Identity and The Postcard

After Rosh Hashana supper and guests had departed, just leaving my grandsons and their parents, the topic meandered around  to antisemitism. My son contributed a story about an incident at Boyne River where as a student he had attended a music camp for his trumpet playing. Oldest grandson mentioned that at many of his schools and events, there appeared to be large numbers of Jews. That lead to a search to where Jewish populations are largest. Not Israel as we expected, but New York was number one. That dovetailed into the book I had just finished, The Postcard.

Sometimes a journey ends where it begins, the resolution of a search quietly, gently resolved. In The Postcard, Anne besieges her mother Lelia to investigate her family’s roots, those of a buried Jewish identity. That search is ignited by a granddaughter’s (Anne’s daughter) remark that Jews are neither liked nor wanted at her school – in Paris-in 2013. And so the story recounts how small acts, even jokes and offhanded comments concerning dislike for Jews, can, over the centuries, balloon to exclusion and worse as in The Final Solution in death camps.

Berest’s novel The Postcard traces the lives of the Rabinovitch family from Moscow to Łódź to Palestine to Paris from 1919 to 2003 and 2013 . The story revolves around Berest’s grandmother, Myriam , her family, their deaths and her own hiding from society. She is “ saved” because she marries Francis Picabia, surrealist artist’s son, Vicente and her name is not included on lists for transport out of France in the 40’s.

But even as far back as 1919 in Russia, Myriam’s father, Nachman Rabinovitch warned his family, citing the Passover story, “ In Egypt, the Jews were slaves…The salt water we put on the table on the evening of Pesach represents the tears of those who broke loose from their chains. And the bitter herbs remind us that the life of a free man is inherently painful…” So , fraught with nightmares of being hunted by drunkards in early 20^th Century Moscow on Christmas for killing Christ and encouraged by State laws of antisemitism enacted into the May Laws, he relates that Jews have continually been deprived of their liberties . Unable to travel, attend university, with rumours of a Jewish conspiracy fanned by The Black Hundreds, an extreme-right wing monarchist group, Ephraim, son of Nachman is told to pack his bag and leave for Palestine, much as the slaves in Egypt did.

But “[t]he Rabinovitch children had never imagined anything like this deprivation of rights could be possible “. Emmanuel, another son, refuses to leave, deciding to pursue his dream of being an actor in Paris. Nachman, again evoking the four sons at the Passover seder. Nachman explodes, “Yeder nar iz klug un komish far zikh”( Every idiot believes himself to be intelligent). Further attempting his argument, he implores” There is nothing for you in Europe.”

Yet Nachman and others in his family do move on to a good life in Riga, Latvia. But on a subsequent Passover night and family gathering, Nachman again is entreated by his wife, Emma, to remind their daughter Myriam about the exodus from Egypt. “ But Ephraim, the engineer, the progressivist, the cosmopolitan, had forgotten that an outsider will always be an outsider.”, his granddaughter in the future narrates, sadly. Harassed by the Latvians when his caviar business fails, Nachman’s family in 1920 must once again venture on their own exodus to Palestine, first stopping in Łódź, home to visit Emma’s parents.

In Poland, Myriam is struck with a stone, the words” hep, hep Jude” echoing in her ears. Emma’s father, Maurice Wolf, explains that the Poles do not want to work with the Jews “…but they hate him [even]more because he is the boss of the blanket factory.” So the family departs for Palestine, a journey of forty days as long as it had taken Moses to reach Mount Sinai. When finally reunited with Nachman, years later in Palestine, Ephraim and family are surprised to find the work, the heat, the roughness and struggle of life insupportable .

Yet Ephraim’s children, Myriam and Noemie, are content in this rough and tumble life, warmed by their grandparents, the oranges, olive and date groves , palm and pomegranate trees and talk of the freedom of the Zionist movement. In Migdal, however, Passover is very different from Russia, bent old forks replace the silver heirlooms, dust- ridden Haggadahs easily tossed aside. But again the patriarch Nachman intones on the meaning of “ pass over”. He explains the word also connotes “passage”: the passage across the Red Sea, the passage of the Hebrew people to become the Jewish people, the passage from winter to spring. It’s a rebirth.” And again away from servitude and death. And discrimination. And a reason to vacate their home.

Unlike his optimistic father, Ephraim endures only for five years and considers the Palestine resettlement “ disastrous “. Nachman warns, “Besser mit un klugn dans gehenem eyder mit un nar dans ganeydn Better to be a wise man in hell than a fool in heaven.”, casting doubt on his son’s complaints and desire to return to Europe where he fantasizes that life will be sweeter.

Ephraim’s family sets out once more, returning to France where the story of The Postcard begins with the mysterious arrival of a postcard with four names. Yet life in France repeats the repression and rumblings of discrimination first encountered in Moscow. Huge posters and banners in public places are unfurled that target and satirize Jews as vermin, despised for ridicule. They are banned in any civil service position as Hitler’s influence spreads like poison ivy. It is 1933 and the Nazi party has become the official political party in Germany. The Rabinovitches must face the fallout: the children are harassed at school and their citizenship applications are constantly deferred so their presence as citizens in France is not solidified. And the right wing press and the political enemies of Jews expand, anti- semitism increasing as intern camps , transports, numerus clausus, curfews, slanderous slogans, propaganda, mandated yellow stars and disappearances mark the society, ironically reinforcing Nachman’s warnings. Jews are not only wanted in a land not their own, they are the scapegoats and cause célèbre punished for all of societal ills.

Anne, granddaughter of Myriam questions her mother on this: “Maman . . . there comes a point when you can’t keep saying, ‘but people didn’t know’ . . .” But similarly The Toronto Star on Sunday, September 7, reported that even the Vatican possessed information about death camps. Pope Pius Xii’s Secretary was sent a letter from an informed source in Germany who was part of a Catholic anti- Hitler group. A Jesuit priest  in December 1942, detailed “ Nazi extermination…in ovens…with killing up to 6,000 Jews and Poles daily in prewar Poland transported to the Belzec death camp.” It has been suggested, however, that the Holy See needed not only verification, but feared for his own life, and those of the resistance workers and sources

 Lelia, Anne’s mother, replies, “Indifference is universal. Who are you indifferent toward today, right now? Ask yourself that. Which victims living in tents, or under overpasses, or in camps way outside the cities are your ‘invisible ones’?” The reply underscores toxic attitudes towards immigrants, scapegoats, Jews and all perceived as “ others” throughout time. The question, like so much of Berest’s novel shakes both narrator and reader: Who have we ceased to see?

