Wrap-Up

I completed the challenge a while ago; it was fun to have occasion to highlight some of the reading I do for my job as a temple librarian and share some of the great books I read. You can see my reviews here. Thanks to Callista for hosting the challenge.

Hanna's Suitcase, by Karen Levine

Hana's Suitcase, by Karen Levine, published in 2007, is the true story of a young Czech girl named Hana Brady, who was taken away by the Nazis along with her older brother George, and that of her suitcase, which through a chain of events ended up in Japan. It is also the story of a Japanese woman's efforts to find out about Hana- who she was and what happened to her. The book is incredibly moving. Illustrated with photographs of Hana and her family as well as the Holocaust center in Japan where her suitcase is found, Levine tells Hana's story in parallel with the story of the efforts to learn about her. This structure sets up two crushing waves of emotion that left me in tears by the end. It's bittersweet tragedy, told with beauty and sensitivity.

The Schocken Guide to Jewish Books

Since this is my last post in the challenge, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about The Schocken Guide to Jewish Books. The Schocken Guide is the book lover's passport into the world of Jewish books- basically it's an extended bibliography of Judaica in a range of subject areas, fully annotated and illustrated with photos and drawings. I found it on one of my trips into my local used book store; it caught my eye because I work in a synagogue library right now and was browsing the Judaica section for something that might be either a good addition to the collection or a useful tool for me. This book turned out to be both.

Schocken Books is a publishing company speicalizing in Judaica since it was founded in Germany in 1931. In 1987 it became a division of Random House but continues to publish popular Judaica in a broad range of subject area, and publishes authors like Anita Diamant and Aharon Applefield. See the official About Schocken page at Random House or the entry on Wikipedia for more information. In other words the company is an expert source when it comes to Jewish books.

Every chapter of The Schocken Guide is written by a different expert, mostly rabbis and college professors representing every stream of Judaism. The chapter on the Jewish Middle Ages, for example, is written by Ivan Marcus, a professor of history specializing in medieval Europe at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. The chapter on immigration and Jews in America is written by Brandeis University professor of American Jewish History Jonathan D. Sarna. So it's not just one guy rattling off a list of his favorite books but scholars giving a gloss on the most useful volumes in his or her specialty.

The recommendations include all genres of writing- fiction, nonfiction, etc. And each section mixes genres so for example the chapter on the Holocaust includes Holocaust fiction as well as history and memoirs. This feature is useful for someone learning about a given topic because you can find all the information you need in one place. The well-researched chapters cover mostly scholarly topics like Jewish mysticism, Israel and Zionism, women, as well as separate chapters covering Hebrew and Yiddish literature as well as American Jewish novels.

It's been fifteen years since The Schocken Guide was published in 1993; I would love to see an updated version covering newer publishers like Jewish Lights and Gefen Books, and newer trends in Jewish publishing, like the recent spate of self help books. I think it would also be helpful to include some chapters on less-scholarly topics. At my library, the single most popular category of books for adults is cookbooks and it would be great to have an expert along the lines of Joan Nathan or Susie Fishbein tell me about the must-haves. It would also be helpful to include a directory of publishers and other resources in Jewish literature, like the National Yiddish Book Center or the Association of Jewish Libraries. But it is still incredibly useful for evaluating collections made up largely of older books and for anyone looking for a good read in Jewish religion, history, and literature.

Out of Line: Growing Up Soviet, by Tina Grimberg

Out of Line: Growing Up Soviet, by Tina Grimberg, is a vivid, affecting memoir of a childhood and adolescence spent in Ukraine under the Soviet regime. Grimberg, now a rabbi in Canada, lived in the former Soviet Union until she was 15 and emigrated with her family to Indiana. The book is a memoir about growing up in a world that doesn't exist anymore.

Grimberg's narrative jumps back and forth through the years, from early childhood to her emigration. Grimberg frames her narrative in terms of a young girl and her family doing what they needed to do to survive- queueing up in long lines, working connections for that extra little luxury that made life bearable and worthwhile. The reader gets to know her parents, deeply in love with each other and devoted to their two children, Tina and her older sister Natasha; we meet her grandparents, especially Inna (always "Babushka Inna"), who changed her name from the Jewish Ginda to the more ethnically indeterminate Inna to fit in, and a small cast of friends and some family members who passed away before Grimberg was born.

Throughout the book the tone is warm and affectionate but not really sentimental; Grimberg depicts a loving family struggling to survive and is open about the trials of life as a Jewish family under the anti-Semitic, anti-religious Soviet regime, as well as her own lapses and failings. One of the most touching, albeit sad, anecdotes in the entirety of this slim volume is when Grimberg tells us the time she rode on the bus with Babushka Inna and heard Inna speaking Yiddish with another Jewish woman. After a brief altercation with another passenger they got off the bus; then little Tina told her grandmother never to speak Yiddish in public again, so ashamed was she of the attention it attracted. She speaks then of the heavy, loaded silence and shame that lived between her and Babushka Inna for the rest of the day, even as Babushka lovingly laid out Tina's nightclothes and put her to bed. I have Russian Jewish friends who escaped like Grimberg's family did and most of the time they don't like to talk about their more painful experiences, or only do in general terms, but this anecdote in particular brought something home to me about the damage done to families and to people by the Soviet system.

