From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews, and Israel

An astounding study by Robert S. Wistrich

University of Nebraska Press.  648 Pages.  $55.00.

This is a colossal undertaking, both in scope and intellectual weight. No scholar is likely to sift through the primary and secondary materials that bear upon the relationship between leftist ideology and the Jewish people with the thoroughness, patience, and boldness that Professor Wistrich has displ ayed. Though I’m not sure that he makes the strongest case for ambivalence about the Jews at the dawn of European socialist thought, he certainly demolishes any lingering notion that socialism and socialist democracies have been especially hospitable political environments for European, Palestinian, and world Jewry .

To read the entire review as it appears on the Jewish Book Council website, click here: From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews, and Israel

The theme of brokeness explored in study of Abraham’s rebellion

The Gods Are Broken!: The Hidden Legacy of Abraham, by Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin. University of Nebraska Press / Jewish Publication Society. 192 pages. $19.95.

 In tidy chapters and subchapters, and in a breezy, excited style, the author explores all aspects of the meaning of  brokenness as a Jewish identifier. Likewise, he explores the tension of stasis and change. To break is to break away, to break convention, and ultimately to create anew. Salkin reminds us that idolatry does not require idols. Too strong a focus on ritual for its own sake can become idolatrous. An obsession with halakha or institution building (especially the material building) can shut us off from our spiritual nature and journey.

See the entire review, as prepared for Jewish Book World, at: The Gods Are Broken!: The Hidden Legacy of Abraham

Novelistic non-fiction reveals Depression-era Jewish immigrant life

 My Mother’s Wars, by Lillian Faderman. Beacon Press. 264 pages. $25.95.

 This strikingly intelligent and emotionally wrenching narrative traces almost a decade in the life of its main character. Mary Lifton. Set in New York beginning in 1932, the story explores Mary’s life as a Jewish immigrant from Europe. Her good fortune is that her family got her out of Latvia long before Nazi power and U. S. quotas severely limited chances for such relocations. Mary’s life as an uneducated, Depression-era foreigner, a woman without influence or meaningful support system, represents the life of many such desperate individuals. And yet Mary is remarkably well profiled by the author. This shouldn’t be surprising, as the author is Mary’s daughter. 

 I haven’t yet used the word biography to label this work because given the liberties that Ms. Faderman admits to taking, the book could have quite easily been published as fiction. The main sources for building character and situation are conversations between mother and daughter over the years.  Many of these conversations (as well as conversations between Faderman and her mother’s younger sister) belong to a wholly different era than the events, beginning perhaps in the 1960s.  Given the richness of the source material, this reader finds an unexpected remoteness between author-daughter and mother-character. In spite of this sense of distance, and due no doubt to the author’s skill and inventiveness, a luxuriantly imagined Mary Lifton explodes from the pages.

 Whether viewed as fiction, biography, or creative nonfiction, My Mother’s Wars is a powerful achievement. One of its many glories is Prof. Faderman’s portrait of the New York Depression-Era garment industry. Her descriptions of work spaces and conditions, interactions among employees, and operations of union and nonunion shops, are totally engrossing and ring with authenticity. In these descriptions, the author demonstrates her ability to turn voluminous research into flowing action and imagery.

 Faderman underscores not only that this industry depended largely on Jewish and other immigrant laborers, but also that Jewish ownership was prominent – even dominant.

 The author creates additional context by beginning each chapter with carefully constructed “Time on the March” introductions. Having the feel of movie-house newsreels, these nuggets of historical fact are drawn largely from contemporary reports in Time magazine and the New York Times. They outline the different stages of two processes: the horrific rise of Nazi Germany and the disastrous slide of the U. S. economy.