And much later, Anne, granddaughter’s daughter of Myriam , is invited to a seder. Her identity as a Jew in France is challenged.Because of a family history of hiding, of concealment, of intermarriage, of the camps and, of being raised in a secular, Republican socialism, she is without religion. Yet she concludes that she maintains values of equality wherein a utopian world might be possible and women encouraged to be intellectually free.

But when another woman at the seder who feels herself deeply grounded in being Jewish attacks Anne , for not knowing Hebrew or which side to open her Haggadah, Anne is embarrassed, feeling shamed , bereft and lacking a Jewish identity. Still in this uncomfortable situation, Anne is overwhelmed with memories as if she has lived this seder scene before. She writes, “ Everything seemed familiar: passing the matzohs around, dipping bitter herbs in salted water, letting a drop of wine fall from my fingertip.. even the symbolic Pesach dishes…as if I’d seen them a million times before…the ceremony transported me back in time. I could feel hands sliding into my own, inhabiting them, Nachman’s fingers, gnarled as the roots of an ancient oak tree.” Still she is upset, feeling once more like an outsider to herself as a Jew: ironically these painful criticisms levelled by another Jew.

I understand how Anne must have felt. Although I was sent to Hebrew school and the majority of students at my school were Jewish, the idea of being Jewish was still fraught with fear for me, a need to hide and not to openly disclose that I too was Jewish. Similar to Nachman and his dispersed family, my grandparents had fled to Canada from Europe to avoid war, but many relatives had perished in the camps, not believing they would be part of the final solution.

My mother was five, sent ahead with her sister, aunt and mother. She vividly recalled peering out at the red tulips in Amsterdam, but also feeling the sharp prongs of metal combs that combed her head for lice when her ship docked port. And even here in Canada, she emphasized that there was an unease at being Jewish. There were prohibitive, threatening signs my mother told us: “ Jews and dogs not allowed”;as well, she was followed home with taunts of greenhorn, tin horn, and so sprang up the need for Jewish benevolent societies to protect Jews. Immigrants were faced with Jewish quotas at universities, preferred hiring and discrimination, and even terrifying race riots against Jews at Christie Pits Park in Toronto.

Anne reflects, “ The Holocaust was like a treasure hunt in our house. You just followed the clues.” And I too recalled the stories my mother retold of her life in Petrokov, Poland, of being snatched up by her father at a picnic to avoid pogroms and Cossacks on horseback. Of course, I read Anne Frank, and any other holocaust novel I could find, searching for information, frightened to think who would hid me if I had lived in the Poland of my grandparents ? As a child, you want to know more but are terrified to find out the details : of what meaning a Jew could mean.

And much later, you understand how some turn to and others turn away from their religion, either providing sleepless nights of guilt or comfort. At Anne’s seder attack, I could feel her confusion: of not reading Hebrew, of having espoused ideas of equality, embracing diversity and feeling an exclusion to those chanting the songs, to not knowing the routines, to not fitting seamlessly into a paradigm to which she cannot fit.

Georges, Anne’s boyfriend , gives her a book by Natalie Zajde Children of Survivors. In it, Zajde discusses what does it mean to wonder about what it means to be Jewish. She conjectures,” Someone who has the same nightmares as her mother, and is trying to find her place among the living.Someone whose body is the grave of those who ever had a proper burial” Anne recalls that at the birth of her own daughter, Clara, her first thoughts were of mothers who were breast feeding when they were sent to the gas chamber. She says, it would “ suit her for things to be difficult…[but] not to be afraid of the giver, afraid of gas, afraid of losing [her]identity papers, afraid of closed spaces, afraid of dog bites, afraid of crossing borders, afraid of travelling by airplane, afraid of crowds…afraid of saying I’m Jewish.” And again, I conjure my mother , Chava, who physically shook at borders, fearful her papers were in order, terrified of doctors, reliving her own and memories of her family, with that sense of being hunted.She saw obstacles where others did not.

Filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky is also cited in The Postcard to explain a family’s preoccupation with the trauma of the Holocaust. He refers to this as transference of fear or psycho magic. “There are part of the genealogical tree, traumatized unprocessed places that are eternally seeking relief. From these places, arrows are launched towards future generations. Anything that has not been resolved must be repeated and will affect someone else..” And so, we come to the connections with fears, threats, instability, exclusion and hiding one self : anti- semitism, Passover and the stories of a Jewish family, forced to flee, to seek freedom and in doing so, identities that might have been forged with religion minimized , almost obliterated.

So too like Anne, we can perhaps understand the disconnects, the burial of identity once anchored in religion, for it has been the cause of rift and death in society. However In the celebrations , the eternal passages of Rosh Hashana, Passover, Yom Kippur, Purim, Succot, Simhas Torah, we come face to face with our historical biblical roots, our genesis and yet when we are not free to participate and reflect on who we are, the fear, the need to hid replaces and obfuscates.

Yet as Anne, and her grandmother Myriam, and her great grandfather Nachman, they were able to survive in the worst of times. Holidays like Passover, the reminder of being freed from slavery in Egypt, poses a symbolic arch through which one might pass- through, not over: to be able to not wonder what it is to be a Jew, but to choose to be a Jew, free from fear, servitude, discrimination and threat of reprisals.

Kaddish.com

In response to the Channukah attacks in New York, my daughter tweeted about anti- semitism and a phrase we must have engrained in her head, “ It doesn’t matter who you marry, when they come to get you, you will always be a Jew”. Likely we did repeat this as mantra, for we echoed our parents’ words, usually used to warn us against intermarriage. My father, in particular, felt betrayed when his sister married his non- Jewish friend, who berated his beloved mother as a “ dirty Jew”. Eventually my aunt and her husband divorced, but the die was cast in my father’s head, his experience teaching him that all the warnings were, in deed true, because when the chips were done, and true feelings came out, you were a Jew, and that meant bad, reviled, strange unacceptable, dirty. My father was a man of few words but dating someone other than a Jew was not allowed in our family.

