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Jewish Journal

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Books

Artist Evokes Jewish Strength — Overtly

Rachel Zuckerman February 19, 2004

Five years ago, veteran comic book artist Joe Kubert visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. He expected to be moved, but since he and his parents had escaped from Poland before the Nazi genocide began, he assumed his emotional reaction would be relatively contained. Then, he saw something that struck him profoundly: \”Yzeran,\” the name of the shtetl where he had been born, etched on a wall filled with names of towns that had been completely obliterated in World War II.

This one word began a creative odyssey that found its completion this month, with the publication of \”Yossel — April 19, 1943,\” Kubert\’s graphic novel about Jewish resistance during the Holocaust — artistic, as well as physical — with the date in the subtitle referring to the start of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Legacy of Questions Without Answers

Michal Lemberger January 15, 2004

Lev Raphael, a child of survivors, clearly knows this well. His new novel, \”The German Money,\” tries to take on some of the questions that those who inherit the Holocaust must face. Raphael is also a mystery writer, so he is not only interested in recovering the past, but also in solving its mysteries. Because, as Faulkner implied, the past is always a mystery to us. We can never really know its truths. That\’s why it cannot die. There is too much for us to figure out.

‘Tattooed Girl’ Mines a Root of Prejudice

Howard Kaplan January 8, 2004

Neither of these characters, driving at breakneck speed toward each other, are seeing anything too clearly. So a crash is expected. But with the prolific Joyce Carol Oates\’ deft and dark hands on both wheels, the carnage is far worse than is easily imagined.

A Prayer Book of Many Colors

Gaby Wenig January 1, 2004

Lori Justice-Shocket thought that the traditional praying experience was just a bit too black and white. Not the prayers, themselves, per se, but the siddurim (prayer books), with their plain black typeface on white pages and the archaic traditional language, made davening, for her at least, formal, stiff and lacking in the visual and emotional engagement that she thought prayer should have.

So Justice-Shocket, vice president of conceptual development at the Los Angeles-based nail polish company, OPI, decided to take matters into her own presumably well-manicured hands and create a prayer book that could visually and intellectually inspire worshippers.

Israeli Novel of Ideas Overpowers Story

Donna Rifkind January 1, 2004

Can a work of fiction be important without being successful? If so, it would look pretty much like \”Foiglman,\” by the distinguished Israeli author, Aharon Megged.

\”Foiglman\” was originally published in Israel in 1988 and is being issued here for the first time in English by Toby Press, a Connecticut-based firm with an active editorial office in Jerusalem that has been busily acquiring backlists of leading Israeli writers.

Megged\’s book is a novel of ideas in which ideas completely overpower the novel itself.

Meant to Be

Rob Eshman January 1, 2004

Earlier this year, two remarkable authors came to town and changed the way I thought about being Jewish.\n\nFrederic Brenner, the French photographer, came to speak about his new book, \”Diaspora: Exiles at Home\” (HarperCollins). The product of 25 years of work, the book contains photographs of Jews living very different kinds of lives in 45 different countries. The images are powerful, as are the accompanying analyses by some of the great thinkers and writers of our time.

Awaken Your Inner J.K. Rowling

Beverly Gray December 11, 2003

Scratch away at any Jew and you\’ll find a storyteller. The people of the book dream of spinning out personal memories and Old Country stories to a rapt circle of children. That\’s why the first-ever Jewish Children\’s Literature Conference, held in the fall at Sinai Temple through the auspices of Mount Sinai Memorial Parks and Mortuaries and the Association of Jewish Libraries, attracted 125 eager attendees. Many were there specifically to grapple with the question: So you want to be a writer of children\’s books?

Book Unpacks Shoah Memories

Beverly Gray December 11, 2003

Karen Levine never had plans to write a book.

Then in 2001, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. radio producer came across an article in the Canadian Jewish News about a young Japanese woman, urged on by Tokyo schoolchildren studying the Holocaust, who traveled halfway round the world to find the owner of a child\’s battered suitcase. That child, Hana Brady, had died in Auschwitz at age 13, but the determined young woman tracked down Hana\’s brother George, who had survived Auschwitz and found a new life in Toronto.

Levine made a radio documentary chronicling the meeting between Fumiko Ishioka and George Brady, and that led her to write a children\’s book, \”Hana\’s Suitcase,\” a gripping detective story and an inspirational saga.

Shoah-Era Opera an Allegory of Victory

Gaby Wenig December 4, 2003

Today, \”Brundibar\” is experiencing a revival of sorts. It is the title and story of a new children\’s book written by Tony Kushner, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak (Hyperion Books for Children), and this weekend, the Jewish Community Foundation and the Dwight Stuart Youth Foundation sponsored Youth Opera Camp of Santa Monica College Conservatory will be performing the opera at the Miles Memorial Playhouse and Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Professor Donates Dickens Collection

Tom Tugend December 4, 2003

Fagin, who recruits a gang of young thieves in \”Oliver Twist,\” is arguably the most villainous caricature of a Jew in English literature — not excepting Shakespeare\’s Shylock — but his creator, Charles Dickens, was no dyed-in-the-wool anti-Semite.\n\nIndeed, in \”Our Mutual Friend,\” his last completed novel, Dickens took a 180-degree turn in his portrayal of the Jew Riah, who is as saintly as Fagin is evil. For good measure, Dickens added a Jewish factory owner and his wife, who treated all their employees with kindness and generosity.\n\nThe appraisal of Dickens comes from Harry Stone, one of the foremost collectors and authorities on the great 19th-century English novelist.\n\nStone, who taught English literature at Cal State Northridge for 32 years, recently donated to the university the thousands of items in his private Dickens collection, including first editions of all the novelist\’s works, the monthly newspaper installments in which they first appeared, personal letters, corrected proof sheets, translations, photographs, and even dolls and figurines inspired by his characters.

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