Lillian Faderman

 The story proper begins in 1932 with Mary already in her mid-thirties. She had already lived more than half of her life in the United States. Anti-Semitism, which Latvia had in abundance, did not seem to have influenced her relocation at the age of seventeen. Rather, her marketable skills in clothing manufacture and her determination to become a professional entertainer led her to accept her step-sister’s invitation to immigrate.  But the sponsorship of the step-sister and her step-sister’s husband created an awkward sense of obligation, and the clash of personalities was extreme.  After only a few months, young Mary was out on her own. At first, she loved the freedom. However, over time, loneliness engulfed her. . . .

The full review is available at the Washington Independent Review of Books. See: My Mother’s Wars | Washington Independent Review of Books

Seeking to reconcile Judaism and Feminism through art

Whatever is Contained Must Be Released, by Helène Aylon. The Feminist Press. 287 pages. Trade paperback (oversized). $29.95.

Helène Aylon’s astonishing book balances the two dimensions of her life that are expressed in its subtitle: “My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist.” It’s a magical book, not nearly as egocentric or “in your face” as one might expect at first glance. Thoughtful, properly proud, and modestly grateful for the distance she has traveled on her unusual journey, Aylon mixes facts, feelings, and meditation. Over and over, she adjusts the tension between these two identities, identities which paradoxically poison and nourish one another. 

Young Helène loved her traditional household in the Boro Park section of Brooklyn. Even when she was feeling stifled or misperceived, which was often, she knew that her parents loved her deeply and had her best interests at heart. While her mother lacked the worldliness that this young girl craved and eventually attained, there was no doubt about her mother’s essential goodness and the depth of her passionate caring.

This particular Orthodox community invested significant resources in the education of its young females. Helène absorbed an abundance of Jewish learning; however, there was little – as a female – that she could do with it. And she had plenty of questions that would not be truly heard or respectfully answered. Before she knew what feminism was, she was asking feminist questions. At bottom, the question is: how can a woman belong to a religion that disrespects (or seems to disrespect) women in its sacred writings and in its traditions?

Helène married young (a successful arranged marriage), had children young, but was already drifting toward the educational opportunities that would stimulate her self-creation as an artist. This self-creation involved selecting her own last name. When her husband, a rabbi, died in his thirties, the young mother could not continue to wear her partly hypocritical mask of Orthodoxy. She admitted to, and began to act out her “post-Orthodoxy” self, moving more and more into the world of art and artists.

She liberated herself socially and intellectually, while never forgetting the warm enclosure of her childhood home and community. Fighting with Jewish attitudes toward women, especially their place (or lack thereof) in ritual life and in scriptural modeling, she found a second religion in Feminism – and in time she became a strong force in this arena. Her artworks, primarily multi-media installations, expressed this theme, as well as those of environmentalism and anti-war activism.

A major part of her journey as an artist took place in California, where she encountered many kindred spirits and forged mutually supportive relationships. However, Boro Park remained in her thoughts, as did her love-hate relationship with Jewish wisdom and – as she felt it – Jewish misogyny.

In what is roughly the second half of the book, Aylon’s discussion of her artistic experimentation and growth is bolstered by a generous array of photographs that give readers some idea of the power of her installation art. Over and over again, her particular post-Orthodox feminism combines with her other themes in highly original, powerful, and daring visual compositions, works that are challenges both to her and to those who behold them. Some are inspired by Kabbalah, the mainstream of Jewish mysticism. Others involve technologies and materials that allow the installations to undergo change over time. Still others enact curative processes, such as redeeming the earth (in Jewish tradition, Tikkun Olam).

Many of these projects, — like the sequences that assemble sacs of sand, stone, and earth – required not only visionary insight and purpose, but also physical exertion and potential confrontation. Her Earth Ambulance project, carried out near nuclear power facilities and military sites, expressed and connected anti-war and conservationist perspectives. For Aylon, such battles are truly women’s work: housekeeping, nurturing, and healing on a grand scale.

More and more, her achievement was recognized with well-received gallery exhibitions and exhibitions in public spaces. However, finding display venues for installation art is often far more difficult than finding space on a gallery wall. Often, Aylon means to be shocking – shocking enough to wake people out of their slumbers and force them to confront major issues.