My daughter in another tweet reacted to this fear of anti- semitism and Jew- hating, explaining in her youth, that having bleached her hair blond to match her blue eyes was reason to allow her to pass as an Aryan, keep her safe, and quieten the horrific holocaust scenes so generously dispensed in Hebrew school classes. I thought about her tweets as I read Nathan Englander’s Kaddish.com that made me uncomfortable because of the portrayals of Jews.

As we begin the story at the shiva of Larry’s father, Larry, the protagonist, rejects his Judaism. However, surprisingly he will soon embrace it, transforming himself into a kosher Rebi Shuli. But, from the outset, as a reader, I’m not impressed with the person who arrives at his father’s funeral in his hometown of Memphis, who battles with his sister, Dina, disparaging the kind orthodox people at the shiva, judging and rejecting them, and viewing porn during these sad days of mourning. The omniscient narrator relates,

The second day of shiva is even harder than the first….He lets himself be small-talked and well-wished, nodding politely….One after another, he receives the pathologically tone-deaf tales of everyone else’s dead parents….Larry wants to say, in response, ‘Thanks for sharing, and fuck your dead dad.’ ”

Young, rebellious, antagonistic, even at his most vulnerable, Larry holds tight to an obnoxious sense of loathing. However, it is here that the story becomes interesting, for he hires Kaddish.com on line in Israel to say kaddish as he,himself, at this juncture rejects the orthodoxy of the ritual, but in the wake of his sister and rabbi’s hysterical but heartfelt recriminations in not fulfilling the mandate of eleven months of prayer for the dead, allows himself an alternative of assigning the prayers to another.

It is here that a single decision, made in a moment of angst and anger will upturn his life and come to haunt him. This is early Larry who is ironic, and sarcastic, retorting, “Why does everyone keep acting like I’m not Jewish? . . . You think I don’t know the rules? You think, without you watching, I’d cremate him and stuff his ashes in a can? That I’d plant his bones in some field of crosses and pour a bottle of bourbon on the mound?”

Abrasive, annoying with a smart answer, he does not draw our sympathy or even understanding : of how the death of his father has effected him.

Now, I’m not sure if Englander feels his new Shuli is a better, improved model in spite of the fact that he has married Jewish, produced two Jewish children, and teaches at the yeshiva: that somehow returning to the fold has yielded a better person. That as a Jew who davens frequently, blesses brides, and quotes scriptures somehow enhances the model of a loving son. In truth, he was always a loving son, just not one who followed the orthodoxy of living as a Jew. Maybe I am as opinionated as Larry because my prior judgement had not been altered by his donning a big black hat and dispensing advice from biblical quotations.

For example, should I cheer when the new Larry/Shuli revisits remorse for not saying Kaddish when Gavriel, (one of Shuli’s students ) reveals his own dilemma regarding the death of his own father? What follows is Shuli’s attempts to right this wrong, open the gates of paradise for his father, and be forgiven. Yet Shuli uses others and unacceptable means such as forbidden technology along the path, knowing but equivocating to himself when he transgresses. Although old Larry was outright honest, cynical and blasphemous in his behaviour, this Shuli wears the cloak of Judaism that includes the trappings of a good Jew to further his quest and attempt to assuage his soul.

For me, Shuli’s hubris is real, but the story is limited by the focus Englander provides, particularly of Larry-Shuli himself. In spite of having been out in the world during his reprobate days, all references, save the computer ones, are now biblical, provincial, self-serving, narrow. But then, Larry’s world has been returned to a specific community that believes in the absolute truth of the words of Torah. Horrifically , even as the new reconstituted good Jew, when Shuli dreams, he transposes the Torah literally onto his father so his arms have become, without elbows, the straight poles that hold the holy book in place.

Ironically in an NPR interview, Englander,who considers himself secular, says,

If a story is functioning, it is universal. Like, that’s it. If this can only be read by Jews, it’s an utter failure … that’s how I feel about story. That’s the beauty of reading, that’s why it’s subversive, because it just crosses time and space and culture. So really, you read science fiction, read it like, I don’t know, dystopian kosher…and I do think there is a responsibility to what we say, an ethical responsibility, and I think if you’re writing from the heart, that’s all you can do, and I really, I think if anything, you’re creating empathy if you’ve created a person others can connect with.

And again for me, my issue centres on a character definitively described as Jewish who has not demonstrated growth or insight and although non- Jewish readers may embrace him, he does not serve as a human who has developed or shown much difference from the rebellious kid we met at the beginning of the novel.

And as myself, the kid who sat in darkened Hebrew school classes shivering at Hitler’s propaganda and scenes of bones and bodies heaped onto more pits of ashes, I fear this portrayal of the recalcitrant only lends more fodder for stereotypical reinforcement of the sarcastic ridiculed Jew kvetching and pursued by guilt. Another notch for the anti-Semite who yells, “See what they’re like.” It’s not that creepy Jews are not allowed to exist in literature, for Philip Roth gave us many, but somehow I could relate to them, and yes, they transgressed and mingled sacred and profane, but I could see myself in some of what they did, and how they battled the crossovers in life. Again, for me, the characters were more fully formed, in spite of some actions and behaviours of which I did not like or approve . Yet I did not construe them, such as Portnoy or Merry, Swede’s daughter, in American Pastoral or the bumblers in Goodbye Columbus. These characters were not just Jews, but maybe Jews or others in a world I could recognize and although I did not condone their behaviours, I could perhaps stand back, sympathize or intellectualize with them beyond their being birthed into a particular religion.

