A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life from the Pages of the Forward

Book Description

The finest photographic account of Jewish life in America.

This extraordinary volume features classic photographs of the history one has learned to associate with the Forward—Lower East Side pushcarts, Yiddish theater, labor rallies—along with gems no one would expect. The premiere national Jewish newspaper has opened up its never-before-seen archives, revealing a photographic landscape of Jews in the twentieth century and beyond. From shtetl beauty contests and matchmakers caught mid-deal to the streets of the New World; from diaspora communities and mandate Palestine to the Holocaust, the Soviet Jewry movement, and the emergence of Jewish suburbia; from Paul Muni and Barbra Streisand to Woody Allen and Madonna—this book is a kaleidoscopic array of modern Jewish life. Original essays are included by leading intellectuals and historians, including Leon Wieseltier, J. Hoberman, Roger Kahn, and Deborah E. Lipstadt, plus an introduction by Pete Hamill. A great gift book in the tradition of Roman Vishniac's A Vanished World and Frederic Brenner's Diaspora: Homelands in Exile. 531 duotone photographs.

Customer Reviews:

Jewish Insight.......2007-09-28

Beautiful book, well written. A book for anyone to share with their children to teach them an important part of our US history.

Genetic Memories.......2007-09-12

As the grandchild of Polish / Ukraine immigrants who read the Forvitz, this book lovingly captures the memories of a time long gone.

Outstanding.......2007-09-08

Earlier this year, I had participated in a tour, including the old Forward Building in Lower Manhattan, with our guide being one of the photographers for this beuatiful book. I was so happy with the book which arrived in exellent condition.

Thank you.

Renate Stone

AMAZING PICTURES.......2007-08-05

I found this book very informative and very interesting. I enjoyed reading all the Jewish history in it. I was very interested in the information about Poland because my father's father was born there and I have a lot of his papers from when he was born in what was called Austria-Poland (even his birth certificate). It brought back many memories of my grandmother, who would take me to the Lower East Side of Manhattan where my father was born and we would shop in the specialty stores there and to the Jewish Theatre when I really didn't understand Yiddish but kept asking what they were saying and I did enjoy going. I have been recommending this book to friends and neighbors and have it on the coffee table in my living room and anyone who picks it up is fascinated by it, regardless of religion.

CAROL ESGAR

Leftist Jews Carry On the Tradition for All Immigrants!.......2007-05-14

The Forward captured and related news for the new Jewish immigrants, and for some of them not so recent, in both a special political and social way.

Obviously, with my name as a Christian Irishman, I did not live the experience, but my significant other grew up in the rare environment of a Leftist (read, Socialist) community in the Bronx that continues to enrich the American political experience, as well as the peculiarly American, secular Jewish experience.

As a fourth-generation Irish-American, I am obviously somewhat removed from immigrant issues. On the other hand, the family oral tradition very strongly pointed out why my ancestors fled Ireland during the potatoe famine of the mid 1840's and how English political suppression of the Irish led to my family's connection to events in today's Ireland.

This book, specifically the photos and 'back stories', enable all of us of whatever immigrant background to re-live some specific moments in the American immigrant past that led to the building of a great community and to our country, whatever its faults.

While new immigrants arrive from the Caribbean, Africa, Eastern Europe, India, etc., and have their own stories to tell with their own ethnic language newspapers, The Forward will continue to stand as a model of 1) helping new immigrants adjust to their new homeland; 2) keeping them informed of news of their former homeland(s); 3) providing advice as to how to adjust to their new land. These are, perhaps, timeless topics in helping new immigrants adjust to their new land and circumstances.

The book and photos should serve as a rich tribute to striving immigrants of whatever religion, regional, or racial background to show how almost every new arrival wants to 'fit in' and contribute. Maybe this book, in some small way, will add a few "positives" to the current, embarrasing, and rediculous controvery over immigration.

Average customer rating:

Good, but not as much as the first.
a worthy sequel
Not art for art's sake
This is one of the most important books in my life.
Don't Judge It By It's Cover

The Gift Of Asher Lev
Chaim Potok
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0394572122
Release Date: 1990-04-21

Book Description

"Rivals anything Chaim Potok has ever produced. It is a book written with passion about passion. You're not likely to read anything better this year."
THE DETROIT NEWS
Twenty years have passed for Asher Lev. He is a world-renowned artist living in France, still uncertain of his artistic direction. When his beloved uncle dies suddenly, Asher and his family rush back to Brooklyn--and into a world that Asher thought he had left behind forever....

Customer Reviews:

Good, but not as much as the first........2007-09-15

My first introduction to the brilliant Chaim Potok was his novel, My Name is Asher Lev, the story of a Ladover Hasidic Jew, conflicted and divided by religion and art. In, The Gift of Asher Lev, the artist is grown, older--still conflicted--and now the father of two children and a husband of a Holocaust survivor. His own father has traversed the ladder and his now the right-hand-man of the Landover Rebbe.

When Lev's uncle dies, Asher returns to Brooklyn, family in tow. It's here that his conflict matures. In his return, we see how years of fame and maturity have impacted Asher Lev's mind and changed his view of home, his artistic and religious beginnings.

The Gift of Asher Lev is not fast paced action. This story is not the stuff of commercial best sellers. It's about life and art and perspective. It's reflection and internal conflict. I see part of myself in Asher Lev and his conflict, or I see Asher Lev in me. And Chaim Potok's use of repetition, foreshadowing, and peephole luminance of a world foreign to me is wonderful. He's reminded me that in writing is art, and his writing is beautiful craftsmanship.

I highly recommend My Name is Asher Lev, followed by The Gift of Asher Lev. Although the first is better than the sequel.

a worthy sequel.......2007-01-09

Chaim Potok is my favorite author and My Name is Asher Lev is my favorite book. With that said, The Gift of Asher Lev was an excellent follow-up. Potok managed to say new things and address new issues that Lev encountered in a different stage of his life.

It's good. Read it.

Not art for art's sake.......2006-08-04

Asher Lev drew outcasts. The people were angered. He had grown up in a Brooklyn apartment. His father worked for the Rebbe. Now, a middle aged man with two children, he lives in the South of France. He and his wife and children travel to Brooklyn because his uncle has died. His uncle had supported his art. He did two crucifixions, paired, and the community was enraged. He arranged to attend a yeshiva in Paris where things would be calm. Asher read in a book that children threw stones at Cezanne when he was an old man.

The Hasidim refer to God as the Master of the Universe. The group is called the Ladover community. The last time Asher Lev stayed with his parents there had been death threats. His uncle's watch and jewelry stores supported the Ladover communities. Asher's mother teaches Russian history and political theory at NYU. In the matter of painting pictures Asher Lev disagrees with the Ladover community. In other respects he is a Ladover Hasid.

Asher's Uncle Yitzchok leaves a substantial art collection. He put money and energy into the collection. His uncle had said to Asher Lev that he would be another Picasso. Asher's parents want him to lengthen his stay with them. He feels he is being sucked into the sect's and his family's disapproval of his pursuits.

