Marcel Liebman. The author was a young child in Nazi-occupied Belgium. He survived the Holocaust, thanks in part to the help of Catholic nuns. His older brother was not as lucky, and perished in Auschwitz.

After the war, Liebman became a well-known Marxist-Leninist and a historian of, and apologist for, the Soviet Union. This slender volume deals with his personal experiences during the war, including descriptions of class conflict and class differences among Jewish populations in occupied of Belgium, and accounts of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis.

Our reviewer mentioned this book only in passing, without necessarily endorsing the author's views.

Also mentioned: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, by Paul Krugman. As soon as our reviewer mentioned the name of the author of this book, a lively debate ensued about a wide range of topics. As far as we can remember, the substance of the book was never discussed, but many other aspects of the current political climate, the economic problems in Europe and here, the contrasts between today’s leaders and the Founding Fathers who managed to agree upon a Constitution right here in Philadelphia, and many other topics were discussed.

Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds, by Joel L. Kraemer. Unlike every other book ever reviewed during Book Nosh, our reviewer did not actually recommend this book. However, the book did serve as an excuse for a discussion of one of the great Jewish thinkers (is that redundant?) of all time, of his life experiences, his achievements as a Jewish theologian, as a physician, as a leader of the Egyptian Jewish community, and as a rationalist thinker in a world then governed by superstition and ignorance (as opposed to now, of course). The subject of the book was interesting; the author not as much.

_________________________________________________

This was a fun meeting, with lots of heated but informative and good-natured discussion. Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, November 1, at 7:45 pm. To those of you whom I have not seen in person in the last couple of days, G'mar Chatimah Tovah.

Our September Meeting

A small but hardy band of book lovers, displaying cavalier disdain for torrential downpours, ignored their flooded basements, donned their waders, forded the raging river formerly known as Skippack Pike, and joined us in the dry, warm and cozy confines of the TBI Library to embark on the second year of our voyage on this bobbing bark that we call Book Nosh.

BOOKS DISCUSSED LAST NIGHT:

Haikus for Jews, by David M. Bader, is the perfect book for the lazy reviewer. It is an easy read, with only 17 syllables per page, and instead of analysis, the reviewer can simply quote an example or two from the book:

Today I am a

man. Tomorrow I return

to the seventh grade.

If that one is a bit jejune for you, maybe this one comes closer to your own stage of life:

Testing the warm milk

on her wrist, she beams—nice, but

her son is forty.

Still not right? Try this one on for size:

Jewish nudist camp,

surgical scars compared—who

did your gall bladder?

The List, by Martin Fletcher. This is a brand new novel, not scheduled for release until October 11, 2011; however, we had a chance to peruse an “Advanced Uncorrected Proof” of the book, thanks to the insider status of one of our members.

Martin Fletcher is the former chief of the NBC Tel Aviv News Bureau (this was in the days when our broadcast networks still had foreign news bureaux), who has written a novel set in 1945 London and Palestine. The plot centers on an Austrian couple who have managed to escape the Holocaust, and are currently trying to find out the fates of their families, who had stayed behind (hence the title). They are also trying to make their way to Palestine in the teeth of the British blockade, and become entangled with an Irgun-type organization. Our reviewer says that it is a quick, enjoyable, interesting read.

This novel is the 2011-2012 One Book, One Jewish Community selection of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. Martin Fletcher is coming to speak about, and sign copies of, his book on Sunday, October 30, 2011, 7:00 p.m., at Congregation Beth Or, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen, PA.

OK, enough of that serious stuff. Have another haiku:

Sorry I’m not home

to take your call. At the tone

please state your bad news.

Homer & Langley, by E. L. Doctorow. A new novel by the well-known Jewish author. Although the front of the book contains the usual disclaimer, to the effect that this is “a work of fiction” and “any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental,” in fact the book is based on the lives of two actual people, brothers Homer Collyer (1881-1947) and Langley Collyer (1885-1947), who lived their entire lives in a Fifth Avenue mansion in New York City, and who were somewhat unusual characters, to put it mildly.

