SEINLANGUAGE

SEINLANGUAGE by Jerry Seinfeld was read for the Jewish Literature Challenge, the Support Your Local Library Challenge, and the New Authors Challenge.

We've all seen the Seinfeld TV show. Remember in the earlier shows, at the beginning of the show, Jerry would be on stage, doing his act - his observations of life? That's what this book is - observations on various stages of life.

When Dom and I would watch the show, we could gauge how funny the show would be by the amount of hair on George's head -- much hair, not funny - little hair, funny. I think George had a full head of hair when this book was written.

There was one funny bit in this book on page 177. I'm going to post it now to save you the time and trouble of reading through this book to find something to bring a small chuckle.

To me, the thing about old people is that everything about them gets smaller. You know, their bodies get smaller, they move into smaller places, they sleep less time, they eat smaller meals ... except the car. The older they get, the bigger their car gets. They're all driving these Detroit behemoths. I've never understood that. And old people have a way of backing out of the driveway. They don't turn from side to side. Their attitude is "I'm old and I'm coming back." "I've been around a while, now. You watch out for be, buddy, I survived, let's see you do it."

And then once they get out there, they drive so slowly. I would think the less time you have left in life, the faster you would want to go. I think old people should be allowed to drive their age. If you're eighty, do eighty. If you're a hundred, go a hundred.

They can't see where they're going anyway, let them have a little fun out there.

Now, after reading that, you can feel you've read the entire book. You can thank me - I've saved you time and money!

DREK!

DREK! THE REAL YIDDISH YOUR BUBBE NEVER TAUGHT YOU by Yetta Emmes was read for the Jewish Literature Reading Challenge and the New Author Challenge.

From the back of the book:

Who says Yiddish is a dying language? After hundreds of years, you should look so good! In fact, today Yiddish is spoken in almost all parts of the world. Whether you're a goy, a Jew, nebbish, schmuck, yenta, or klutz, you probably already know enough Yiddish to praise your best friend, insult your worst enemy, or at least order lunch. But what about the hundreds of other exclamations, expressions, profanities, colloquialisms, blessings, and curses your blushing bubbe never taught you? They're all here, in this comprehensive, uncensored, hilarious, not to mention delightfully illustrated book. DREK! is a walk on the wilder side of Delancey Street, where the mensch, the mamzer, and the meiser meet.

This little book (only 97 pages) hardly rates as Jewish Literature. It's basically a dictionary arranged by types of words with a few little stories thrown in for fun. It was interesting to learn the meaning of some of the words I've heard tossed around - and some I've used myself.

I'm sure we all know a little Yiddish. Remember the opening of Laverne and Shirley - "Shlemiel - Shlemazel - Hasenpfeffer Incorporated?" Yep, Yiddish. But now I know what they mean.

Here are a few Yiddish terms - how many do you know?

Mishmash
Nudge
Shmooze
Fressing
Shmaltzy
Shlep
Shnook

A fun little book!


Shlemiel - a foolish person, a simpleton, a dolt, a bungler
Shlemazel - a born loser, someone for whom nothing seems to go right or turn out well. When the shlemiel spills his soup, it always lands on the shlemazel. (page 15)

CONVICTION

CONVICTION by Leonard Levitt was read for the Jewish Literature Reading Challenge (book by Jewish author).

From the back of the book:

On October 30, 1975, fifteen-year-old Martha Moxley's brutal murder made national headlines. But for years one one was arrested, despite troubling clues pointing to the Skakels, a rich and powerful family related to the Kennedys.

In the years that followed, investigative reporter Leonard Levitt uncovered groundbreaking information about how the police had bungled the investigation; he also discovered that Tommy and Michael Skakel had lied about their activities on the night of the murder. The case was reopened and investigator Frank Garr began to doggedly pursue unexplored leads. In 2002, more than twenty-five years after Moxley's death, a shocked world watched as Michael Skakel was convicted of the murder, thanks largely to the evidence Garr alone had marshaled against him.