On the other hand, what does redeems the story for me is the relationship between Shuli and his father who always maintained his belief in Larry even when he rejected Judaism. The father is not idealized but humanized as a sweet and loving man. Englander might have demonized the father or ridiculed his devotion to his faith. Here he does not, and I can empathize with one single strand of the book: in Larry’s unfaltering and abiding love for the good man. Yet undermining the love is Larry’s father’s belief that eventually Larry will find his true life, the one Larry has searched for. Again, the narrator records,

Larry’s father told him he was confident that Larry would eventually “come home.” To Larry’s father and sister, home meant “anywhere on the planet that held like-minded, kosher, mikvah-dipping, synagogue attending, Israel-cheering, fellow tribespeople, who all felt, and believed, and did the very same things in the very same way — including taking mourning so seriously that they breathed up all the air in the room, suffocating the living, so that the survivors might truly end up one with the dead.”

Yet, we have no details of Larry/ Shuli’s way back to Judaism, except the spark of fresh- faced Yeshiva boy, Chemi, who appears on Kaddish.com to perform the rite of kaddish: that ignites Larry to become the son his father imagined him to be.

Englander pushes forward 20 years with no details of the apostate’s conversion back to devoted child. This too limits the reader’s ability to connect with the protagonist. We don’t always have to like the people we read about and recently I wrote about The Girl Who Smiled Beads and her belligerent attitude towards those who were kind to her but there, the writer, I felt, provided sufficient insight to allow understanding and compassion. She did not become for me the Greedy African Saved by Americans. She radiated out as a person with believable needs, wants, sadness and complaints. Some might disagree, but that was my thought.

However, Shuli, for me, does the opposite. He becomes, in spite of the ending ( which I will not reveal) narrowed, again the stereotype who plots, twists truths, lies, to reach his goal. And as I confess, perhaps it is my Hebrew school days of fear of reinforcing the stereotype, my lack of knowledge regarding the focus of the Hasidism and my bias towards people whose thinking feels fundamental and unyielding that has caused me to write this piece.

Or more likely, it is a world where ant- semitism in no less than six violent acts this year, and a president whose remarks about Jews, particularly in their loyalty to Israel or their money grabbing behaviours as real estate agents, makes me very nervous as a Jew. It’s always there. And in that light, Englander’s book has cast an uncomfortable shadow of a devoted Jewish parishioner and through that lens, I unkindly condemn Larry/Shuli, not permitting myself to believe in his conversion.

When we read, we find spaces to unite ourselves with the characters: to laugh, to cry, to comprehend their flaws and perceive the human condition that should be universal, no matter the telling of the tale is in a nunnery, a shtetl, or baseball stadium. In Kaddish.com, it’s an interesting excursion into a small world with small people, written in excellent prose with interesting details, but lacking the broader insights that make books relevant and deepen my knowledge of myself.

So Go figure.

😉

The Sisters of the Winter Wood

I’m not a fan of fantasy and truthfully when I read the blurb of The Sisters of the Winter Wood, I wondered why I had added it to my list and who had recommended it to me.

But because we are all glued to Game of Thrones and witnessed strange transformations there and Kafka’s cockroach has survived many generations and yiddishkeit holds a fascination for me, not to mention any story about European shtetls and persecution of Jews, I began the story of Liba and Layla, daughters of the Rebbe Berman in Dubossary, a town between Moldavia and the Ukraine. Dubossary conjured for me the pictorial landscape of Marc Chagall’s Russian hometown of Vitebsk in Russia with Chassidim, travellers, farm animals and lovers.

The sisters, temporarily abandoned by Mami and Tati, as occurs in many coming- of- age novels, must fend for themselves, while the parents deal with pressing familial obligations in Kupel nearby. However before departing, Mami imparts strange information to her very different daughters, Liba, tall, dark and big-boned, and Laya, graceful and long- limbed: Liba is part bear like her father and Layla is part swan. This unsettling knowledge complicates the lives of the almost 18 and 16 year old adolescents.

With many authors, we might guffaw and stop the read immediately, but in the hands of Rossner,in spite of this being her debut novel, she has tweaked our interest and curiosity in the plight of the sisters, living at the edge of the forest, all ready not totally accepted by the town yentahs : because Mami is a convert to Judaism, not always covering her hair.

The story is told from the dual perspectives of the girls who know themselves to be Jews. They are aware of their lineage from the Berre Rebbe and the lore that has marked them as special; Tati insists that the young men in the village are not to be considered suitable marriage prospects. But in most tales of becoming, love plays a major role. Laya is enchanted by Fedir, a “ goy ” who along with his handsome brothers travel from town to town, selling fruit; their origins Rossner tells us in an Afterward, is derived from Christine Rossetti’s Goblin Market wherein the protagonists’ names also happen to be Laura and Lizzie.

Liba, too, experiences her first sexual awakenings with Dovid Meisel, the local butcher’s son, whose entire family reaches out to her. Aware and perplexed by her difference, Liba reflects, “I feel his breath on my neck and I think, we breath the same air. We are not as different as we seem…we believe in the same god, practice the same religion, like the same food, laugh at the same jokes. I want a normal family and a home where I don’t need to fear the woods around me.”

In parallel stories, the girls face infatuation and love. But along with this comes anti- semitism aroused by Fedir and the townsfolk. Based on actual events that occurred in Dubossary in March in 1903 , two non- Jewish victims were discovered drained of blood, one in a fruit garden. Often to explain terrible events in times passed, Jews were harassed, slandered, and their blame attributed to the myth that Jews baked matzoh with the blood of non- Jews. In Rossner’s novel as in the real life event, the Jews of Dubossary organized, fought back and prevented a progrom. But overhanging antisemitism was and continues to be real.

In both the truth and fiction, Jews in nearby villages were not so lucky. Five hundred in the Kishinev area were murdered, hundreds injured, their stores and homes destroyed. Between 1880-1920 there were over 1300 pogroms in the Ukraine. And in 1940, back again in Dubossary , the Nazis rounded up 600 Jews in the synagogue and burnt them. The remaining 6,000 were lead into the nearby woods and shot. Not surprisingly, Rossner dreamed of the ghosts of the town, personally effected, as her lineage comes from Dubossary , fortunately a great uncle having escaped to America years earlier.