We also see some other aspects of Soviet life. Through her grandparents' story we see the terrible price the Soviet people paid for World War II, with nearly every family missing that entire generation of men; we see the role played by that generation of women, including Babushka Inna, as essential childrearers and neighborhood watchdogs. We see privations and little victories, such as when Grimberg is able to buy flowers for her mother for Women's Day even after the florist has sold out.

Grimberg draws herself as a basically happy, normal little girl and although her circumstances were grim, we have to remember that the story has a happy ending for the Grimberg family, however unlikely it may have seemed to them even up to the very moment they boarded the train for western Europe. I'm grateful for them that they made it, and grateful for being able to read this sweet, moving book. Out of Line gives some great insights into everyday life in a time and place that shaped a lot of people and is definitely worth checking out. Aimed at young adults, I think it would be a great read for teens (or anyone) interested in the former Soviet Union, in Jewish life there, and in the world that was swept away with the fall of the Soviet Union.

Megillat Esther

Happy Purim!

For my next entry in the Jewish Literature Challenge series, I chose a graphic novel-style interpretation of the Megilla, the story of how Queen Esther saved the Jews from slaughter by King Achashverosh and his advisor, Haman, in ancient Persia, forming the basis for the Jewish holiday Purim, which begins tomorrow. Not your standard children's-book interpretation, this version of Esther's story is full of intrigue, conspiracies and reversals, not the least of which is the physical reversal of the text which occurs halfway through. At this point, the reader needs to flip the book over and read it right to left, all the better for the Hebrew but possibly jarring for readers unfamiliar with reading Hebrew or (in my case) Japanese manga. But I digress.

This Megillat Esther is a treasure, a beautiful and thoughtful retelling of the Book of Esther. The story is told in English and beautifully-lettered Hebrew, and includes rabbinic footnotes and a bibliography, as well as a section explaining the importance of citations and explaining the term midrash, the orally-told stories that expand on the Hebrew Bible. This section seems aimed at children, but this is no children's book. Waldman's rich, detailed black and white illustrations reward careful attention and a slow, deliberate pace, and there is some racy sexual content and innuendo that would make me hesitate to include this volume in a library collection for children, although it would be wonderful for adults who can be persuaded to read a "comic book."

Waldman's Megillat Esther is a real treat. I had a hard time tracking down a copy through my local public library system, but it's worth a read, at Purim time or anytime.

Such a Prince, by Daniel Bar-el

Such a Prince, a new picture book for elementary-school children by Dan Bar-el, is a lively retelling of the "three peaches folktale about a sick princess who needs three perfect peaches to get well. In return for providing the peaches, her father, the king, promises the girl's hand in marriage. This version is narrated by Libby Gaborchik, a fuss-budget little fairy who takes a liking to a skinny, feckless young man named Marvin and helps him win the princess.

The book is a joy from start to finish. The story is funny, the characters are recognizable fairy-tale types used perfectly. My favorite character is the unabashedly loud-mouthed, assertive Princess Vera, who even from her sickbed will express herself in quite the forthright manner. And the pictures! The guache and colored-pencil pictures are appealing, colorful and complement the fast-paced, rolly-poly story. Even the endpapers, depicting bunnies bouncing here and there, contribute to the overall atmosphere of hyperkinetic action.

When I first read the book silently, I enjoyed the humor and the beautiful, vibrant illustrations. But it really came to life when I read it out loud- Libby's playful, irreverent tone, only a little sarcastic at times, is a great match to the bouncy, bright pictures, and sounds great when spoken. The lively Yiddish-inspired syntax is to blame. Even without using a single Yiddish word Bar-el does a great job of capturing the uniquely expressive sound of Yiddish-inflected English and it's this trait that lends the book so beautifully to being read aloud. So read it, enjoy it, have fun with it, and read it out loud- though you might have to ham it up a little to really do it justice!

Bagels from Benny

Bagels from Benny is a very sweet picture book that tells the story of Benny, a little boy who loves to help out at his grandfather's bakery and wants to find a way to thank God for his grandfather's wonderful bagels. He hits upon the idea of leaving a bag of bagels in his synagogue's ark- where the Torah is kept- because it just seems sensible to leave a gift for God in with His book. A poor man who comes to pray finds the bagels- and believes they are from God. When Benny's grandfather finds out what Benny has been doing with his bagels, grandfather and grandson share an important lesson about the transformational power of kindness and generosity. It's a really lovely story with an important lesson, based on an ancient Jewish legend from Spain. Petricic's illustrations in watercolor and pencil are by turns funny and beautiful and echo the emotional tones well. It won the Sydney Taylor Book Award in 2003. I love Bagels from Benny!