According to our reviewer, one of the (presumably fictional) conceits of Langley was that he could create a “universal” newspaper. His unique “insight” was that what passes for news is actually the same darn thing over and over again; therefore, if he could only manage to write down these few archetypal stories in sufficiently vague and universal form, and put them all together in one newspaper, people could simply buy his one “universal” newspaper once, and never need to spend another dime buying daily papers.

It is possible that Langley was not entirely sane, but one interesting side effect of his endeavors was that he carefully bought every single paper published in New York City every single day, and read each issue cover to cover, in order to tease out the recurring “meta-stories.” Yet, when Jewish men started knocking on the brothers’ front door, telling stories of terrible persecutions of Jews in Europe, and seeking contributions to aid the refugees, Langley found their stories hard to believe. After all, he had ready nary a word in any of the New York papers about this alleged barbarity engulfing European Jewry.

This is just one of many interesting observations about the 20^th century that Doctorow is able to tell through the eyes and ears (Homer was blind) of the Collyer brothers.

The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious, by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg. According to our reviewer, this is the opposite of a quick, easy read. However, it was placed on this year’s recommended summer reading list by the rabbi of one of our neighboring congregations, apparently in an attempt to prevent his flock from suffering mental degradation from unfettered reading frivolity over the summer. Our poor reviewer fell prey to his ploy, and actually spent his time at the beach reading about Zornberg’s psychoanalytic insights into various Biblical figures, ranging from Adam and Eve, through Noah and Jonah, all the way to Esther and Ruth, bringing to bear her renowned erudition in all (obscure) matters Talmudic, psychological, and literary.

All kidding aside, our reviewer noted that Zornberg’s writing serves to remind us of all the great Jewish thinkers of the past two millennia who have left to us their keen insights into human nature, which has not changed much since Biblical times, and whose remarkable writings we often overlook, if we are familiar with them at all. There is an entire world of profound Jewish writing out there, and it behooves us to go and learn something about it.

But first, how about a Jewish haiku?

Beyond Valium,

the peace of knowing one’s child

is an internist.

Our last review was of the controversial best seller, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua. The author is a Chinese-American mother, married to a Jewish American father, and the parent of two Jewish Chinese-American daughters. Both parents are professors at Yale Law School, and both kids are typical, gifted, high-achieving teenagers, just like our own kids about whom we like brag after minyan. The thesis of Ms. Chua’s book is that traditional Chinese parenting methods are superior to the decadent, “western” parenting ways that she professes to observe in contemporary America. However, it was the consensus of our group last night that Ms. Chua’s traditional Chinese parenting methods are not all that different from traditional Jewish parenting methods, with the exception of Ms. Chua’s bad-tempered public shaming of her children, which we “decadent” Americans try to avoid. As Garrison Keillor likes to observe, we all have above-average children, but we don’t all write books about our above-average parenting skills. Nevertheless, there is some truth to Ms. Chua’s generalizations about the changing approaches to parenting as we move from first generation immigrant parents, to second generation parents, to third generation and beyond. According to our reviewer, this is an interesting book, especially to those of us who have been there and done that, and enjoy comparing our own parenting mistakes and triumphs to those of this self-proclaimed “tiger mother.”   

Is one Nobel Prize

so much to ask from a child

after all I’ve done?

Our June Meeting

Summer is upon us, but we managed to squeeze in one more meeting last night, talking about books and other topics, before going down the shore and up the mountains, to read books in solitary splendor.

BOOKS DISCUSSED LAST NIGHT:

The Camp, by Michael D. Eisner, formerly of Walt Disney Company fame. It turns out that Michael Eisner, like many of us, attended summer camp during his youth, in his case, Camp Keewaydin in Vermont. However, unlike most of us, he apparently never got over the experience. He liked going to camp so much that he felt compelled to write a whole book about it, decades later.