A friend believes the Ladover success as a fundamentalist movement on America's secular soil makes it newsworthy. It is both traditional and contemporary, but what about Asher Lev? How does Asher fit in to the scheme of things? Jacob Kahn, Asher Lev's teacher, told him that redemption is death to art.

The Rebbe requests that Asher Lev and his family remain longer in Crown Heights. Everyone but Asher is pleased to extend the visit. Asher wants to be back at Saint-Paul. In the Holocaust Asher's wife, Devorah, lost her entire family. Devorah spent two years in the dark in an apartment in Paris. She is enjoying becoming acquainted with Asher's family. Asher has been designated trustee of his uncle's art collection pursuant to the wishes of his uncle and notwithstanding the uncomfortable feelings of his cousins and the widow. Any profit realized from the collection is to be given to the Ladover community.

Asher returns to Paris, leaving the children and Devorah in Crown Heights. He has been working under a series of shocks, the deaths of his teacher and uncle, and the savaging by critics of his latest exhibition. In the end her realizes what the crucial dilemma is. Asher Lev agrees to give his family over, particularly his son, to community interests. It seems that his father, as the chief assistant to the Rebbe, is in a position to succeed the Rebbe, but only if he, in turn, has a suitable successor, Avrumel, the son of Asher Lev. The arrangement of living in France is to become a solitary existence permanently on the part of Asher Lev.

This is one of the most important books in my life........2006-02-23

I take my spiritual life seriously -- and so does Asher Lev. I am certainly not any kind of artistic genious, but Lev and I really fell into sinc.

In fact, I have read this story so many times that I have been through three paperback copies. And it has never disappointed me.

Potok took me so deeply into Lev's character that I was him. I felt his pain and his struggle. I understood his feeling of being torn apart by two worlds that should and could have fit together.

This book also provides the deepest insights into Hasidism that I, a lapsed Episcopalian, have ever read. I have a deep respect for that tradition because of Potok and Asher Lev.

Sacrifice is always a central storyline and in "The Gift of Asher Lev" not only is a sacrifice required but the sacrifice is wrapped in mystery and enigma.

Delightful read!

Don't Judge It By It's Cover.......2005-06-07

In my review of Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev, I admitted that I was reluctant to read the sequel out of fear that it could not be as satisfying. My fear was unfounded. The Gift of Asher Lev is a wonderful novel and those who enjoyed My Name is Asher Lev will be happy to find Asher twenty years later with a wife and two children living, if not happily, at least contentedly in southern France. That is until page 6. Coming off a successful but poorly reviewed art show in Paris, Asher learns that his uncle has died and takes his family with him back to Brooklyn for the first time.

Unlike the first Asher Lev novel, where Asher was shunned by the leaders of his Hasidic Jewish community because of his controversial painting, the tension in The Gift of Asher Lev revolves around the Ladovers wanting him - or part of him - back. Asher's parents get to know his wife and children, and everyone except our hero is happy with this arrangement. Asher, however, has trouble exorcising his old demons: he fears another anonymous death threat, he can't find the inspiration to paint, and he just doesn't feel comfortable in Brooklyn anymore. Asher's father still does not understand him or his art, but anger and frustration have subsided to a sort of resigned sadness.

The Gift of Asher Lev introduces the importance of riddles in Hasidism, which seems as much a suspense-building technique by Potok as a true Jewish tradition. Frustratingly, Potok does not give answers to some of the riddles the characters evoke. But the biggest riddle of all - the heart of the story - is rather clear early on, making the book more readable rather than less suspenseful. Though he puts them off throughout most of the novel, Asher ultimately has some important choices to make. He makes them in the final ten pages of the book, keeping the reader engaged to the very last page.

Now, about that cover: it's awful. It looks like the cover to some sci-fi/romance fusion novel. It's got a picture of a blue-eyed man with his blow-dried hair, resembling Harrison Ford in Return of the Jedi but looking nothing like any of the characters in The Gift of Asher Lev (Asher is still a Hasidic Jew, after all). It's got smaller pictures of a pudgy young boy and an old, white-bearded man who I guess are Asher's son and father. Are they trying to turn readers off? If there's ever a time that the old adage fits, this may be it. If you can get past the cover, you are in for a rewarding read.

Average customer rating:

Depict one character perfectly; the rest will follow.
a porfound masterpiece
Strangely Addictive
rambling but important
Not My Kind of Novel

Call It Sleep: A Novel
Henry Roth
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0312424124
Release Date: 2005-06-16

Book Description

'One of the few genuinely distinguished novels written by a twentieth-century American.' -Irving Howe, The New York Times Book Review When Henry Roth published his debut novel Call It Sleep in 1934, it was greeted with considerable critical acclaim though, in those troubled times, lackluster sales. Only with its paperback publication thirty years later did thisnovel receive the recognition it deserves-and still enjoys. Having sold-to-date millions of copies worldwide, CallIt Sleepis the magnificent story of David Schearl, the'dangerously imaginative' child coming of age in the slums of New York.

Customer Reviews:

Depict one character perfectly; the rest will follow........2007-06-16

Henry Roth wants to do two things well in this book: first, accurately describe the experience of being a child -- not a tough, bully-type child, but a shy kid with no friends. (I can relate.) Secondly, he wants to capture the language spoken by native New Yorkers and by immigrants to the city.

It might be best to explain the book's trick as "inside versus outside." Most of the time, we stand in a position of semi-omniscience, much like in Crime and Punishment: while the godlike narrator in Crime and Punishment could see inside Raskolnikov's head and no one else's, we are allowed into David Schearl's mind while he wanders terrified through the world. David understands perfectly well why he's so scared, and by the end so do we -- but we also understand why he can't explain his terror to anyone else. We are trapped in the child's head with him. It's been a very long time -- probably since I was David's age -- since I've remembered those feelings.

The language of New York's Jewish ghettoes in Call It Sleep also has an inside and an outside, and Roth's great trick is to pull us so deeply into that world that it's a slap on the face when we're back outside. The immigrants talk to one another in their native Yiddish, in which there's great poetry and biblical allusion (as well as more than a few "may your remaining days be dark"-type curses). We're steeped in that world. Only occasionally do the immigrants step outside and talk haltingly with, say, a local policeman. They are shy, awkward, and adrift. Roth is so ingenious in the delivery that we feel their shyness and awkwardness as though it were our own.

It's rare to find a book that is so committed to its characters. Roth has no ulterior motive. He just wants to introduce us to this little community and its little people. If we happen to see larger meanings or other people in those he depicts, it's accidental. That sort of devotion to character is extremely rare. I can only imagine how absorbed in the characters Roth must have been, if he drew his reader in that completely.

a porfound masterpiece.......2006-11-13

This is probably the best novel I have read in the last 10 years- my only question is why hadn't I heard of it before since it was writtten some time ago. How Roth gets into the mind of a small boy is remarkable- I could not put this book down!