The ongoing, mutating story of Helène Aylon’s relationship with her mother and her Orthodox heritage binds together the passages of this attractive, uplifting, and powerful memoir.

This review appears in the February 2013 issues of the Federation Star (Jewish Federation of Collier County), L’Chayim (Jewish Federation of Lee and Charlotte Counties), and The Jewish News (Jewish Federation of Sarasota / Manatee).

Reprinted with a new title in February 21, 2013 issue of the Naples Florida Weekly: Florida Weekly – Aylon

An impassioned debut novel about the Nazi campaign against “degenerate art”

Fugitive Colors, by Lisa Barr. GIRLilla Warfare Press. 398 pages. $12.95 trade paperback.

Mixing romance and horror, history and imagination, high art and double-dealing artifice, Lisa Barr has fashioned a dynamic page-turner of young artists caught up in the Nazis rise to power and their leaders attempted control over the definition, sanctioning, and purposes of art.

We first meet Yakov Klein as a young child, then as a rebellious teenager in an Orthodox Chicago family. Chaffing at the restraints that surround him, Yakov feels compelled to replace his traditional Judaism with the religion of art. Learning about art and becoming an artist drive him to abandon his roots and strike out on his own, first in New York, and later in Paris. 

As Julian Klein, he sets aside his opportunity to attend a reputable Paris art school to team up with his new, adventurous friends and learn from their master teacher. The bonds between Felix, Rene, Julian grow powerful, as they spur each other on to finding their true styles and subjects. Their degree of mutual support is frequently compromised by their extreme competitiveness. And they compete not only for artistic supremacy but for the beautiful young women, fellow artist Adrienne and unscrupulous model Charlotte, who are part of their circle.

The competition is primarily between the enormously talented Rene and the ambitious but mediocre Felix. Rene’s success embitters Felix, though he keeps up the semblance of friendship. Julian tends to be the peacemaker, a satellite figure who needs more time to find his own direction.

Their personal stories, romances, and dizzying artistic enterprise become more and more folded into the story of Hitler’s rise and its effects on the world of European art. Just as Nazi policy will include an ethnic cleansing of non-Aryan populations, most notably Jews, it will also include a cultural cleansing of what it considers depraved art. Guess what? It considers all of the revolutionary schools of art developed in the early 20^th century to be decadent and thus a threat to the Uber Race.  

Julian, Rene, and other fight to save the art, the artists, and the gallery owners (Rene’s father prominent among them) who create or foster the iconoclastic modern and contemporary masters. Felix, by now, has returned to his German roots and taken on a major role in the Nazi project.

The Nazi plan is to steal or otherwise confiscate the decadent artworks and sell them at top prices to help fill the Nazi coffers. Julian becomes involved as a sort of spy, and both he and Rene end up severely beaten and imprisoned in Dachau for their attempts to thwart the Nazi plan. It seems almost incidental that Julian, Rene, and Adrienne are Jewish, for Ms. Barr’s emphasis suggests that the art issue is looming much larger than the ethnic issue at this time (early and mid 1930s).

Lisa Barr’s own literary brushstrokes carry all the colors of passion. As she builds her characters, sets her scenes, and considers the power of art and artistic genius, she paints a very rich canvas. Her descriptions of artworks and of artists at work are dazzling, evoking the longings, fears, manias, and even the hatreds released in the kaleidoscope of colors and shapes. There is a lushness of descriptive imagery that is intoxicating, though it is sometimes overdone.

Fugitive Colors is, in part, a celebration of youth, self-discovery, loyalty, and infatuation. Julian is over and over again acting against his best interest in his subordination to Rene’s needs, enthusiasm, and plans of action. As an intermediary between Rene and Felix, he walks a careful and dangerous line. His relationships with Adrienne and Charlotte are part of a complex puzzle of shifting erotic patterns.