Whatever insights the book might provide about Eisner himself, its chief virtue for most readers will be to trigger a nostalgic trip down memory lane, which is exactly what the review of this book accomplished for us last night. It turned out that our reviewer spent a good many summers at various camps, first as an inmate (I mean camper), and later as a counselor. What is more, the rest of us had a few fond recollections of our own to contribute, making for a delightful escape from our quotidian cares, and an excellent appetizer for the delights of summer ahead of us (especially those of us who are teachers and get the summer off).   

Sacred Strategies: Transforming Synagogues from Functional to Visionary, by Isa Aron, Steven M. Cohen, Lawrence A. Hoffman and Ari Y. Kelman. Our president, who has spent the past couple of years thinking long and hard about the topics raised by this timely book, reported to us about some of the strategies employed by other congregations in an effort to keep their communities vibrant, warm, and thriving. This was another topic that generated a lively and thoughtful discussion, with many ideas bandied about concerning possible improvements to our own congregation. Our president, who is ending her term on June 14, was delighted to pass on our suggestions to her successor.

Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay. This novel alternates between the story of a little girl, Sarah, who survived the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied France, and the current-day story of an American journalist, Julie, married to an arrogant, unfaithful Frenchman. Julia stumbles upon the story of little Sarah, and keeps digging until she uncovers the whole ugly truth about the 1942 Paris roundups, by the French gendarmes, of thousands of Jewish families, who were then held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, and eventually deported to Auschwitz. Very few ever came back. However, this being fiction, little Sarah does survive the war, although the story of her survival involves many harrowing twists and turns.

According to our reviewer, despite its subject matter, or possibly because of it, this novel is a quick, involving, and thought-provoking read.

The Boy: A Holocaust Story, by Dan Porat. This is a book by an Israeli historian about a single photograph.

Many of us are familiar with this iconic World War II photograph, taken during the last days of the Warsaw Ghetto. But how many of us know that the photo was shot by the Nazis themselves? It turns out that it was included in a report about the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto proudly prepared by the commander of the Nazi forces, Jürgen Stroop, who evidently considered the murder of thousands of unarmed men, women, and children to be a laudable military accomplishment. Stroop had the report, including the photographs, bound in leather, and presented copies to Himmler and to Hitler, in hopes of earning a promotion, which in fact he did receive. After the war, the report played a prominent role at the Nuremberg Trials. Stroop himself was eventually hunted down, tried in Poland, and executed.

Dan Porat has made an effort to identify the people, both Jews and Nazis, shown in the photograph, and tell us what happened to them after the war. One of the young ladies in the picture, for example, managed to escape, make her way to Palestine, get married, and become the mother of two boys. The young boy in the foreground remains unidentified but, according to Dan Porat, he almost certainly did not survive the Holocaust.

_________________________________________________________________________________

This was our last meeting before the summer recess.  I want to thank all those who participated in our discussion groups.  Have a wonderful summer, and we will see you all at our next meeting in September.  For those of you who missed our meetings thus far, I hope that you will be able to join us for some of our meetings in the fall.

Our May Meeting

Another great evening, talking about books and other topics.

BOOKS DISCUSSED LAST NIGHT:

Our first reviewer, Alex Redner, reported on The Sunflower, by Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Nazi hunter.  Alex has been kind enough to provide me with his notes about this book, which are reprinted in full at the bottom of this post.

The Sunflower was Wiesenthal’s first book. It is an account of his experiences during World War II, but its larger mission is to explore, as the subtitle suggests, “the possibilities and limits of forgiveness.” This newly expanded second edition of the book includes not only Wiesenthal’s own thoughts on the topic, but also responses to his thought-provoking question from a constellation of writers, thinkers, clerics, and other Holocaust survivors.  Please read Alex’s summary below for more details about this great book.

Not surprisingly, Wiesenthal’s book provoked a lively discussion within our own group. First, Simon Wiesenthal is a great hero not only to Holocaust survivors, but also to great many Jews and “righteous gentiles” across the world.  Any book that sheds light on the genesis of his life-long pursuit of Nazi war criminals, and on his own thoughts about accountability and forgiveness, is of great interest to the legions of his fans.  Second, questions about forgiveness for the unspeakable crimes committed by the Nazi, and by their willing accomplices – Who were the culprits? Who has the right to forgive them? Is forgiveness warranted? – will be debated as long as there are people in the world who remember the six million Jews murdered during WWII.