Rossner was raised with Chassidic tales such as the Shpoler Zeiyde, Russian superheroes such as “ bogatyrs”, fairytales such as Snow White and Rose Red, and Jane Yolen’s Holocaust retelling of Briar Rose, later she was influenced by Jonathan Foer Safran’s Everything Is Illuminated and others. To sweeten the dark violence of these tales in her recreation of the events in The Sisters of the Winter Wood, Rossner includes the sweetness of her own Romanian grandmother’s expressions so that every few pages underlines her background: with Yiddish evocations such as “ zichrono livracha (May her/ his memory be a blessing)… shidduch (arranged marriage)…niggunem (melodies)…shaynah madele( lovely girl)…oyam ( world).” When dreaming of varenikes, Liba speculates, “ They are soft and plump and the onions and gribenes she serves them with are always so crispy. Her ( a neighbour) borscht is thick and creamy and she never skimps on the marrow bones that flavour it. There will be sweet wine, too, and Mami already brought over some of her flakiest rugelach. I lick my lips in anticipation.”The melding of Yiddish and the description of Jewish foods works to augment the warmth of a strong tradition in a village where Jews are not trusted, merely tolerated, yet there is vibrancy in their presence that recalls our sense of shetl life before the wars. The novel is an echo of significant influences that have shaped both Jewish life and Rossner’s growing up.

When Laya disappears with Fedir, Liba attempts to rescue her from the enchantment that has turned trees to fruit- bearing, overloaded with sweet succulent peaches, pears, plums, pomegranates, apricots … dizzying in their smell, touch, lure. Yet their roots have encumbered Laya’s movement, for she is held captive, but a willing one because of love she imagines for her green eyed suitor. For Laya, being in love has altered the faces of Fedir and his brothers. Soon she will realize her mistake and like the veils in Blake’s Book of Thel and other poems, stories of maturation, she eventually sees clearly, understanding the forest for what it is.

Libya’s comprehension of love and life is less dreamy, as she learns how to arrest her transformation to avenging bear: by calming herself, focusing on water, ensuring she does not respond emotionally.That knowledge will come to Laya later so the girls can learn to command their metamorphoses.

However, what is most difficult to accept is the girls’ transformation to bear and swan. But even Libya’s awareness of this strangeness mirrors our own as readers when she murmurs, “It’s a dream…it must be a dream. A fairytale coming to life in my head, nothing more…maybe I’m sleeping…” When she observes her own powerful muscles and paws with claws, she marvels, “ None of what I am, what we are, makes any sense at all.”

Yet one might consider the many Russian folktales about bear- men and women the traditional donning of brown fur cloaks at the time worn to celebrate the new year and chase away malignant spirits. So too, Chassidic tales of Tati’s great grandfather’s kindness of averting persecution of other Jews as the Shpoler Zeiyde, as the retelling of his dancing with a bear in a contest to win the freedom of destitute Jews forced to pay rent and taxes on time. Liba explains, “ My mother once told me that my great grandfather became a bear because of great need…we can all become what we need to be in a time of danger.” And so we recall modern stories in which a mother somehow lifts a car off the body of her child pinned beneath or other extraordinary measures to save a loved one.

And in a similar moment of amazement, we might recall the mother of dragons in The Game of Thrones calling her babes home. And although we might not accept Zeus changing himself into a swan, or magical raindrops to impregnate Danae, we do not doubt him as a god of power. Or even the ability of Captain Marvel to propel herself into space or transform her arms to efficient attack machines. And what do we make of Spider-Man or Batman possessed by the power of transformation in times of greatest need? Magic is magic, and the possibility of transforming to another form, ice to water to gas, or human to superhero or animal is- at the very least- provocative. So we watch, read, transfixed.

Metaphors and similes in our language also allow for comparisons between the mundane and the exceptional so we accept that we might be as hungry as a bear or as sly as a cat, ready to trick or outwit our opponents. The woods around us can be internalized or external, alternatively inviting or threatening, suggestive that there are forces, spirits that await in the darkness. Why else do children insist on nightlights at bedtime?: to prevent witches or goblins from dragging them away. This is Coleridge’s willing suspension of disbelief that permits our leap to imagine and to engage in other realms.

The notion of transformation as presently witnessed in the films based in Stan Lee’s comics is welcomed by audiences, perhaps as an anecdote to the craziness of life. And even today as congresswomen cast aspersions on our people, or riots in Charlottesville where even the U.S. president does not disparage or condemn the white suprematists, terribly, antisemitism has not disappeared. Not in the bear dancing contests, the attack of blood letting for matzoh, or being pushed to the edge of forests, whether real or imaginary, it has endured. Sadly, that image of Chagall’s diaspora Jew emerges as I write this, the outcast traveller’s pekkalah on his shoulder, searching for a place to live freely without harassment. Liba’s statement comes to mind, “ Being a Jew means always changing- staying true to what you are, but adapting to your surroundings.”

Rossner gives us a fairytale that is underpinned with history and the reality of Jewish discrimination we continue to face. Would that we were like the sisters able to transform and learn how to defeat the biases that continue to confound us .

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Also see The Globe and Mail (Ontario Edition), Canada Mar 16, 2019 O8 French journalist and novelist latest book Hate: The Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism in France (and What It Means for Us) by MARC WEITZMANN

Turning 70:Gasp!

I’m thinking about turning 70 and the changes in my my lifetime.

I was born on Christmas Day, a perfect day for a contrary girl to enter the world. I arrived at Womens College Hospital heralded by two women, Drs. Marion Kerr and Marion Hilliard. Women’s College was the home to women not allowed to practice with the august men in the profession. One of Dr. Hilliard’s greatest desires was to have Women’s College Hospital become a teaching hospital. She was involved with the negotiations that eventually led to the hospital becoming affiliated with the University of Toronto’s department of obstetrics and gynecology. In its early days it was located on Rusholme Road. I felt a connection to the hospital for many years soI had my three kids there, attended in the 80’s by male doctors allowed to contribute their own expertise to the women on staff.

The kindly Dr Kerr assured my mother she would return after she delivered her Christmas presents . And so she did. My mother reported that she so appreciated her doctor’s kindness and care, staying in a private room for a week. Since then periods of stay have been much shortened.