It is ironic that a novel so concerned with celebrating the joy of art and artistic sensibility is also a novel that explores the murderous ends of ambition and jealousy, both on the individual and the collective scale. Extreme passion seems to obey no laws but its own.

Fugitive Colors has a cinematic feel. I can’t keep from trying to cast the parts for a blockbuster film based on this novel. Such qualities have already been recognized: the manuscript won first prize at the Hollywood Film Festival for “Best Unpublished Manuscript.” Read it and you’ll see what I mean.

This review appears in the January 2013 issues of Federation Star (Jewish Federation of Collier Count, FL), L’Chayim (Jewish Federation of Lee and Charlotte Counties), and The Jewish News (Jewish Federation of Sarasota/Manatee).

SINGER’S TYPEWRITER AND MINE: REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH CULTURE

by Ilan Stavans / University of Nebraska Press, 2012 / Paperback  392 pp. $24.95

This major collection of Ilan Stavans’ shorter writings confirms his place as a premier interpreter of the Jewish experience in the Americas. Primarily concerned with the narrative arts (literature and film), his range is wide and his penetration is deep. As he battles through the distinctions between the intellectual and the academic, the creative spirit and the critical one, Stavans is at once erudite, relaxed, and friendly. Often seriously engaged with high-brow achievement, he is not condescending to writers of lower elevation – such as Leo Rosten. 

Stavans employs his considerable intelligence and knowledge in a particularly therapeutic way. For one thing, he reminds us not to confuse Spanish speaking Jews with Sephardim. Born into an Ashkenazi Mexican family, he represents a stratum of Latino culture underrepresented on most North American maps of Jewish life and achievement. Yet Stavans has made New York and Boston his homes for half of his life. Intellectually and emotionally, he is at home with the giants (and the overlooked) of modern western culture in both its Spanish and English streams. And let’s not forget about Yiddish!

In this dazzling sampler of his work, we encounter short essays (book reviews, brief critical meditations, tributes) and longer sojourns into multi-layered topics: “Thinking Aloud: The Education of Maurice Samuel,” “Rereading Lionel Trilling,” “Sephardic Literature: Unity and Dispersion,” and – of course – the magnificent title essay “Singer’s Typewriter and Mine.” In many of these pieces, Stavans knits the circumstances of his own life into the exploration of his ostensible subject. Somehow, he manages to make this kind of risk-taking productive rather than intrusive. . . .

To read this review in its entirety, as it appears ALONG WITH AN INTERVIEW on the Jewish Book Council web site and in the Spring 2013 issue of Jewish Book World, click here: Singer’s Typewriter and Mine: Reflections on Jewish Culture

This review and interview was reprinted in the April 2013 issues of the Federation Star (Jewish Federation of Collier County, FL), L’Chayim (Jewish Federation of Lee and Charlotte Counties), and The Jewish News (Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee).

Roman forces threaten a resurgent Jewish nation in this suspenseful family saga

And So It Was Written, by Ellen Brazer. TCJ Publishing. 338 pages. $14.95 trade paperback.

Ellen Brazer has taken on quite a challenge in her quest to breathe life into the story of Bar Kokhba’s rebellion against the Roman rulers that took place around 130 C.E. In imagining this long-ago world during the Israelite struggle for survival, she frames a narrative that includes two sets of rival brothers. In this way, she follows the grand tradition of Biblical story-telling: Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau. Her Jewish pair is the sweet, contemplative Livel and the physically imposing Masabala. They, at least, are friendly rivals.

Ellen Brazer

The studious Livel is taken as a slave into the family of a powerful Roman leader after he is captured in a Roman raid not far from his home in En Gedi. His brother Masabala, the true warrior, takes upon himself the guilt of his brother’s uncertain fate. Both young men are the sons of Rabbi Eleazar, the Aaronic high priest. The Israelite people are living at a curious time, dazzled by the self-confidence, charm, and military prowess of Bar Kokhba – at once military leader and self-proclaimed messiah with a growing number of devoted followers. Bar Kokhba has successfully freed the Hebrews from Roman rule, but now the brief recurrence of their national independence is threatened by the return of determined Roman forces.