Strangely Addictive.......2006-08-11

It was just another audio book to check out of the library and listen to while doing boring exercises. The oddysey of a Jewish immigrant boy in early 20th century New York City became an addiction that I did not want to continue but could not stop listening to. Towards the end, I wondered if author Roth had read Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' (he even refers to a heart of darkness). The book became an addiction, one that I am glad to have experienced, but would not want to try again.

rambling but important.......2006-04-21

He really captures the times and the immigrant mentality. He does ramble however and I got irritated at times. It's like he chose not to edit, but sometimes editing is about etiquette and consideration towards the reader.

Not My Kind of Novel.......2005-12-12

In a sense, it's sort of silly to try and write anything useful about a book so completely hyped by critics and carefully studied (cf. New Essays on Call it Sleep), but I'm going to anyway, because I didn't like it. Now, to be totally up front, I read it under a certain amount of duress. My book group picked it, and after the first ten pages I decided I wasn't going to read it and would miss the discussion for the first time in four years. However, it happened that at the exact same time, I started a research project in which I needed to learn about Manhattan in 1916. Since that's just a year or so after when this novel is set, I realized I could kill two birds with one stone -- and so I went ahead and read it.

In hindsight, I realize that I should have skipped the introduction by Alfred Kazin which appears in my edition. It gives away almost every significant plot point and plants far too much in the reader's head -- I cannot conceive of why it wasn't the afterword. Plussing as which, it's not a great essay, even a light skim of it will reveal at least one logical flaw and a total misreading of a scene from the book. So, skip the introduction until after you've read the story. And that story is basically the heavily autobiographical inner life of a emotionally damaged 8-year-old Jewish kid in a rapidly modernizing New York. Many like to laud this book as the best novel about the immigrant experience ever written. This seems rather a strange proposition, for while one of the central themes is certainly the boy's attempt to discover an identity in this brave new world, his circumstance is far from typical. First of all, the Jewish immigrant experience in New York is a very particular one, especially as it relates to cultural persecution in the old world and the notion of alienation and always being "the other". Trying to say the "New York Jewish immigrant experience" is representative of the "immigrant experience" in general is clearly ridiculous. Secondly, by their own choices and actions, the boy's family is almost completely cut off from their fellow immigrants, and are hardly representative. Indeed, it's almost refreshing to find a depiction of immigrants whose hardships are largely of their own making.

The boy protagonist is a particularly irksome guide to this world, as he is the ultimate mama's boy (although not without reason). One of the running menacing subplots is the question of whether or not his father is truly his biological father or not, and what exactly his mother got up to in the old country that led to her being married off to a brute of a man (elements apparently drawn from Roth's own childhood). The bulk of the book concerns the boy's horrendous struggle both to assimilate into the world around him and to decipher the spiritual world. The former is a reasonably well-told and familiar portrait of an outsider who just doesn't "get it". The latter fills the book with religious symbolism, which remained largely a mystery to me owing to my utter lack of religious education and knowledge. Clearly, readers with a strong understanding of Judaism and Christianity will certainly find plenty to chew on. The sexual realm is another running theme, and one that's treated with a great deal of angst, confusion, and negativity. This takes on an entirely different aspect if you read the book knowing that Roth, as his biographer so gently puts it, "indulged in incest" with his sister Rose (and a cousin) for several years during his early teen years. A less sugar-coated way of putting it is that he sexually abused and raped his little sister for several years... This is hardly incidental to the book, as his biographer writes: "Roth would ultimately recognize that incest was the engine that drove his composition." Roth's tortured soul comes through very clearly in his younger alter ego, and it's not a pretty sight.

The style and language used are certainly distinctive, and doubtless many find it invigorating and affecting -- I did not. Roth was rather famously influenced by Joyce, Eliot, and other modernists, and I just happen not to care for modernism. The stream of consciousness employed to depict the boy's inner terrors is effective in moderation, but each passage of it runs on far too long, almost to the point of parody. Similarly, much has been written about Roth's representation of Yiddish and the phonetic treatment of English in the book, but neither has aged particularly well. The stylistic flourishes, epithets, and distinctive syntax of Yiddish which Roth employs are difficult to read without simultaneously "hearing" them as farce or parody of the Mel Brooks variety. There are a great deal of detailed descriptive passages, which again, may appeal to those who appreciate the writer as still-life artist, but again, these struck no chord with me.

So, I freely admit that many of my reasons for not liking the book are personal, however I doubt I am alone in this (as indeed I wasn't in my book group). It simply did not resonate with me on any level, and I can't say I'm the richer for having read it. Others certainly will be though, especially those with an interest in Jewish-American literature or literature about New York.

Tough Jews : Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams

Average customer rating:

Tells a lot
Murder, Inc., With a Bang!
An Unfortunate (but colorful) chapter in American Jewish History.
Factually inaccurate
A closer link between Italians and Jews -- Empowering for the latter.

Tough Jews : Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams
Rich Cohen
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Criminology | Crime & Criminals | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0375705473
Release Date: 1999-04-20

Amazon.com

When we think gangster, hood, or wiseguy, we often associate these characters with such names as Capone, Luciano, or even Corleone. However, when organized crime reared its ugly head in the late 1920s in Brooklyn, at the foundation were men like Meyer Lansky and Ben Siegel--both Jews. Rich Cohen's romantic account of Jewish gangsters, Tough Jews, brings to life the story of Jewish involvement in the world of organized crime.

Cohen persuasively achieves his objective by recounting the stories he heard from his father, who grew up with his friends (including broadcaster Larry King) at the end of the gangster era in Brooklyn, finding heroes in men like "Kid Twist" Reles and Bugsy Goldstein. The intriguing tales Cohen heard, although slightly embellished over time, offer a rare glimpse into a world that can barely be related to today's generation of Jews living in America. These Jews went to prison for committing violent felonies, not white-collar crimes, and got the chair for it. Inspired by their stories, Cohen went on to conduct extensive research through old journals, police records, and court reports to uncover the real stories behind the tales he heard as a boy.

Cohen warmly discusses his father's fascination with these powerful, charismatic figures, and openly envies his experiences at a time before Jewish people lived under the debilitating shadow of the Holocaust. In addition, Cohen shows compassion for the need of his father's generation to look up to "someone who gives them the illusion of strength." --Jeremy Storey

Book Description

In an L.A. delicatessen, a group of Brooklyn natives gets together to discuss basketball, boxing, the weather back east, and the Jewish gangsters of yesteryear. Meyer Lansky. Bugsy Siegel. Louis Lepke, the self-effacing mastermind of Murder, Inc. Red Levine, the Orthodox hit man who refused to kill on the Sabbath. Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, who looked like a mama's boy but once buried a rival alive. These are just some of the vibrant, vicious characters Rich Cohen's father reminisced about and the author evokes so pungently in Tough Jews.