Finally, there was brief mention of Wiesenthal’s best known triumph: his tracking down of Adolph Eichmann, which led to Eichmann’s capture by Mossad agents in a suburb of Buenos Aires on May 11, 1960.  Eichmann was spirited out of Argentina alive, tried for war crimes in a riveting trial followed around the world, and eventually convicted, sentenced, and executed.  Because Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. Navy Seals just two days before our meeting, there was an inevitable, albeit short, discussion of the comparisons between the two cases.  Our conclusion was that the two cases were dissimilar, and that the times have changed.

Next, our congregation president, Meryl Raskin, reviewed a novel by Jenna Blum, called Those Who Save Us.  This is the story of Trudy,     a present-day history professor in Minneapolis, who collects oral histories about WWII from both Germans and Jews, and of her mother, Anna, a German woman who lived through WWII, married an American soldier, and emigrated to this country. Through Trudy’s interviews, and flashbacks to Anna’s life in her hometown of Weimar, the novel gradually, suspensefully, and skillfully reveals a tangled story of Anna’s love affair with a Jewish doctor who dies in Buchenwald (and who turns out to be Trudy’s father); of Anna’s coerced affair with a high-ranking Nazi (whom Trudy incorrectly suspects of being her father); and of Anna’s (and Trudy’s) life after the war, shedding new light not only on the atrocities of the Nazi era, but also on the anti-Semitism over the years, from the standpoint of those who practice it and those who are victimized by it.  Surprisingly, given its subject matter, this is a quick, entertaining, and highly recommended novel.

Next, in honor of the 150^th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War, our resident expert on all matters Jewish, Phil Silverman, gave us a short, but insightful, report on the role of Jews in both the Confederate and Union armies.  Specifically, Phil summarized for us American Jewry and the Civil War, by Bertram Korn (Rear Admiral Bertram Korn was the first Jewish chaplain to attain flag rank in any of the United States armed forces; he was also the long-time rabbi of Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park, and the author of 12 books on the history of Jews in America), and General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse, by Joseph Glatthaar.  In addition, Phil touched upon the infamous General Order No. 11, issued by Ulysses S. Grant on December 17, 1862, which expelled all Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi.  (The Order was subsequently countermanded by Abraham Lincoln.)

As with every topic on last night’s agenda, we could have easily spent the entire evening talking about the Jewish experience during the Civil War.  Because of time constraints, we had just enough time to whet our appetites for further readings and discussions on the timely topic, as we re-live the Civil Was experience from a 150-year perspective.

Finally, we wrapped up our evening with a bit of fluff, in the form of Calvin Trillin’s novel Tepper Isn't Going Out, reviewed for us by Janie Siman-Glatt and Helene Geiger.  First, we were surprised to learn that a guy named Calvin Trillin is Jewish.  Trillin, who was born in Kansas City, is quoted in Salon.com as saying:  “I should say that in Kansas City, Calvin Trillin is a very common Jewish name.” (Keep in mind that he is a humorist.)  Second, we learned about the art and science of alternate-side street parking in New York City, and about the perils of asking for “a nice whitefish” at Russ & Daughters on Houston Street in the Lower East Side.  Third, we learned that this is a laugh-out-loud book, and a great read for the summer, especially for those of us who have spent a little time in New York City, and have tried, G-d forbid, to park there.

Alex Redner’s Notes for his presentation last night:

“THE SUNFLOWER”

By

Simon Wiesenthal,

(Revised, second edition)

About the author.

Simon Wiesenthal was born in 1908, in Galicia, a part of Austro-Hungarian Empire, (Southeastern Poland). He graduated from the Polytechnique Engineering School in Lwow, just before the war started. After Lwow was occupied by German armies in July of 1941, he was imprisoned in several Labor camps, starting in Janowska camp in Lwow; he was moved to Buchenwald and later to Mauthousen where he was eventually liberated.