Taken into the household of his conqueror, the Roman senator Marcus Gracchus, Livel becomes a tutor to this accomplished leader’s sons, Scipio and Domitius. For these brothers, the rivalry is not friendly. It is so fierce that it is potentially deadly. Scipio is a man of integrity and humane values, while Domitius is vain, cruel, and driven. Marcus consciously sets them against one another. Scipio is winning Livel’s sympathies as a student; Domitius is haughty, irresponsible, and dangerous.

Once the story lines are established, Ellen Brazer skillfully moves us back and forth between the Roman family and its larger world and the Jewish family and its Israelite context. We meet the woman whom Masabala marries and get close to other members of Rabbi Eleazar’s family as well as leaders of Bar Kokhba’s forces. This part of the story involves a rediscovery of the Ark of the Covenant holding the Ten Commandments.

Livel’s experiences within the power centers in Roman culture bring him into the orbit of the great physician, Galen (these episodes are consciously anachronistic – Galen’s life as a scientist is actually somewhat later than the years being recreated in the novel). Livel becomes Galen’s student and is trained and mentored along with Galen’s daughter, to whom he is attracted. However, the young woman is jealous of Livel for several reasons, making their relationship awkward as well as intriguing.

The strengths of And So It Was Written are many and varied. It is truly suspenseful. Characters and setting, including material culture, are handled with authority, as long as we remember that the book is not history, but rather based on history with imaginative leaps in the service of story-telling.

The contrast between the monotheistic religion of the Jews and the Roman polytheistic world view provides a provocative undercurrent. The thirst for knowledge shared by the exemplary characters and the yearning for matching destiny with identity probed within almost every character relate to eternal issues as relevant today as they were in the past that Mrs. Brazer embroiders.

In her fictional delineation of striking individuals, families, and nations, Ellen Brazer gives readers much with which to identify. In following the threads of her “what if” premise, she entertains, teaches, and teases. “Could this be?” we wonder. Each reader will have his or her answer, but the process of questioning is really the novel’s power and reward.

This review appears in the December 2012 issues of the Federation Star (Jewish Federation of Collier County), L’Chayim (Jewish Federation of Lee and Charlotte Counties), and The Jewish News (Jewish Federation of Sarasota/Manatee).

Reprinted in December 13, 2012 Florida Weekly. Click here:  Florida Weekly – Brazer 1 and here:  Florida Weekly – Brazer 2

ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE BIBLICAL RECORD

 by Bernard Alpert and Fran Alpert. Hamilton Books. 110 pages. $24.99.

Though the Alperts make great efforts to distinguish (and separately value) the world of faith from the world of scientific discovery, their compact, knowledgeable book will probably ruffle many feathers and be declared heretical by those who read the Bible literally. The findings of modern archaeology, findings that Bernard and Fran Alpert have helped make, simply demolish the Old Testament narratives as history. While the books of Moses, the prophets, and the chroniclers are treasures, they are treasures of a special kind: repositories of truth rather than fact. They provide masterful portraits and understandings of the human condition; they set down guidelines for moral and effective human interaction; and they etch the birth struggles of a civilization.

 The authors point out that there is very little archaeological evidence to support the events and personages laid out in the Bible (which here means Old Testament). What we have in that assemblage of narratives, laws, and prophecies is a magnificent attempt, assembled in the 6^th century BCE, to give coherence, meaning, and status to the Israelite experience.  Divinely inspired? Perhaps. . . .

To see the full review, on the Jewish Book Council site and slated for Jewish Book World, click here: Archaeology and the Biblical Record

What words are for: Two reviews from Jewish Book World

by Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz 

http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/judaisms-great-debates

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger

http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/jews-and-words

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These two reviews were combined as a single review article and published in the March 2013 issues of Federation Star (Jewish Federation of Collier County), L’Chayim (Jewish Federation of Lee and Charlottle Counties), and The Jewish News (Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee).