Tracing a generation of Jewish gangsters from the candy stores of Brownsville to the clubhouses of the Lower East Side--and, occasionally, to suites at the Waldorf--Cohen creates a densely anecdotal and gruesomely funny history of muscle, moxie, and money. Filled with fixers and schlammers, the squeal of tires and the rattle of gunfire, his book shatters stereotypes as deftly as its subjects once shattered kneecaps.

Customer Reviews:

Tells a lot.......2007-08-27

This book, and more than that, some comments by so-called-jews (I sincenrely hope they're just antisemites trying to make jews look bad) tells a lot about some jews' psyche.

Murder, Inc., With a Bang!.......2007-08-01

The Jewish version of "GoodFellas." A brutal and, at times, curiously humorous depiction of what life was probably like for the cold-blooded Murder, Incorporated, killers who thrived in Brooklyn during the Thirties and Forties. Thugs with such colorful monickers as "Pittsburgh Phil," "Kid Twist," "Dasher," "Bugsy," "Pretty," and "Happy" (the latter so called because he never smiled) are among the violent cast of characters whom Rich Cohen vividly brings back to life in these pages as he details their reign of terror. A highly entertaining read which in all likelihood would make a good movie. Are you listening, Mr. Scorsese?

An Unfortunate (but colorful) chapter in American Jewish History........2006-12-31

Tough Jews is a book about Jewish gangsters, and how they pretty much faded after World War II. It leaves the reader to wonder exactly what created this phenomena and why it died out. The criminals whose stories Cohen tells, like Bugsy Siegel, Lepke Buchalter, Meyer Lansky, Kid Twist, Joe Amberg, were all products of harsh years. In this day and age, Jewish boys go to college. In the 20's and 30's it was much harder for Jews to go to college and have careers. It seems as though bootlegging and loan-sharking were a more attractive alternative to the rag trade. It seems as though Meyer Lansky slipped into crime because of a lack of opportunity, not necessarily greed. When his son said he wanted to be a gangster, Lansky replied "why would you want to do that when you can go to college!" With World War II, the GI Bill gave Jews the chance to go to college, and become doctors, lawyers, accountants, and....oh well, you know the rest!
It wasn't just poor opportunities that fostered the Jewish gangsters. Monk Eastman and Bugsy Siegel had emotional problems. Did Eastman have ADHD? His habits appear to be symptoms. Bugsy Siegel, a prolific rapist, had several characteristics that I see in kids in Special Ed. Shonder Burns, a Jewish Cleveland gangster (not mentioned in this book) may also have had "special" problems, along with an abusive childhood in Jewish orphanages. The Purple Gang of Detroit (also not mentioned) were a sick bunch. It's kind of hard to admire people like this. Then again, there was no Ritalin or Special Ed in those days, so a kid who couldn't do well in school was out of luck.
Cohen himself idolizes the Jewish gangsters, yet he admits that their world is gone. The Jews had left the Lower East Side by the 1950's, and the world of "Pretty" Amberg and Monk Eastman is long gone. Growing up, I admired gangsters. But when I asked my folks about the Jewish gangsters (rarely seen in the movies), nobody seemed to care. I guess Jews aren't proud of the Jewish gangs, any more than Italians are of Al Capone. Since Hollywood honchos like Meyer, Warner, and Goldwyn were all Jewish, they probably didn't want to draw attention to themselves with movies about gangsters named Abe and Mendy.
But maybe there is a reason why some of us admire these men. The Jewish people are often stereotyped as weak, cowardly, and timid, with an emphasis on intellect at the expense of the human body. Our history is one long parade of pogroms, expulsions, mass killings, and abuse, until 1948, when the Jews of Palestine defeated the Arab armies. It wasn't until the Israeli War of Independence that the Jews were seen as conquering heroes. Perhaps when you come from a persecuted nation, you admire those punch, kick, clobber, slash, burn, and strangle their way through life.

Factually inaccurate.......2006-11-12

I do enjoy the fact that a book was made about the jewish-american gangsters, however the book is so factually inaccurate that it made me cringe. Orgabized crime seems to be one of th esubjects where a person can do no research and just quote inaccuracies put forth in other books and completly get away with it.

A closer link between Italians and Jews -- Empowering for the latter........2006-10-05

Growing up Jewish -- especially in non-Jewish dominated areas -- can lead a child to believe that the Jews are historically a weak people. Despite the history. And maybe it's because the brightest and most famous are so self-depracating. "Tough Jews" is a compelling read. A Mario Puso like examination of a non-fiction dark tough-as-nails culture. But it also serves as a reminder that not all Jewish boys are "nice", or "sweet", or even Doctors or Lawyers. This book is a great read about the Murder, Inc. team, that serves as a reminder that Jewish history is not all "suffering", but also some "infliction", and in an odd and unexpected way, that is empowering to read. Simply put -- Mr. Cohen reminds us that, like those of any religion, some Jews shouldn't be messed with.

Average customer rating:

Doubted it but ended up liking it
Living in the neighborhood
People say short stories are dying...
Ooh, what delicious writing this is
One of America's most underrated writers

Collected Stories
Grace Paley
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0374126364

Book Description

Here are all of Grace Paley's classic stories collected in one volume. Her quirky, boisterous characters and rich use of language have won her readers' hearts and secured her place as one of America's most accomplished writers of short fiction.

Customer Reviews:

Doubted it but ended up liking it.......2006-01-11

Someone suggested I read this collection and at first I doubted I would like it, I skimmed through it and it didn't grab me but since I promised the person I would read it, I finally did. I couldn't have been more wrong about this collection- it's very well written and interesting. The subject matter of the stories might not be for everyone but I really was surprised to see how wrong I was and definitely should have given this an earlier chance. Paley's writing is clear and takes you through even parts where you might be confused. It is unusual to what I usually read but it grew on me and now I want to read more of Grace Paley's work. Her stories definitely have a period feel that might challenge certain readers but if you give it a chance, you just might enjoy it as I did.

Living in the neighborhood.......2003-12-09

The characters in these stories are consistent throughout the book. Reading the stories was like getting acquainted with a community of people. I lost interest in some stories, while others contained gems of wisdom and phrases that stopped me in my tracks.

In a story called, "A Conversation With My Father" Paley writes:
""I would like you to write a simple story just once more," he says, "the kind Maupassant wrote, or Chekhov, the kind you used to write. Just recognizable people and then write down what happened to them next."

I say, "Yes, why not? That's possible." I want to please him, though I don't remember writing that way. I would like to try to tell such a story, if he means the kind that begins:'There was a woman..." followed by plot, the absolute line between two points which I've always despised. not for literary reasons, but because it takes all hope away. Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life."

