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- Our Holocausts: Aren't we all victims, really?
In the beginning, you’re not quite sure what to make of Tova Reich’s “My Holocaust.” Where is she going with all this lampooning of Holocaust survivors, of trips to Auschwitz and of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum? It’s not until you’ve gotten more than halfway through the book that you realize Reich’s mockery is not limited to Holocaust survivors: with this book she’s likely to offend Catholics, Poles, Germans, Buddhists, Israelis, Palestinians, Mormons, New Age-hippie-meditation types, second-generation Holocaust survivors and especially all those big-shot donors who paid to have their names put on plaques at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Now, back to Reich’s Holocaust survivors and one in particular: Maurice Messer. Messer, who’s as endearing a character as you’ll find anywhere, is the wheeler-dealer chairman of the Holocaust museum who likes to boast of his connections to the White House and his days as a partisan resistance fighter. Of course, only his children and fellow survivors know Maurice never actually fought the Nazis during the war, but exposing him as a fraud would be bad for the Jews so they just think of it as a harmless inside joke. Maurice, his hapless son, Norman, and his chief of staff, the Rabbi Dr. Monty Pincus, spend all of their time and energy soliciting large donations for the museum from wealthy Jews. As Reich makes clear, their ‘product’ is the Holocaust and Maurice is the ultimate pitch man. At the museum one day, Maurice finds spiritual solace at the Founders’ Wall: “This wall was his supreme creation. It was the monument to his greatest achievements, inscribed like a Rosetta stone with the chronicle of his triumphs, which only he could truly decipher. For a long time he gazed at the names on the wall, the roster of his precious donors of one million dollars or more, and was suffused with emotion as he recalled the details of each and every deal — how to reach this one on his private island he had retched nonstop over the side of a boat in the Bermuda Triangle, how at the second meeting in the San Francisco penthouse to extract the gift of a lifetime in the estate planning of that one, the prospect had appeared wearing a surgical mask because, as his feygele assistant nonchalantly explained, Maurice had a habit of standing too close and spitting too wildly from excitement in the climatic moments of a fund-raising pitch, and so on and so forth down the roll of his princely benefactors.” Alas, Maurice’s success on the donor circuit inspires jealousy among other victims’ groups. And here’s where trouble begins. First, one of Maurice’s VIP donor trips to Auschwitz get interrupted by a rabble of New Age hippies who seek to include other ‘victims’ in the Holocaust genre. There’s the African-American holocaust, the Palestinian holocaust, the women’s holocaust, the American Indian holocaust, the Christian holocaust, the Muslim holocaust, the Gay and Lesbian holocaust, the Tibetan holocaust and any and all other holocausts, known or unknown. Back in the States, the hippies go even further by occupying Maurice’s beloved museum and demanding inclusion of the ‘other’ holocausts. It’s a spectacle that draws crowds from all over to watch the tragedy unfold on 14th Street. Maurice is among the hostages stuck inside but Norman and Monty won’t let the police storm the museum because, as one of the occupiers explains, it would look bad to have “federal storm troopers come breaking into the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum of all places … and turn [it] into another Waco Holocaust.” Nu, so what’s the point of all this? Reich’s satire demonstrates the absurdity of the competition for victim status that appears to be vogue among liberal elites. As Cynthia Ozick points out in her praise of the book, “it accuses the prevailing tone of American society, a cultish-ness cultivated from the top down—the cult of rivalrous victimization, celebrated among the humanities in all American universities, from women’s studies to black studies to postcolonial studies, from literature departments to history departments to Middle Eastern departments, all those braggart elitist realms where grievance and suffering are crowned with laurel.” Reich also succeeds in chastising the collective Jewish community for the intense fund-raising, the countless memorials and the accompanying donor-ego aggrandizement surrounding the memory of the Holocaust. This is no simple task. When you venture into criticism of anything Holocaust-related, you risk backlash from the Jewish community. You can be seen as someone who wants to minimize the Holocaust in history. And with that being a common tactic among the Holocaust deniers, it qualifies you for an associate membership in their group. Even if you reject the deniers’ point of view, the deniers can still embrace your ideas and for many in the Jewish community that’s just as bad because you provided fodder for the enemy. So that’s the risk Reich took. Undoubtedly, she’s already received letters from people who think Holocaust survivors are too sensitive a subject for satire. But, those readers miss Reich’s larger message about ‘victim-ness’ in American society. Of course the Holocaust is a sensitive subject but that’s precisely why something had to be said about the tainting of its legacy. Thankfully, Reich has said it. “My Holocaust” is published by HarperCollins (326 pages, $24.95).