About a year and half after my birth, my father who worked installing radios in ambulances succumbed to polio. That Labour Day weekend, he mowed the lawn and collapsed. That gossip was that Sunnyside Pool was the source for the epidemic although I doubt they had taken me near the vicinity of the pool and his contact to the disease would have been second hand. He spent the next excruciating nine months at Riverdale Hospital where all the polio victims were housed. He told of being able to watch executions at the Don jail through his window.

Before the Salk and Sabin vaccine, so many people were left with twisted or useless limbs or had to spend their lives in iron lungs to perform the job of breathing. He would not have survived in an iron lung because of his asthma. He came out of that hospital fully braced, disillusioned, but with a family to support. With my mother’s immense help, fortitude and courage, he did, gracing the electronics industry with his genius. The advent of the polio vaccine made the world safer and yet now stupid people refute the miraculous discovery. When I’ve gone to concerts and watched Itzhak Perlman navigate the stage swinging his lifeless legs, I’ve often thought of my father, the immense struggles of climbing stairs or even kerbs, but like Perlman, my father’s avocation revolved around his hands and his head . My mother used to compare our plight to the Little Red Hen who learned that she had to do it herself. And so she did.

Growing up, I knew one set of grandparents had left Poland in hopes of a better life, fearful of the extinction and war. There were stories of cousins having abandoned first wives and papering their walls with money to avoid deportation. I heard of my grandfather encountering his landesmen on the street in Toronto and bringing them home to provide them with a meal or even a bed, children sleeping nose to toes in overcrowded rooms. There was this aura of antisemitism my mother carried with her, one that infected me so as to not to want to identify myself as Jewish, as if I might be betrayed like Anne Frank or hustled off to an interment camp. At the library I poured over books trying to discover the details in the scary war stories.To this day, I recall in some paperback a Nazi so taken with the beautiful turquoise eyes of a child in the ghetto that he gouged them out to set them as centrepieces in gold rings, furious they had lost their lustre.

And although my parents rarely discussed politics, I recall our family being hunched around the television during the Bay of Pigs incident as they fretted about Russia and US going head to head. They worried about a nuclear war, and feared an atomic bomb destroy the world. My aunt and uncle tried to be proactive and joined organizations such as the World Federalists and Voice of Women. Yet most preferred to keep a low profile, aware that ” Jews and dogs were not allowed”.

We worried that my American cousin would go to the Vietnam Nam war and he did. There were sit ins at the universities, against Napalm and Agent Orange and public displays of support for draft dodgers fleeing the US. I did not know my husband then but we actually attended the same university, UC at U of T in the same years, he at the centre of controversies, me chatting up guys in the grassy quadrangle. He and his friend Bob Rae organized the festival Perception 67 that invited Timothy Leary and The Fugs to the campus. I remember the black folk singers who sang about freedom and resistance, and spaghetti used to recreate the experience of being on LSD in a darkened hall. ? We were exhorted to turn on. Leary although detained with his banned speech, wrote,”

Yes, young people of Canada, I’m telling you that you must drop out of school. Your education system is a narcotic, addictive process paid for by old men and women to teach you to become Romans like them selves. You must drop out of school. The aim of Canadian education, like American education, is to narrow your mind, contract your consciousness, get you to accept this reality, the ridiculous game of the television prop scenario of Canadian industrial urban life today. You must drop out.”

I also huddled close to the television to watch the first walk on the moon and hear Neil Armstrong’s words. And we were all distraught by Kennedy’s assassination, everyone remembering where they first heard the news. I was exiting a History exam in Grade 11. We lamented the fall of Camelot, his words “ Ich bin ein Berliner, “and the glamourous life of him and Jackie felled by the tangled inexplicable shooting by Oswald and the Jack Ruby cover up, as dramatized by Oliver Stone. For dreamy adolescents The Peace Corp, hope for a better, finer world were all dashed.

Television was our main means of communication as we observed the fall of the Berlin Wall so far away. And instead of the Internet and email was the telephone, should a classmate call to ask for a date for Saturday night. There was the occasional Sunday meal out should my parents find a kosher restaurant nearby and Sunday drives to the outreaches of the city, such as the wooded Unionville , to get an ice cream cone. And I remember how deliciously forbidden a Big Mac and chocolate shake were when I visited my California cousins at the end of Grade 10 in the 60’s. Hermosa Beach in my yellow pockadot bikini was heaven.

Over time clothes changed too, white being ridiculed should it be worn after Labor Day. Girls wore skirts to school. Living at the edge of Forest Hill behind our store, we were very careful about money, although both my sister and I had ballet, piano and Hebrew lessons: the last two I would have been delighted to do without. So we travelled to Buffalo where a crisp white Susan Van Husen shirt could be purchased for $1.98 and there were great sales. But on the odd Saturday, I was overcome with shame to be standing at the corner of Bathurst and Eglinton with Honest ED bags containing underwear. I insisted my mother turn those bags inside out for fear a schoolmate might see me.Fast forward to years where jeans with tears and holes, and kids bought pounds of clothes at Good Will, mixing and matching.But for me back then, I wished I could disappear into the sidewalk.

Memories come as a jumble: a few from childhood such as the strains of “ Today’s the day, the teddy bears have their picnic…”, the first time I heard the music of the Beatles at a school dance, lunch time tea dances in junior high , a wallflower earnestly praying someone might ask me to dance; lovely days at university and summers hitchhiking to view the art I initially encountered in darkened classrooms; falling in love and committing to one person, the arrival of my children and becoming a family; my post- colonial literature classes and contributing to the development of the Standards and Ethics at OCT- important, valuable and thoughtful work. I have been lucky.

But the years somehow go by so quickly and as I gaze back, many of the same scenarios pop out, over and over again while more are lost in the bank of time. You wonder. : what has made me ME, and you realize it is not just one or even a few things, the happiness and travaux that raise us up and wears us down, experiences ground as fine as dust. You draw back and through the vortex of time, you observe yourself, and can only know that each person is the same, that we all arrive at the same point, maybe wiser for the journey. But not necessarily so.