People say short stories are dying..........2001-05-21

This collection of short fiction demonstrates just how horrible that would be. Grace Paley's work is amazing in its lyrical sound - at some moments sparse, at others extremely detailed, and always poignant. Stories about single mothers, about women visiting elderly parents in odd nursing homes, about families in general, and how the world works (and worked). It is hard to find a good short story writer... Somewhere between a novel (overly stuffed with words) and a poem (too highly styled and formatted to say what it really wants to say) a short story, when good, can come closest to literary perfection - you can say all that you want to say, but only that. Grace Paley's stories come close to that perfection. She is one of the most underappreciated great authors out there.

Ooh, what delicious writing this is.......2000-10-14

Grace Paley has that rarest of gifts: a voice all her own. Funny, tough, and compassionate, this voice mirrors her characters, some of whom (especially the eponymous Faith) are people you wish you knew, or already do. At every turn, her characters avoid stereotype, something most self-professed "political" and "feminist" writers fail to do. Three volumes of stories are collected here; the first volume, I think, is the richest. Here Paley is content to represent the hilarious, yet tragic, travails of her characters. In the later volumes, aside from being more experimental in form, she tackles overtly political themes. But the voice never fails her, and even the most dogmatic, contrived story is lifted above the ordinary. Paley never loses her compassion for mankind. At the end of her career, this was her abiding them: when faced with cynicism or compassion, she always extended the latter to her fellow human beings. These are great, tough stories, worthy of reading several times over. Please buy this collection and spread the word. Paley is that dying breed -- an American original.

One of America's most underrated writers.......2000-06-16

ENORMOUS CHANGES AT THE LAST MINUTE is a perfect collection of perfect stories. It's too bad the reader from Marietta, GA spews forth such ignorant bile about such a wonderful writer.

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This is a must-use for any middle school classroom!
Character traits nicely parallel our school's program.
Great book for all ages!
An absolute treat!
Great book

Journey to Ellis Island
Carol Bierman , and Barbara Hehner
Manufacturer: Hyperion
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0786803770

Book Description

Jehuda and his family have struggled through hunger, poverty and war in their Russian homeland. Now, at last, the family is heading to begin a new life of freedom in America. But the family's relief is short-lived. In Russia, Jehuda's arm had been injured by a stray bullet, and the health inspectors at Ellis Island are very strict about allowing invalids into the country. Jehuda must convince them that he is well enough to stay, or the whole family will be sent back Russia.

Customer Reviews:

This is a must-use for any middle school classroom!.......2001-03-06

This true story written from the perspective of an 11-year-old immigrant, truly sums up the immigrant perspective. My 4th grade students, journaled each day as if he or she were the central character, and begged for each of the five chapters. This book alone, replaced a 4-week unit that I had used previously to emphasize the impact of immigration on our state. Written by the author's daughter, with photos showing then and now, it is wonderful. FYI: We used, as the final journal entry, an account written by Yehuda when he finds his journal 70 years later and recounts the years since arriving in America.

Character traits nicely parallel our school's program........1999-09-10

The story reads well for any student needing to understand the trials and tribulations of people immigrating to the U.S.Important character traits are developed and their importance in reaching a goal are emphasized. The artwork makes a dramatic statement to anyone who opens the book. Elementary students should be attracted by this outstanding feature. As a school director and recently retired teacher, I purchased a copy for each of our elementary libraries because of the qualiy of this book.

Great book for all ages!.......1999-02-10

This review is from Debbie,Paul,Ryan and Melissa. We all modelled for the illustrator,Laurie McGaw, of this book. It was a wonderful experience since some of our grandparents left Russia and Poland because of the war and we felt we could relate to the people in the book.The book has been presented to the our childrens' school in conjunction with the Holocaust unit. Teachers and kids alike found the book to be very interesting and beautifully illustrated. We recommend it to all nationalities and ages.It is not only a book about Jewish people, but also a book about what any immigrants coming to North America might have experienced.

An absolute treat!.......1998-11-26

A wonderful story with fabulous illustrations. A must read for all ages

Great book.......1998-11-18

Well i actually got this book for reaserch for a projet and i think it helped me a lot because it told me that familys strugle to enter america.I would reccommend this book to anyone doing an interview with an immagrant i know it helped me a lot.

One Eye Laughing, The Other Eye Weeping: The Diary of Julie Weiss, Vienna, Austria to New York 1938 (Dear America Series)

Average customer rating:

And Hope Remains
one of the best!!
Missed the Mark
A Child's Book?
Heartbreaking

One Eye Laughing, The Other Eye Weeping: The Diary of Julie Weiss, Vienna, Austria to New York 1938 (Dear America Series)
Barry Denenberg
Manufacturer: Scholastic Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0439095182

Customer Reviews:

And Hope Remains.......2007-08-01

A very, very touching book about the life of a Austrian-Jewish family just before World War Two. Scary and happy and sad all at once, this is great read for anyone who wants to know more about that time period. Highly reccomended.

-Emma D.

one of the best!!.......2007-03-11

My daughter loved this book! She said it was one of the best Dear America books that she has read.

Missed the Mark.......2006-11-03

Very dissappointing and bordering on revisionist history. The author makes a point of letting us know that the Jewish girl really doesn't practice religion. These events were driven by racism and religious oppression. By focusing on the character's lack of religion, it looks more like a modern day political perception rather than an historical account. I'm sorry to say we did not share this book with our daughter, but threw it away.

A Child's Book?.......2006-08-29

This book starts out very sweetly - a little girl named Julie waiting up for her Father to come home. A few pages later, I'm wondering if some brat stole Julie's diary, because the tone flips! She's glad, GLAD! that her brother Max is in crutches, she brags about how she's as smart as he is, she makes VERY personal observations about Milli's (the waiting maid) anatomy, and cheerfully reports that a fat, ugly boy from school tried to look up her dress, etc; etc. Weird book. I can't believe this ended up in the Dear America series.

Heartbreaking.......2006-05-23

Sure a good book, and hearing about the awful things happening around Julie is just heartbreaking.

Average customer rating:

The story......and then the story about the story
Playing a Life Playing a Role
Comentary on Understanding and Racism

Fires in the Mirror
Anna Deavere Smith
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0385470142
Release Date: 1993-09-01

Book Description

Derived from interviews with a wide range of people who experienced or observed New York's 1991 Crown Heights racial riots, Fires In The Mirror is as distinguished a work of commentary on current Black-White tensions as it is a work of drama.

Customer Reviews:

The story......and then the story about the story.......2006-03-22

The play captures the human drama from the highly charged, out-of-control situation in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, over three days of rioting in August of 1991. One of the play's many apoplectic characters says, "There ain't no justice," in response to another character describing separate groups of angry mourners for both Gavin Cato and Yankel Rosenbaum, with each group regarded as being "at a political rally rather than a funeral."

Another character talks of "the situation that moved from simplicity to sophistication...to become a powder keg." It is fascinating to hear and watch as each character reflected that powder keg experience uniquely. The play revealed that each one of us is, in fact, the accumulation of our life's experiences, at any given moment in time.