 

A bold proposal for Israel’s future

Israel: The Will to Prevail, by Danny Danon. Palgrave Macmillan. 240 pages. $26.00

If this is the new voice of Israeli politics and government, it is a shrewd, loud, and powerful voice that is sure to be controversial both inside and outside of Israel’s borders. Danny Danon, chairman of World Likud (a major political party) and Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, argues that the generations of appeasement, two-state solutions, and land-for-peace bargaining need to be put into the dustbin of history. They haven’t worked, and they have rarely, if ever, been in Israel’s interest. He advocates a much tougher stance, along with much greater independence from American policy. 

As a key player in a new generation of Israel’s leadership, Danon insists that Israel needs to assert full sovereignty over lands under its control and stop expecting some future giveaway to bring peace. For Danon, demonstrated strength will be the great peacemaker. In the Middle East, power talks and anything less than an aggressive stance is construed as weakness. We’ve heard these positions before, but Danon has put the package together with great clarity and force.  Is his a dangerous stance? Perhaps, but it may be less dangerous than the acquiescence that invites annihilation.

Danon makes all the old cases for Israel’s right to exist in its current place on the globe: the Biblical case, the continuity case, and the legalistic case. He makes them coherently, economically, and with a bit of useful swagger. It’s almost as if he’s briefing Jewish college students on how to answer the arguments from the left side of the political spectrum, and Danon provides superb ammunition and copious documentation.

He reminds his readers that after WWI Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon were created in pretty much that same way that Israel was created after WWII, but no one is questioning the legitimacy of those nations. He reviews, briefly, the great British Mandate for Palestine giveaway of 80% of the land to the country now named Jordan, the home of over two million Palestinians. It’s clear that at one time the international community expected the entire Mandate territory (from the wreck of the Ottoman Empire) to be the home of a Jewish nation. He insists, with plentiful evidence, that there never was a Palestinian nation –  a distinct, self-governing entity – to be overtaken, stolen, occupied, or otherwise compromised.

For all of the background arguments that Danon provides, his main strategy is to underscore the facts on the ground.  Israel is here, unapologetic, and ready to take its survival interests fully into its own hands. That means, with some slight adjustments, fully annexing territories conquered in defensive wars.

Danny Danon

Danny Danon is at great pains to articulate a refinement of Israel’s relationship with its great ally, the United States. The question of U. S. influence on Israel’s policies and actions is complicated and deeply rooted. From Danon’s perspective, Israel has too often caved in to U.S. (and other Western) pressure and acted against its own interest, postponing the reckoning to a later date. Having gained the upper hand with its enemy neighbors on several occasions, Israel folded to appease its allies. Danon believes a stronger, more independent Israel can be of even greater value to the United States. Though such a statement may seem counterintuitive, the argument’s details are compelling.

The future that Danon envisions includes a three-state solution to the Palestinian crisis. He writes as follows: “This would entail a regional agreement with Jordan (Danon claims that Palestinians are 70% of Jordan’s population), Egypt (where Palestinians already enjoy many advantages of citizenship), and Israel that would give Palestinians land and other rights across these three areas – not land to form a distinct Palestinian state but land within the borders of these states as they exist now.” All parties would agree that Israel has a right to exist, and Israel would fight to demolish those, like Hamas and Hezbollah, that work to delegitimize and destroy the Jewish state. 

Does Danny Danon’s proposal have a chance? Well, stranger things have happened.  It certainly is a challenge to the dead-end modes of thought that have proven their inadequacy for so many decades. For this reason, it is required reading for all who care about Israel.

This review appears in the November 2012 issues of Federation Star (Jewish Federation of Collier County), L’Chayim (Jewish Federation of Lee and Charlotte Counties), and The Jewish News (Jewish Federation of Sarasota/Manatee).