Tue, 22 May 2007 10:42:24 GMT - Monday roundup: The non-fiction edition
After so much Michael Chabon coverage last week, we had a lot of non-fiction reviews to choose from this Monday: • The New York Times ran a review Sunday by Corey S. Powell, executive editor of Discover magazine, of the two new Albert Einstein biographies: "Einstein: His Life and Universe," by Walter Isaacson, the former managing editor of Time magazine, and "Einstein: A biography," by Jürgen Neffe, a German journalist and biochemist. Powell notes that both authors justify new biographies of Einstein — there are already more than 200 — by "incorporating recently unearthed bits of Einsteiniana, including a trove of personal letters released by Hebrew University last year." While both books set out to explain the impact of Einstein's theories on modern science, Powell gives Isaacson high marks for taking a chronological approach: "If any 600-page book about relativity can be described as a page-turner, 'Einstein: His Life and Universe' is it," he writes. On the other hand, Neffe tried to present Einstein's ideas by using a theme-driven structure that gets "distractingly convoluted in places." But, the books' biggest differences appear to lay in their assessments of Einstein's personality. "Isaacson’s Einstein is a resilient humanist who managed to adapt to tough political realities without sacrificing his core beliefs in freedom and social equality," he writes. "Neffe’s Einstein is more of a naïve idealist, repeatedly drawn to (and burned by) ill-advised causes." Click here for the NYT piece. • The Forward published a piece Friday about a newly published collection essays and speeches by the late Susan Sontag. Personally, I've always felt that Sontag shined when she discussed art and aesthetics but faltered whenever she waded into politics. Mark Oppenheimer, the writer of the Forward piece, would probably disagree with me. Click here to read Oppenheimer's take on Sontag. • Lastly, HaAretz reported last week that Simon and Schuster has already purchased the English translation rights to "Nekudat Ha Al-Hazor" ("Point of No Return"), a new book by Yedioth Ahronoth reporter (and lawyer) Ronen Bergman. The author says Israel and Iran have been engaged in a secret war ever since Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979 and promises to reveal new details about the Second Lebanon War, Iran's nuclear ambitions and the 1994 AIMA bombing in Buenos Aires. Its Hebrew release was Sunday but the article does not mention when the book may appear in English. Click here to read the story.