As the viewer watches the rumors spread, there is the realization that, "There always is the story. And then always there is the story about the story."

In a sense, Fires in the Mirror shows how one story is transformed and extended by the Crown Heights citizens into other stories, with each story being somewhat new, usually nuanced, and uniquely shaped by the circumstances surrounding the story-teller's accumulated life experiences. The accumulation is each individual's life. No other individual in the whole world can possibly have the exact same accumulation of experiences. That's a practical example of what diversity looks like.

In a certain sense, all involved are at fault in creating the riots. In quite another sense, the play makes clear that no one is at fault, because at any moment the community is prone to erupt into the confusion and violence that comes from individual bafflement and fear from an unexpected occurrence. In this case the occurrence is the auto crash leading to the murder that evening. The play says it is hard to assign blame. No one but no one wanted to have seven-year-old Cato killed in the auto accident. That evening, the teenagers didn't really want to kill Yankel in retaliation. Rather they were reacting, by automatically and unthinkingly expressing their anger and their oppressively inarticulate grief through knee-jerk violence.

Compelling--that one word describes the play's environmental aesthetic of eruption, noise, and confusion, all of which lead by the end to some clarity, yes, but also to stupefied and inexplicable human silence. That muted end result, the play shows, comes from a lack of absolute certainty regarding something important yet ultimately mysterious.

There is a great deal to be said for undertaking an exploration of the meaning in the moral ambiguity and confusion prevailing within the conflicted Brooklyn neighborhood, the confusion initiated by the two understandable, if terrible, deaths. In this instance, one might ask this: If we are not to assign blame, then what is the human alternative in these particular circumstances of murder leading to the madness of mass mayhem.

Prehaps after all it is forgiveness.

As the audience listens to each interpretation of the unfolding story--of what next happened and why--viewers comes to see that each point of view has some validity. There is never merely two sides to a story, that proverbial and simplistic black and white dichotomy. Humans are too complex for easy categorization into a "this" or a "that" camp or an "us vs. them" position. In truth there are often 10 or 15 sides to a story...at least.

The basis of each character's expressed perspective seems to derive from each character's absolute, even dogmatic, belief in the virtue and rightness of his or her own special position. And that "to-the-death" view necessarily derives from each character's accumulated life experiences in these our troubled and conflicted times of racial and religious tension. In a limited sense, that's a kind of certainty in a very uncertain world. It's the sort of certainty that comes from an individual's unquestioned belief in lived experience. But in a clearly profound way, the play asks the viewer to expand the cultural and social understandings of "lived experience" and what might result from external expressions of that lived experience.

Yet it is true that no virtuous act is as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of acceptance and love, which is forgiveness.

For me, the play brings into dramatic relief that idea of forgiveness as one humane way--whether in Crown Heights and elsewhere--of dealing with cynicism and despair. Those two attitudes of hopelessness seem automatically sometimes to snap into being from the confusion of unresolved social and moral ambiguity.

Forgiveness is one answer to the mess. Genuine forgiveness is one expression that can help relieve seemingly irreconcilable tension and conflict. Forgiveness is usually tough--that much we reasonably know. Forgiveness demands courage, heart.

Jim Boushay Metro Chicago Resources Unlimited Foundation

Playing a Life Playing a Role.......2001-05-18

In Fires in the Mirror, Anna Deavere Smith says, "A character from a play does not have a visible identity until the actor creates a body for that character." She goes on to explain that her goal is "to show that no one acts like anyone else." She does this by focusing on the details of her characters, the physical and liguistic subtleties that make people unique. This issue of "personality" of character is strongly emphasized in her work. When interviewing, she doesn't simply record the dialogue of her characters; she analyzes her characters, seeking to discover the true identity or identities of the people she portrays. What she discovers--and shares with us--is that her characters are not only three dimensional, but three dimensional in a multiplicity of roles. When she's successful, as she is in portraying the Jews and Blacks of Crown Heights in 1991, the underlying racial conflicts and hatreds and biases of her many-masked characters rise to the surface. This is Anna Deavere Smith's craft: She doesn't play a role. She plays a life playing a role.

Comentary on Understanding and Racism.......1998-05-01

Having lived in Brooklyn during the riots as well as the afterward subsequent search for meaning among those immediately involved, I find Smith's work to be exceptional. She does not go to academics or political pundits for explanation, but into the heart of the Crown Heights community itself. There she finds and then portrays complete understanding of cultural differences, allowing explanation to come from the source. One has only to read Smith's work here to see that we as human beings could do alot to combat racism if only we would ask questions and seek understanding first, rather than make assumptions and insist on our own meaning.

Dreams in the Golden Country: The Diary of Zipporah Feldman, a Jewish Immigrant Girl, New York City, 1903 (Dear America)

Average customer rating:

the golden country
Gabby
Life's Roads as a Jewish Girl
Dreams in the Golden Country, But is it really golden?
Molly's Review for Dreams in the Golden Country

Dreams in the Golden Country: The Diary of Zipporah Feldman, a Jewish Immigrant Girl, New York City, 1903 (Dear America)
Kathryn Lasky
Manufacturer: Scholastic Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0590029738

Customer Reviews:

the golden country.......2007-03-06

I thought the book was awsome. I couldn't put it down there was no part that was boring. I recccomend this book to every one. i read it so fast and i want to read it again

Gabby.......2006-11-08

Have you ever wondered how long and painful a trip across the Atlantic, would be? Leaving your home, your customs, your whole life, all left in the waves. In the book, Dreams in a Golden Country by Kathryn Lasky, a girl named Zipporah Feldman, mostly known as Zippy struggles to adjust to the American way of life. Zippy would not even have had to come to America, but in her small town in Russia Jews were being persecuted. Zippy has a father who decided to come to America first, who is becoming more American everyday. Zippy has a mother who refuses to leave her old ways, and two sisters, one named Tovah who is obsessed with politics, and the other, Miriam who falls in love with a Catholic firefighter. Zippy has to start in 1st grade, since she had never gone to an American school before, but she eventually gets to the grade she should be in. Zippy is the only family member who was allowed to go to school. I like this book because you get to see the easy and difficult times in an immigrant girl's life during the 1800's. I recommend this book to someone who like stories in diary entry form.

Life's Roads as a Jewish Girl.......2006-03-08

Life's Roads as a Jewish Girl

Zipporah Feldman (Zippy) comes to America with her Jewish family. They came from Zarichka. This book was the diary of Zipporah. After coming to America they all have found some sort of dream in this new country. What was it about America that makes you like this, having big hopes and dreams. Her beloved sister has gone away with the guy she loves, who is not a Jewish boy. Mama gets mad ands pretends top mourn over her daughter like she is dead. The family has fallen apart. Zippy is sad. Something happened to one of her friends. She wants to fly an airplane like the first two brothers did. Or be an actress. She had dreams to look up to.