Stupid People

As I get older, I seem to get more crochetty. But perhaps there are more things that cause my blood to boil and more media distribution to relate tales of stupidity.

My daughter lives in a picturesque town outside of Philadelphia. Besides bird sanctuaries, downy paths to traverse and solid old stone houses, there is a caring community that will jump with home cooked meals should there be a birth or death. However, some of these kind folk hold religious beliefs that are in conflict with modern medical knowledge.

My two grandkids. ages 3 and 20 months came home ill from daycare – which everyone knows is the worst place to catch germs. However, with breathing issues and explosive coughing that lead to vomiting, the 20 month old wound up at the doctor’s. Shortly after, her little brother began to scream about his ears.which wound up being the site of infection. In the posts on FaceTime both adorable munchkins appeared lethargic and very sad, their pathetic little heads propped together on one pillow. Almost well, they were about to return to school when the doctor called: to inform. my daughter that both had pertussis or whooping cough. And so the children were quarantined for another week.

How ironic that unvaccinated children are allowed to wander the community, infecting while the victims of this stupidity are locked in. Now, I have no problem that kids who have been ill must refrain from spreading the germs, but to allow the perpetrators of the sickness to move freely in a society like so many Vika mosquitoes is unconscionable. And it makes me furious at the parents who refuse to vaccinate, ignorantly calling on some outmoded reason to validate their dopey contentions. Worse yet is a government that permits these violations to occur.

Not surprisingly I saw many Trump signs along the forested roads and charming alleys in Pennsylvania. And now with the election of this man, I again cannot but wonder at the stupidity of people who have voted for the man who now threatens the security of our children. Not just in the US, but in Canada and world wide.

Watching Meet the Press last Sunday, I heard Vice President- elect Pence, compared by John Oliver to a Salem witch hunter, downplay the telephone call Trump took from the Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen, referring to it as one of fifty calls of courtesy that week.. Beyond that rationale , perhaps worse yet was the dialogue with Chuck Todd , an apparent jeering, an outright patronizing and indignant quality to Pence’s words whose born again Catholic views prevail in his outmoded attitude towards women’s rights, especially abortion. On the same show Kellyanne Conway as well presented with that smug arrogance of the victor, unable to concede gracefully. Although Todd reminded her of the split in the nation, Conway ignored an opportunity to show humility but continued to berate the Press who did not take Trump’s pursuit of the country!s highest office seriously, she scolded. When Todd asked about putting the country first, suggesting Trump divest himself of his businesses while in office, Conway took the opportunity to again lecture and absurdly crow,” You know Chuck, he put the country ahead of everything else [by] running…”!! Taking a shot at the media, Conway was nicely told by Todd that” …that every knee- jerk push back is going to blame the media”!In deed pundits are suggesting that Trump used the media, rather than the other way around. John Doyle in the Star writes that Trump’s “ bombast and off- the – cuff blustering and rudeness is what gave CNN and other outlets staggering high ratings..” To the shame of the profession, focusing on this outrageous man was great for business and ratings so they overloaded the network, gave him airtime so his “tell it as it is” mantra instead of attacking his bigotry and lack of knowledge that just became de rigeur and was accepted in the homes of too many brainwashed Americans. So says Doyle in Monday’s Star,”He played the TV news outlets like fools.”

So not so stupid there.

But read Sara Kendzior in the Globe today ( Monday, December 5) about the fears of a Uzbekistan refugee whose only crime in his country was to teach about environmental problems. ( of course, we now know according to Trump that are none) or Dov Marmur on the rise of Anti- Semitic outbreaks across America. Marmur underlines that these attacks are” the consequences of xenophobia, misogyny and racism”( Toronto Star).

There is that old poem by Martin Niemollera prominent Protestant pastor eventually incarcerated by Hitler’s goons , that proclaims,

“ First they came for Socialists..Trade unionists…Jews…

Then they came for me- and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Although Trump’s vitriolic words have been downplayed as not meaning what he has said, we do in fact follow the words we choose to put out in the public arena , transforming them into action. Consider how years ago the language of inclusion was put in place, for example, firemen was broadened to include “firefighters” so both men and women might participate in the profession. . As we speak so we behave.

These stupid people who believed Trump was a panacea to “ make America great” should have realized the only thing Trump wants to make great is himself. Where a big mouth is the main quality for election, one can only despair. What do Trump’s voters think, if in deed they think at all, of Trump’s rumination to put a Goldman Sachs banker in his cabinet. And with Trump’s boast to bring back refineries and restore the use of coal, do they worry their children may again return to working in the mines: images of Charles Dickens come to mind.

These are troubling times when a person of Trump’s demeanour, but more importantly values are not only permitted but encouraged.

I realize protests do little good and the horse has all ready left the barn. Perhaps what we can do is to continue to talk and debate in multiple forums so the old ideas of diversity, equality, opportunity, and kindness will not die within the next four years. Although we live in a free society , with Trump’s lambast at the Hamilton cast ignored and the ongoing( thank you Lorne Michaels) critique on SNL and the memory of Barack Obama’s election , that civility and clear thinking can eventually be restored, people must persist in finding positive role models for their children, ignoring the elephant in the room.

So last night Saturday Night Live does what Saturday Night Live often does best, to  poke fun at the political and the powerful with satire: here suggesting the President-elect has a penchant for firing off tweets with the impulse control of a toddler. And President-elect Trump, in turn, does what President-elect Trump does, almost immediately, tweeting out an attack on Saturday Night Live: “Just tried watching Saturday Night Live – unwatchable! Totally biased, not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can’t get any worse. Sad”

Sad indeed. No sense of irony. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Class Voices

I’m sitting in Paula Draper’s Ryerson course and usually I really don’t have much interest in listening to the voices of the other students after presentations as so often conjecture is boring and self-indulgent, but this is different today. Rather than their inward-looking ponderings, these are remembrances of lived experiences. The topic is Anti-Semitism in Canada between the wars. It appears the people in the class, largely Jewish, hail from Winnipeg, but some from Montreal. They are describing events that were motivated by antagonism towards Jews in years that are fogged with time. One man recalls a sign in a restaurant in St. Agathe that prohibited both dogs and Jews to the premise. I am reminded of Lita Rose Betcherman’s work on Centre Island here in Toronto, the same story with different words, echoing Goebbels films and slogans that Jews like vermin must be eradicated. And the book None is Too Many by Abella and Trooper, chronicling the refusal towards Jewish refuges to land on Canada’s shores during the 1930-40’s, most memorable the St. Louis, boat of desperation rejected by Cuba, then attempting sanctuary in Canada, but eventually forced to return to Europe with its human cargo destined for death.