Now, for the first time, Levitt tells the amazing true story of Garr's fight to solve the case and of how their friendship with each other, and with Martha Moxley's mother, Dorthy, sustained them over the years. A riveting, suspenseful drama that unfolds like a mystery novel, this incredible memoir also reveals how a police officer and a reporter refused to give up, and how they helped justice to prevail, against all odds.

I first learned of this case a few years ago after reading Mark Fuhrman's book MURDER IN GREENWICH. (That's the same Mark Fuhrman from the O.J. Simpson trial.) In that book, Mr. Fuhrman named Michael Skakel as the murderer.

This book by Mr. Levitt went into a greater amount of detail about the case. He wrote of the problems with the case from the beginning in 1975 when the police failed to investigate the Skakel boys, probably due to intimidation from the family. Much time was wasted by the police trying to build a case against the Skakel family's live-in tutor, Ken Littleton.

Mr. Levitt's determination in writing his story and uncovering evidence helped lead to the case being reopened in 1991. The story was profiled on Unsolved Mysteries in 1996, and tips were received leading the police to look closely at Michael Skakel. A grand jury was convened in 1998, and after an 18-month investigation, an arrest warrant was issued for Michael Skakel in January, 2000.

On June 7, 2002, Michael Skakel was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 20 years to life.

I enjoy reading true-crime stories, and I thought this book was very interesting. Mr. Levitt, having been involved with this story since 1982, had a wealth of information and gave a true picture of the frustrations of working on a 20+ year old case and the satisfaction of seeing the case finally solved and closed.

One!?!

But, I did a lot of book talks at the college library for "History post Civil War" assignments. The Zoo Keeper's Wife, Diary of Anne Frank, and Night were all big circulation winners; especially, Night because it is very short. You remember college days, right?!?

Book Read: The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs.

Thank you for hosting this moving 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.

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom

I'm really not sure how many folks are familiar with Corrie ten Boom and her fascinating story, The Hiding Place. She was a Dutch Christian who, with her father and sister, hid Dutch Jews in their Haarlem house during World War II and Hitler's terrifying reign.

Corrie lost her father during their time in prison, and then her sister Betsie passed away while they were in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Corrie lived until 1983.

I really love this story. I saw the film "The Hiding Place" when I was growing up, and I subsequently read the book. After also reading Anne Frank's diary, I became fascinated with Jewish culture (which makes me a bit of an oddity as a Christian minister's wife, actually) and the sadness of the Holocaust, which is the most horrible crime against humanity in the 20th century.

I recomend this book, because it is a personal story. It shows that that well-meaning Christians died to help save Jews. And it shows the love of God.

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.

Living A Jewish Life - Anita Diamant

Title: Living A Jewish Life: Jewish Traditions, Customs, and Values for Today's Families (2nd ed.)

Author: Anita Diamant

Country: USA

Year: 2007 (1st ed. 1991)

Rating: 5 of 5

Pages: 308

Happy Tu B'Shvat!!!

Tu B'Shvat, a minor Jewish holiday, is the New Year for the Trees, and is commonly celebrated by planting trees and eating fruits and nuts. It is also known as Jewish Arbor Day. Which leads into the latest book that I finished, Living A Jewish Life by Anita Diamant.

Although a good book for anyone who is interested in learning more about liberal Judaism, this book is most beneficial to exactly what we are: a young Jewish family looking to incorporate more rituals and traditions into our home life. 

Living A Jewish Life provides thorough explanations to many things that remain somewhat elusive to me, a non-Jew raising a Jewish child: the essence of Shabbat and how to include it in your home life, the Jewish calendar and holidays, Jewish community organizations and education. and how to make (and stick) to Jewish choices when other aspects of life interfere (ie. soccer practice on Shabbat).  I especially appreciate the fact that Anita Diamant writes with an assumption that you do not know a lof of Hebrew, and provides a very useful glossary in the back and detailed explanations for the Hebrew she does use.