Hard to say if this book plays in Peoria, but Chabon prepares a perfect rendition of two genres: 1940s noir detective novels and Yiddish culture. A murder occurs in a sleazebag motel on the wrong side of the tracks in Sitka Alaska, home to Jews who were permitted to settle there after Palestine failed as a Jewish state following WWII. Arab – Israeli conflicts are replaced by Chasidic – Tlingit ones. The hard-drinking detective drinks slivovitz from the old country instead of whiskey; chasidic hoodlums hang in gangs on street corners discussing how to launder stolen money and what’s the talmudic way to kosher pots; and the detective has to follow his chief-of-police, ex-wife (he’s still in love with her) on his hands and knees through an escape tunnel, but all he can think about is how much he misses being able to bite her tushy. The parody holds for the entire book and the more you know about murder-mysteries and Yiddish culture, the more you’ll enjoy it. June 2007.
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The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon **** (of 4)
Hard to say if this book plays in Peoria, but Chabon prepares a perfect rendition of two genres: 1940s noir detective novels and Yiddish culture. A murder occurs in a sleazebag motel on the wrong side of the tracks in Sitka Alaska, home to Jews who were permitted to settle there after Palestine failed as a Jewish state following WWII. Arab – Israeli conflicts are replaced by Chasidic – Tlingit ones. The hard-drinking detective drinks slivovitz from the old country instead of whiskey; chasidic hoodlums hang in gangs on street corners discussing how to launder stolen money and what’s the talmudic way to kosher pots; and the detective has to follow his chief-of-police, ex-wife (he’s still in love with her) on his hands and knees through an escape tunnel, but all he can think about is how much he misses being able to bite her tushy. The parody holds for the entire book and the more you know about murder-mysteries and Yiddish culture, the more you’ll enjoy it. June 2007.
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The World to Come by Dara Horn *** (of 4)
On the plus side I learned a lot about Chagall. Dara Horn writes well. She channels the great Yiddish authors like Peretsky, Singer, Sholom Aleichem, and Nachman of Bratslav. She has compiled a modern version of the angst, absurdity, folklife, and culture of Yiddishkeit. But on the minus side Horn has also created a story that wanders aimlessly, sometimes is senseless to the point of distraction, and admits the entrance of the supernatural (yes, these are all features of the great age of Yiddish literature) in ways that divert her story rather than move it along. September 2008. -
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks **** (of 4)
An extensively researched fictional account of the survival of the Sarajevo Haggadah, the luminescently illustrated (that alone is unusual for a Jewish book) account of the Jewish escape from Egyptian bondage read at the Passover Seder. First printed in the1480s the book survives the Inquisition, 400 years of European travel, World War I, an attempt by the Nazis to steal it from the Sarajevo library in World War II, and the seige of Sarajevo. The story of the book conservator created by Geraldine Brooks to provide the clues to the Haggadah’s history is a little too modern, but it is forgiveable because the historical accounting is simultaneously so well researched and richly portrayed. February 2008.
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Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky *** (of 4)
As a Hampshire College student in the late 70s, Lansky decides to learn Yiddish. At that time Yiddish, having barely survived the murderous rampage of the Holocaust, was being finished off by assimilating Jews anxious to distance themselves from their ghettoized past. Lansky found himself a teacher, an old textbook, and I.B. Singer’s Satan in Goray. Then he could not find any other Yiddish book in print. He puts an ad in the paper searching for extant Yiddish books and starts collecting. Outwitting History is the story of how he saves more than a million Yiddish books and in so doing probably also saves a language and a culture from extinction. He does it, too, with enormous modesty. July 2008 -
Natasha and Other Stories by David Bezmozgis **** (of 4)
This short collection of short stories is a wonderful piece of honey cake with a glass of tea. A Jewish Russian immigrant to Toronto describes the transition he makes with his parents and uncle and aunt as they climb from helpless newcomers to weary acceptance of life in the new world, without ever losing the cultural imprinting that Russia plants within its citizenry. The book is full of smiles of recognition, truthful while remaining fictional–but who knows where autobiography is replaced by a little relish — and I think quite accessible even to people who neither know Russians or Jews. In fact, it’s probably a wonderful introduction to both. The book is short, the stories chronological, the characters continue to grow from one to the next, yet it’s not quite a novel with contiguous chapters. July 2005.
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The Lost: A search for six of six million, by Daniel Mendelsohn **** (of 4)
Nearly sixty years after the author’s great-uncle, wife, and four daughters disappeared in the Holocaust, the author searches for their memories. Beginning with his grandfather’s (his great-uncle’s brother) stories, some letters and finally to several of the 48 survivors of the 6,000 Jews of his great-uncle’s Ukrainian-Polish town, Daniel Mendolsohn exquisitely crafts one of the most memorable, humanizing, personal and universal searches for his roots. In so doing he asks all of us to pause and consider the memories and lives of senior generations who have led us to who we are today. One of the most expertly constructed and readable books I’ve read. July 2009. -
Joy Comes in the Morning by Jonathan Rosen *** (of 4)
An assistant Reform Rabbi slowly loses touch with God while she falls in love with the son of a Holocaust survivor who slowly finds God while the two of them find one another. A nice portrait of the essential tenets of Reform Judaism that what matters most are your actions in life and how the adherence to ritual can help you maintain your religiosity even when – as all Jews do – you must wrestle with the utility of believing in God. The story and the characters seemed real, but the writing was a little stiff. I could put the book down whenever I wanted. December 2004.
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Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander **** (of 4)
Auslander carries all of Woody Allen’s neuroses into the 21st Century and does it with panache. This autobiography is a therapeutic disgorging of growing up under the thumb of an abusive father and overbearing God in an orthodox Jewish home in Monsey, five minutes from my boyhood town. While, in my opinion, he hasn’t yet distinguished his parents’ mishegas from his Yeshiva’s he acts out his youthful frustration by alternately worrying God is going to kill him for going to the Naunuet Mall on Shabbat and giving God the finger for messing with his life. I laughed aloud at scenes such as God’s testing the young Auslander by placing porn magazines behind a stone (not unlike Moses’ stone on Mount Sinai) in a test of faithfulness. My parents thought it was a whiny kvetch book. I loved it. You decide. November 2007
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Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer * (of 4)
Has received excellent reviews from Newsweek, New York Times, New Yorker, and my mother, but I couldn’t read even half of it, so take my review with a grain of salt. A nine-year-old genius of a boy searches the wonderful niches of New York City to learn more about his father who has died in the World Trade Center bombing. I think if you can suspend disbelief enough to believe the kid is really a genius, then the book is full of insight for post-9/11 New York. June, 2005.