I really liked this book. Because it was a diary. It was interesting and I liked it a lot. Because she wrote in it almost all the time, it was like a story of her life. Another good diary book that I enjoyed was The Diary of Patrick Seamus Flaherty. I like diary books because they are like a life story and very interesting. These books are different diary's and people. But both are excellent books to read!

Dreams in the Golden Country, But is it really golden?.......2006-03-08

Zippoah is a jewish girl coming to America to meet her Father in New York City. They come to New York City from A small village in Russia. They come for a new life away from all the attacks that are going on in Russia. Zipporah starts a diary of what is going on in the new country she is in. SHe Starts school, Makes firends, and new ideas come to her family that they would have never dreamed of thinking about in Russia. Some thoughts are good & some are bad & some frighten her mother. Her mother is a person who likes to stick to old customs but she starts to add some new ones once she is more comfortable with the New country she is in.
Her father is a very nice man who played the violin very well and was a photographer. Zipporah has two sisters Meriam & Tovah. Tovah is a more seriouse and political person she is also the oldest of the three. Mariam is a very romantic girl, she is the middle child. Mariam ends up falling in love with a cathlic boy and her mother is furious when she finds out that they got secretly married.In Zipporah, or Zippy as her firends call her, has to learn how to read & write in english. At School Zipporah recites poems and learns many new things at school. Zippora's life gets better at some points and bad at some points. But let me ask you how would you feel in her shoes?

Molly's Review for Dreams in the Golden Country.......2005-05-10

Dreams of the Golden Country
By Kathryn Lasky

(Publication: 1998 by Scholastic Inc.) (188 pages) (Genre: Historical fiction)

In summary the book Dreams in the Golden Country was an extremely good book. The book takes place in New York City, 1903. In the book there is a Yetish Jewish family and they live in Russia. The dad of the Feldman family immigrated into the United to States to earn money and buy a place for the family when they came. He worked in a sweatshop factory and had bought an apartment that was shared with an elderly border. When the family immigrated over months later they found that the "papa" they knew and loved had changed. He had cut off this side locks, stopped playing the violin, and did not celebrate any Jewish holidays anymore. Sara, the mom was very upset along with the three children, Zipporah, the youngest, Miriam, the middle child and Tovah the oldest. They were not all impressed with the small unlit apartment either but they had to deal with. As the book went on Zipporah who is keeping the journal is going through school and working hard to learn English along with the rest of the family. The times are pretty smooth until they start to fall apart when Miriam runs away and gets married to a non Jew and the family pretends she's dead. Then more problems come as mama is pregnant and a close friend dies. Times eventually get smooth again and the family resolves their problems and starts their "real" life in America.
I was attracted to this book by the part of the title "Golden Country" it made me wonder what the author was talking about, also the fact that is was a diary.
The main character of the book is Zipporah who is the writer of the journal. Her two friends Blu and Yitzy are immigrant also that have been in America longer than Zippy and her family. The Feldman family, papa, mama, Tovah, and Miriam. The conflict in the book is how the family has to manage being in a new country and not knowing the language there.
My opinion about this book is that the author made a real situation interesting. She made it seem like you were in the book. Very descriptive and hard to put down. I believe the author achieved the purpose of writing this book. The book was powerful, strong, and good and I would recommend this book to anyone that likes a truly amazing story. I would rate this book as a pretty easy read.
The lesson that is taught in this book is that even though life's journey is the most difficult ride you'll ever be on you have to be yourself and stay true to your friends, family and the true you. You also need to appreciate what you have and not take anything for granted.

Average customer rating:

a brilliant novel but no fun to read
A modern epic novel..eternal ..humorous and testimonial
Dark and Epic: Singer rewriting himself
Nowhere plans for nobody
A failure of imagination

Shadows on the Hudson
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Manufacturer: Plume
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0452280036

Amazon.com

Although Isaac Bashevis Singer emigrated from Poland to the United States in 1935, the circumscribed world of the Polish Jews remained at the heart of his imagination. Beginning with his first major work, Satan in Goray (1935), he used the life of the shtetl as raw material, transforming its folkways, religious practices, superstitions, and sexual habits into superior works of art. From time to time, however, Singer turned his eye upon New World Jews like himself, recording their rapid or reluctant assimilation into the American mainstream. One such book is Shadows on the Hudson.

This massive novel originally was serialized in the Yiddish-language Jewish Daily Forward in 1957. Now it has finally been translated into English--in a capable version by Joseph Sherman--and Singer fans should be very grateful. Center stage is occupied by Boris Makaver, a master builder equally devoted to I-beams and the Talmud, and Anna, his much-married daughter. Fanning out from this duo, however, is a small universe of refugees, all of them served up with Singer's customary brio. (Here's a comical snapshot of a shyster named Hertz Grein: "His nose had a Jewish hook, but then had second thoughts and straightened itself out. His lips were thin, and his blue eyes revealed a curious mixture of bashfulness, sharpness, and something else that was hard to define. Margolin used to say that he looked like a Yeshiva boy from Scandinavia.") As the subplots pile up in an unruly heap, the novel sometimes reveals its installment-plan origins. Still, Singer puts his large cast through some wonderful paces, and the endless talk--for these are characters who truly come alive through the medium of rapid, contentious, Yiddish-accented conversation--allows the author to speculate about destiny, identity, and freedom without slowing his story a whit. As Singer said more than once, "Of course I believe in free will. Do we have a choice?"

Book Description

Serialized in the late 1950s, Shadows On The Hudson was translated from Yiddish and published posthumously as a complete novel in 1998, receiving widespread literary acclaim. From the Upper West Side to Miami's pastel resorts, Shadows On The Hudson traces the intertwined destiny of survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer has created a vibrant, resonant, and provocative cast of characters in search of answers to life's greatest dilemmas, challenges, and ironies.

Customer Reviews:

a brilliant novel but no fun to read.......2006-10-13

Had it been published in English when it was written, shortly after WWII, it would have been ignored as the story of a mere milieu. Today it is the story of Everyman. These Jewish refugees in New York after the Holocaust, relatively prosperous since the truly poor had no means of escaping Hitler, display all the Angst, ambivalence, rootlessness and indecision of modern mankind. They cannot decide between reason and faith, modernity and tradition, America and Europe. Their God is no comfort and his non-existence no release. All that is real is Hitler -- and Hitler stands for what the modern world has to offer.

This novel is exasperating because it is always easy to despise the despicable characters it develops, yet reflection after each portion read forces one to admit a sympathy, albeit reluctantly. Very Dostoyevskian to be sure. Dostoyevsky is no pleasure to read either.

Singer deservedly got the Nobel Prize for Literature years ago and before this masterpiece ever saw the light of day except in Yiddish in serialized form.

A modern epic novel..eternal ..humorous and testimonial.......2006-06-18

Having been in jesuit school during my primary and secondary, I distintly remember a priest who told me I should marry a jewish girl for you have the sort of character that requires it.. he was not mistaken, but the unfolding of that story rivals a novel of IBS... so my wife gave it as a girft and I found a novel in some parts as to be similar to Dovstoyeski, yet modern is some others as Saul Bellow's.. and even humorous as Woody Allen.