After defeat of Germany, he joined the American Commission for War crimes.

He founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Vienna, to track the escaping German war criminals. His work was instrumental in bringing over 1000 German Nazi war criminals to justice.

Among many distinctions, he received US gold medal for humanitarian work, sixteen honorary doctorates, published several books.

His first book, The SUNFLOWER, was written shortly after the war, in the sixties. The book was translated into many languages, and I was able to read an early French version.

The Sunflower relates suffering of daily survival of prisoners, and the bestiality of SS guards. The Janowski labor camp was described in 4 books, the most detailed is “WHY”, written by Leon Richman, also a prisoner, one of few survivors, and also by a young engineer, who survived volunteering to “work” in Germany as a Pole.

Work-squads were routinely marched by their SS escorts to various work assignments. One day, a group of prisoners was led to the building that became a hospital caring for wounded German soldiers. Unexpectedly, a nurse came out and ordered a JEWISH prisoner to follow her. She led Simon to the bedside of a wounded SS man, heavily bandaged, with very little time left. The SS man literally grabbed Simon’s hand and related to Simon his actions against Jews. The story took hours, and toward the end he begged for Simon’s FORGIVNESS.

 Throughout the narration, Simon was identifying his family, friends and thousands of victims with the victims of the SS man. He was unable to expressly grant forgiveness to the dying SS man, since in his view, he COULD only EXPRESS FORGIVENESS FOR CRIMES against him, but could not absolve for crimes committed against so many innocent victims. Simon had some doubts, was not sure if he did the right thing refusing forgiveness to a man who confessed to his crimes, and begged for forgiveness on his deathbed. Years later, after liberation, he even visited the dead SS mother. He did not want to disillusion the grieving mother that mourned a son that she considered a good man…..

After many years, and after participating in numerous trials of unrepentant NAZI war criminals, Simon Wiesenthal wonders:  “Will we ever be able to prevent the creation of mass murderers???   (95)

“YOU who have just read this sad and tragic episode in my life, can mentally change place with me and ask yourself the crucial question, WHAT WOULD I HAVE DONE?”

The second edition (English translation) was printed in 1998.

This second edition includes an important addition, a very uncommon feature:

It includes comments and responsa to the key question raised by Mr. Wiesenthal in his book: “Limits of Forgiveness”

Does anyone has the right to express forgiveness for crimes committed by a Nazi responsible for atrocities and murders of innocent Jewish victims, even if the perpetrator confesses to his crimes?

The answer to this question is discussed by members of clergy, political leaders, writers and victims of prosecutions. More than 50 opinions are expressed in this new section, including comments by The Dalai Lama, (p129) Cardinal Koenig, (p182)  Rabbi Kushner, (p183)  Primo Levi, (p191) Admiral Albert Speer,(p245)  Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, (p193)  Bishop Desmond Tutu (266) Sidney Shachnow (241) just to mention some opinions expressed by experts in related fields, intimately familiar with the Holocaust… 

Our April Meeting

Something fairly remarkable happened at our meeting last night; to find out what, keep reading this post.

BOOKS DISCUSSED LAST NIGHT:

Our first reviewer reported on As Luck Would Have It, by Joshua Piven.  This is a collection of short stories about the role of luck in people’s lives. One story is about a man who buys a hot dog, but only has a hundred dollar bill in his wallet. He decides to take his change in lottery tickets, and ends up winning $181.5 million. Another story is about the ad executive who created the Pet Rock phenomenon, making millions in the process. A third story concerns an unknown rock group that becomes a one-hit wonder, because the video of its otherwise forgettable tune happens to be among the first ones aired on MTV. Of course, the group makes millions on its one hit. Apparently, these are all true stories. According to our reviewer, this book is a quick and entertaining read.

Inevitably, this review led to a broader discussion of the role luck plays in our lives, and the extent to which our accomplishments in life are the result of our own virtue, as opposed to random luck.

Finally, members of the group shared personal anecdotes about fortuitous events that changed their own lives, ranging from missing a plane that subsequently crashed, to being saved on a cross-country skiing trip gone awry, to a fortuitous meeting with one’s life partner.