Mon, 21 May 2007 11:22:19 GMT - Review: "Dropped From Heaven"
In her fiction debut, Sophie Judah draws inspiration from her native India for a mixed bag of short stories depicting the slow demise of Bene Israel, a centuries-old Jewish community there. The community’s origins, Judah writes, are shrouded in mystery. No one is sure how the Jews ended up in India. Some say they were one of the lost tribes, possibly Zebulun. Nonetheless, these Jews remained faithful to their customs, like keeping the laws of kashrut, marrying within the community and observing the Sabbath. While these all seem familiar to Jews around the world, Judah makes it clear that the Bene Israel community’s way of life was a unique blend of Judaism accented by Indian cultural trappings. But, like many other small Jewish communities around the world during the last century, the Bene Israel witnessed their young people leave and never come back. Economics took them to other parts of India and idealism led them away to the newly formed Jewish state. Indeed, throughout the book’s 110-year span, the traditions of the Bene Israel come under increasing strain. They seem most severely affected, not by the customs of their Hindu and Muslim neighbors (who appear to be too busy killing each other), but by the influence of life in modern Israel. In one story, “The Courtship of Naomi Samuel,” a visiting Israeli attempts to woo a local girl but he stumbles repeatedly over his blunt, matter-of-fact personality. When Naomi asks what could be done for her disabled sister if the family moved to Israel, he blithely suggests sticking her in an institution. The last straw comes on a Friday evening when Itzik proclaims the Kiddush wine and challah “unclean” because “a goy” prepared them. The non-Jew who made the ritual items — a Muslim friend of the family affectionately referred to as “Auntie Selma” — overhears the comment, becomes distraught and asks if he considers her “an untouchable.” Faced with the perceived humiliation of her auntie, Naomi ends the courtship right then and there by ordering Itzik out of the house. He attempts to explain by quoting Jewish law but Naomi cuts him off with a comment that sums their differences in approach to Judaism. “Is that the law from Sinai,” she asks. “You are more involved with ritual than with God and common humanity.” Naomi later marries out of the faith and loses contact with her family. Thankfully Judah includes depictions of other Israelis who are not so boorish. In the final story — the best one in the collection — a Bene Israel Jew who immigrated to Israel long ago, Joseph, returns to India on a visit with his Israeli girlfriend. Set in the year 2000, Judah says in the book’s forward that the tale depicts the conditions of many small Indian Jewish communities at the start of the 21st century. There are almost no other Jews around. So when Joseph gets stuck arranging a funeral for a local Jewish woman he barely knew, he expends a lot of time, energy, and money making sure she receives a proper burial. This time, the Israeli character lends emotional support to her intended and remains flexible (or suffers silently) when confronted with the local traditions. Ultimately, Joseph’s efforts go wasted. Poverty-stricken waifs pillage the woman’s grave in the overgrown Jewish cemetery and take everything of value, including the shroud. Under the circumstances, Joseph must opt for a non-Jewish means of disposing the body, cremation. And so it went for the Bene Israel community. In the end, not only did Jewish life become impossible to maintain in India: even a Jewish death is impossible. The book is a reminder of things lost. It seems that Judah saw two options for the Bene Israel community: face dispersion in Israel or in the larger Indian community. How many other communities did this happen to? Fortunately for the Bene Israel community, Judah’s nostalgia has given them a second life. “Dropped From Heaven” is published by Schocken Books (243 pages, $23.00).
Tue, 15 May 2007 04:34:24 GMT - A Monday roundup from elsewhere on the Web
Michael Chabon's new book "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" received a slew of reviews over the weekend: • The Philadelphia Inquirer bemoaned a "minor intellectual letdown" after finishing the novel. The Inquirer story can be found here. • The Washington Post called it a "terrific new novel" despite faltering at the end. The Post piece can be found here. • And, The New York Times gave it a positive review while noting that the book's "simple message about the power of everyday love might seem a dismayingly small payoff." Click here for the NYT piece. Elsewhere, The Forward had a Q & A with Hungarian author George Konrád. Click here to read it.
Mon, 14 May 2007 21:02:58 GMT - Welcome!
Welcome and thanks for checking out this new site. This is Jewish Literary Review. As the title suggests, I intend to use this space to post reviews of books that interest Jewish readers. While I anticipate the majority of reviews will be culled from books I find on the fiction racks, there will be some non-fiction titles, some history tomes and a few biographies thrown in. In addition, there will be days where I’ll round-up reviews from elsewhere on the Web and post the links here. All in all, the site will serve as a guide for readers who want to stay abreast of the latest in Jewish writing. I’m no expert but I’ll say what I feel and I think I can entertain you for a while. So, sit back, enjoy a cup of your favorite beverage and read a few reviews in anticipation of your next trip to book store. -Steve
Sun, 13 May 2007 14:25:45 GMT