In class, Draper has just mentioned McKenzie King’s personal attitude towards Jewish immigration; he even purchased land around his own home to avoid Jews from coming too personally close. Blair, his immigration minister openly rejected Corrine Wilson’s plea to allow 1000 Jewish families into Canada. He finally agrees to 100 orphans with only two actually permitted entry. Yet, Draper states that the newspaper was rift with Nazi barbarism and Jewish terror. Ironically Joseph Kennedy maintained he could trust Hitler; obviously Neville Chamberlain believed likewise.

In Canada again, I reflect on the exclusion of Jews from professions, quotas by universities such as McGill and U of T and shake my head. We have come a long way–maybe. Yet at my grandson’s school they have cancelled Multicultural Night where moms were to bring ethnic foods, a version of “Holidays and Heroes”: which even in my1996 thesis research I found to be stereotyping attempts at integrating diverse cultures. But I wonder why the reason for cancellation. Perhaps parents are too busy and cannot concoct delicatissies that reflect the origins of their families. Maybe there reasonably hides some latent resentment at being classified by food their grannies once prepared and are now too old to deliver to a night event at a nearby school. I know there is acceptance of all at this mid-Toronto school and do not for a second consider there is a link to discrimination or racism. My grandson studies Mandarin in a noontime program and the faces emerging from school at the end of the day provide wide evidence of Canada’s changed policies of immigration.

I  wonder what food would represent Jews from Poland, Rumania, Hungary, Lithuania. Bagels? Matzoh balls? Pierogi? Goulash? Strange for my grandsons whose first foods were edamame and pizza. They did not even taste fabled chicken soup until years later. I chuckle to consider that one grandchild’s favourite Saturday lunch at Pickle Barrel commences with chicken soup followed a hot plate of tomato and meatball spaghetti. He is not eating Ethnic. He is merely following the trajectory of his taste buds. Should we say he is combining the food predilections of several foreign countries, he might look quizzical and continue slurping his soup.

When my children were young, we were always expected at the Friday night supper at my parents. I recall my young son cease his eating to frown, look up at the assembled family and query, “ What if we are only a dream in G-d’s head?” Stunned by his utterance momentarily, my mother admonished, “ Just finish your soup”. And he returned to his bowl of hot chicken soup. Perhaps his philosophical questioning squashed forever!

We learned in school that Canada was a mosaic, tiny glittering squares, individual but separate,special and unique, showcasing the qualities of our immigrants, unlike the United States’ melting pot, the gooey non-descript sludge that results when all the ingredients become indistinct from too much chopping and cooking. I often thought of Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Transition where upon entering kindergarten, her name was changed, anglicized to fit into a 1950’s world. From that point, she wrote that her early years growing up in Poland had become inaccessible to her because they had been lived in another language she was no longer permitted to speak in the land of milk and honey.

We here felt secure about our identity that looked to the past but was conjoined with the present to represent all of our realities, that mosaic thing, later to become the mantra of Post-modernism thought. But yesterday when the soldier guarding the war memorial on Parliament Hill was gunned down, I think everyone wondered. ( Remember I write my blogs to be edited much later) Of course anywhere where guns are available, there is no safety. Did the US smirk and think, you’re not so different Canada. Terrorists can also infiltrate your shores, blatantly walking into your home, spreading cloaks of evil and death. The National Post (November 7, 2014) wrote, “Was he ( the gunman) driven by mental illness and drugs? Was the attack a function of extreme religious beliefs, a reaction to the war on the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham? Or was it a copycat crime possibly triggered by the killing of another Canadian soldier in Quebec two days earlier?”

I don’t know how to think about this horror. It is a wide leap to blame immigration, carding, identifying good people from bad. How do we know? Do we really want to try to read the faces of every person who jostles us on the street, scrutinizing by beards, sneers, limps, thick glasses, funny hats and outlandish clothes, or maybe the ones who look most normal like Paul Bernardo: wolves in sheep’s clothing. Ironically, the mother of the gunman (Michael Zehaf-Bibeau born in Canada in 1982), Susan Bibeau, worked as the deputy chairperson of the Immigration Committee at the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.

Having just returned from visiting the 9/11 Museum in New York, and caught in the teeming continuous flow of people in the streets, I cannot know who possesses the madness to pull a trigger or grab my hand in friendship. How do we make judgments that will keep us safe in our home, in our country?

My Pilates instructor that morning suggested that watching the news of the gunman on the hill was like a film trailer of a new catastrophe films. When I worked at the College and rushed in to witness the Twin Towers pierced by the plane,s I thought the same: just rewind the tape and remove the catastrophe, I silently pleaded in my head.

This film’s events at Parliament hill shot by Globe and Mail reporter Josh Wingrove were raw and brutal, revealing the bravery of the police/ RCMP that tailed the shooter, not hanging back. Maybe a bit like the Blair Witch documentary with the smudgy, dropped camera that tracks a murderer in small town America. Loose focus ,but mouth-dropping brave. And the story-our story of the Sergeant at arms who practices weekly with his gun, who was at the ready, and acted immediately. High, hideous, drama in deed.

We, the observers, stand outside the drama gawking, but truly we are inside in the heart of the violence, in our theoretical home, our head, our parliament that organizes our lives in this country. I never drive the Highway of Heroes without reflecting on Nathan Cirillo’s final ride and the people who stood at the edge of the road in freezing cold. His stepfather said, “We are not only mourning as a family, but also a country.”

When I taught my Post-colonial class at Northern, I instructed my classes, “ We all came from somewhere outside Canada; we are all immigrants to this country.”