Next we heard a review of In the Valley of the Shadow, by James Kugel, a profound meditation by an accomplished writer, facing the prospect of his own mortality. Kugel is a professor of Hebrew Literature at Harvard University, and a biblical scholar, specializing, among other things, in the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. However, as he writes in this heartfelt and thought-provoking new book, when confronted with a diagnosis of an aggressive, usually fatal form of cancer, he felt vulnerable, small, and very much alone.

As he battled his illness, Professor Kugel was confronted by personal feelings that reminded him of phenomena that he had previously encountered in his studies of ancient religions. He was struck by the universality of such religious feelings and beliefs, and decided to embark on a study of the origins and bases of religious consciousness. In this wide-ranging book, he looks to psychology and neuroscience to see whether religious belief is hardwired in our brains; he looks to evolutionary biology to examine whether the lack of understanding or control of prehistoric people over their lives and environment led to the development of certain religious proclivities in our natures; he examines the philosophical analysis brought to bear on the question of religious phenomena over the ages; and finally, he looks inside himself, for answers to these profound, existential questions. This is a wonderful, inspirational book, according to our reviewer.

Needless to say, after hearing this review, we spent some time discussing the origins of religion, the meaning of faith, and the extent to which confronting the great challenges and trials in our lives results in a reaffirmation of our faith.

Our third reviewer brought to us a book by Karen Armstrong, called The Battle for God. Karen Armstrong is former nun and the author of the best-selling A History of God. In this book, Ms. Armstrong examines the rise of fundamentalism in all three of the great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. According to our reviewer, this book is an easy read, articulate, provocative, and entertaining.  

OUR SURPRISE OF THE EVENING:

It was at this point that our evening took an unexpected, and delightful, turn. As we were about to engage in a discussion of Karen Armstrong, and her iconoclastic views, one of our Book Nosh participants asked our third reviewer about the progress of her own book.  After much prodding, our third reviewer admitted that, in addition to The Battle for God, there was another book in her satchel: An author’s advance copy of a brand new book, called Africa: A Practical Guide for Global Health Workers.

It turns out that our third reviewer, Laurel A. Spielberg, is the editor, along with Lisa V. Adams, of this remarkable historical, social, political, economic, and health survey of a number of African countries. (For those of you who do not know, Laurel Spielberg holds a Dr.P.H. degree from Johns Hopkins University, and has enjoyed a distinguished career as a public health administrator, university professor, and public health volunteer in Africa, among her many other endeavors and achievements.)

We spent the rest of our evening chatting with Lauren about this wonderful book, with the striking cover (courtesy of Lauren’s son). It turns out that this book is an invaluable resource for anyone planning a trip to Africa, or just interested in learning more about this often neglected continent. The information in this book ranges from the mundane, such as what to pack for your trip to Africa, to the practical, such as advice on working successfully and effectively in African cultures, to the sublime, such as really learning about the beauty and history of Africa, as written by people who have lived, worked, and given a part of their lives there.

Go out and buy this book. (Official publication date is May 10, 2011, but the book is available for pre-order on Amazon.com right now.)

LOOKING FORWARD TO OUR NEXT MEETING:

Although there were several more interesting looking books sitting on our conference table, awaiting their turn to be reviewed and discussed, we decided to “table” our reviews of the remaining books until our next meeting. After all, how often do we have a chance to discuss a brand new book with its author, in an intimate setting, over coffee and a snack, and have an opportunity to find from the author not only what is in the book, but also the process that led to its publication?

The TBI Book Nosh book club meets the first Tuesday of every month, at 7:45 pm, either at the TBI Library or the TBI Conference Room, depending on what else is going on at the building. Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, May 3, 2011, at 7:45 pm. We are always looking for a few more members. We welcome all ages, genders, and points of view. Come and join us at our next meeting.

Finally, if there are any other published authors, or authors about to be published, in our TBI family (we know of at least one more), please come to one of out future meetings, and tell us about your book. We promise to pay you back with a snack and some good conversation.