Its a story of survivors, of the melting-pot phenomenom of the USA, of the drift of generations and the loss of traditions, of the eternal contradictions, and the difference between a world separated by the holocaust.

Dark and Epic: Singer rewriting himself.......2006-01-19

For fans of Singer's writing, there is little new here. All of his classical narrative concerns are on display. But this novel, unpublished during his lifetime, is far more of an immense and deep exploration of his concerns; there is the feeling, when reading this sprawling novel, that he has found yet another angle to explore his fictional concerns, and it is one that is subterranean in its aesthetic. Shadows is staggeringly dark; its vision of humanity, both in the past, present and future, is unremittingly tragic and sorrowful. Singer never lets up, and reading this novel can be fatiguing because of its unrelenting stance toward despair. What saves the novel from perdition, what makes it more than a catalog of gloom, is that it is uttering extremely simple truths, even if they are hard to swallow.

Nowhere plans for nobody.......2004-08-17

"Shadows on the Hudson" is an excellent novel, even better than Singer's similiar but more compact "Enemies, a Love Story". Few writers have ever been able to involve the reader in the inner lives of fictional characters the way Singer could, and fewer still would have been able to make their stories so fascinating when they're all so cynical and often downtrodden, bemoaning God's silence and the corruption of modern man. Singer had a singular talent for exploring the chasm between expectations and reality, how we're almost always let down (and the post-WW2 Jews moreso than practically anyone in history), and how, for some totally inexplicable reason, we keep going. He made the absurd palpable for the modern reader, far better than even Camus and Sartre did, because he was an entertaining storyteller first, and THEN he was a philosopher.

This long, convoluted story of the lives of a half-dozen Jewish intellectuals and businesspeople in New York immediately after the second world war must be Singer's masterpiece. He often explored the same ideas in his novels---the point of existence and the role of the Jew in modern society---and in fact he often used philandering husbands and bitter wives and mistresses as primary characters, but he pulled it all together here into a riveting, beautiful story of obsession, regret, pain, and penitence that you simply don't want to end. That these people, and their endless torturous questions, aren't really important in the long run is precisely the final point of Singer's big novel: we make a tiny, swift ripple in the river and then we're gone, possibly forever; but it is how we grapple with the desires of the body and the needs of the mind and heart that gives our lives substance and form. Without this questioning and searching, without this rending of our spirit by apparently random or viscious events in our lives...without all of it, we would never turn to God. And then our small lives ARE meaningless.

At least, that's what I think Singer is trying to say. In the end, he was a fantastic writer who drew you into the story and kept you guessing until the end. Just like life itself...

A failure of imagination.......2004-07-14

This book was serialized in Yiddish in 1957 and 1958 in the pages of the socialist and extremely anti-Communist Jewish Daily Forward. Reading it reveals that it is no surprise that it took four decades for it to be translated into English. The book deals with a handful of New York Jews, almost all of them refuges from Nazism, in the immediate post-war period. Although most of them are in reasonably comfortable circumstances, they are almost all deeply traumatized by the Holocaust, some of which they survived, while others lost their loved ones. At the same time the characters worry about the equivalent tyranny of Stalin at the beginning of the Cold war (a point Singer constantly reiterates) and how some of their relatives are becoming (uniformly stupid) Communists themselves. Into this depressing situation comes the love affair between Anna Luria, daughter of the wealthy, devout businessman Boris Makaver, and Hertz Grein, a former scholar and now a successful stockbroker. Both of the couple are married, and Grein also has a hysterical mistress that he cannot get free of.

So far, so interesting. But I am afraid the book is a failure. I can understand why Singer would be deeply pessimistic about Judaism and the fate of the world. But the tone is one of hysteria, and however reasonable that might be as a response, it is not successful literature. The essential ideology portrayed is that only absolute devotion to the narrowest and most rigid Orthodoxy can save modern Jewry. The only alternatives presented are the aforementioned stupid Communists, and the most nihilistic sort of atheism. Over and over again various characters state that a Just God could not allow this sort of suffering to His people, and that it would be better if He did not exist at all. But then they usually conclude that atheism invariably leads to the nihilism of totalitarianism, and that therefore the most rigid Orthodoxy is the only solution. Now granted, these characters are not Singer himself. And there are signs that he undercuts his character's Orthodoxy. It will not escape the reader that as Anna's and Hertz's relationship collapses it is Hertz who bemoans and wails his lot. But it is actually Anna who goes out of her way to rescue her father from his own poor financial judgement even after he denounces her as a slut. Meanwhile Grein is horrified that his children are both marrying Gentiles, and disassociates himself from them. He shows no interest when his daughter-in-law thinks about converting to Judaism. "I don't accuse others, only myself," he claims, though in fact he has denounced his daughter as a whore for sleeping with her boyfriend. One might think that an adulterer, who repeatedly betrays the three women he is involved with, could care more for his own children. At another point Grein goes to a synagogue and he comments on how much more generous and kind the congregants are to him, in a way that Zionists and Communists wouldn't. Later, however, he complains that the congregation is as selfish and envious as everyone else. His idealization of the old Polish shetls is undercut by Dr. Margolin's reminder that he lost five siblings to infant mortality. As the book concludes Grein claims his loyalty to Orthodoxy is absolute, even though he doesn't really believe in Sinai, or much else.

So one could think that Grein is neurotic and a hypocrite. But the fact that his perspective, repeated by several other characters, is the one that is endlessly reiterated throughout the novel can help drown out one's reservations about his conduct. The only time Jews collectively show any dignity in the novel it is at religious functions or in the company of the Orthodox characters. Elsewhere, whether it is on vacation, or in business, or at political meetings, or in the world of show business the characters are shockingly crass. Another problem is the repetitive quality of the book, whether it is Grein's conversations about religion or his contacts with his mistress. The constant condemnations of pornography, of violent movies, of pro-female alimony laws are repeated without any real detail or nuance or illumination. Were it not for the criticism of Hitler and the occasional vegetarianism, much of it could have been repeated by Al-Qaedya. There is also an anti-feminism in the book, which only supports Grein's sexual bad faith ("a woman is not governed by reason but by emtions, instinct, fashion, or plain stubborness, against which rational arguments do not avail"). And portraying Grein as the slave of passion subtly blurs his responsibility for his sex life. Certainly the picture of America which emerges is extremely unflattering: assimilation at its worst. There is almost no attempt to deal with Gentiles. Not only is there the tactless reference to an Afrrican-American whose heart, says the book, is supposedly still in the jungle. But the characters immediately think the worst of the Germans they occasionally run into. Most of Singer's work tended to ignore Gentiles, but you cannot write a novel about the aftermath of the Holocaust which assumes that the vast majority of humanity consists only of shadows.

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