Outwitting History by Aaron Lanksy

Once again I must thank Zohar at Man of la Book  for reviewing a book I read based on his review of it.

Outwitting History is about a young man, Aaron Lansky,  who after graduating college in the early eighties developed an interest in his Jewish heritage and learning Yiddish.  This yearning led to a life long quest to collect as many Yiddish books as possible and save them from destruction and the Yiddish language from obsolescence.

Lanksy narrates in first person his mission as he and friends rush around the New York City area saving Yiddish books from garbage dumpsters, dusty attics, and even fisherman wharfs.  As his objective to save the literature of a dying language becomes known, requests start pouring in from around the country and even the globe to come retrieve Yiddish books from certain oblivion.

Lanksy describes the people who want to give him their books: elderly and from a bygone era.   They welcomed him and his friends into their house and forced traditional Jewish food on them.  He and his friends found early on that there was no such thing as picking up the books and immediately leaving.  There was a ritual of hospitality to be performed.  

As Lansky and company ate, these old people from an old country and dying culture regaled them with their stories.  The stories they told held a common theme:  Holocaust, pogroms, losing everything, displaced, learning to start over again in a new country.

Preserving Yiddish is a life long career for Lansky.  He fears that the language and the culture is disappearing.  His hope is to interest young Jewish people in learning the Yiddish language, and to be able to read the millions of Yiddish books he has helped collect and preserve over the last thirty years.

I would have liked a little more information on the books.  He spends minimal time describing the content of the books, although he lists many of the authors.  I gather that much of it is literature and folk lore.  I would be interested in reading English translations of them.

Of course, the argument brought up in the book is that translations are unreliable and books should only be read in their original language.  Be that as it may, realistically, if the books are going to be more widely read they need to be translated into vernacular languages.

A couple of things interested me that perhaps gave me insight into the Jewish mind.  Or least Aaron Lansky's mind.  He believed the only true culture of the Jews was the Yiddish culture.  Yes, Jews may have their roots in Judeasm and religion, but it's the Yiddish language and old European culture that produced it that defines Jewishness today. He describes  Jews that don't conform to this doctrine as "assimilated".

This brings up a provocative point.  Who has the authority to define others?  Must everyone of a certain ethnic background march in lockstep to a prescribed way of life or be considered outcast?  It seems to me that today there is a pervasive movement in many arenas, not only Jewish, but black and Hispanic communities and also the feminist movement where a certain group of individuals claim authority over the others of that category and take it upon themselves to narrowly define that culture or people group.  Those who don't conform are labeled traitors.

Another thing I found interesting was how the Jews who came to the United States from Europe were such loyal adherents to the Socialist and Communist ideologies.  Apparently after being thrown out or escaping from Soviet countries they wished to mirror the political pardigm of the countries they left.  I guess they don't see that the political structure of their home countries might be the reason they had to leave.

I wish Lansky had spent more time making real life individuals out of the people he writes about rather than lumping them all together as a single type.  I also wish he spent more time describing the individual books he was saving rather than lumping them all together as a type as well.

One final thing I took away from Lansky's book was the value on literature and reading that seems to be an integral of Jewish culture.  This is an attribute which causes me to hold Jews and Yiddish culture in great respect.

I wish Aaron Lansky success in preserving Yiddish literature.  May his efforts bear fruit in the next generation.

Further links:

Yiddish Book Center

The Arrogant Years: One Girl's Search for Her Lost Youth From Cairo to Brooklyn by Lucette Lagnado

Lucette Lagnado wrote an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about the current push in certain academic circles to boycott Israel for all its crimes against humanity, specifically its treatment of  Muslims.  Her article was well-written and deftly addressed this latest trend among the "intellectuals" of our time to vilify one group of people while blithely ignoring the the atrocities committed by another.  There's a verse in the Bible that speaks of "straining a gnat and swallowing a camel."  It's not used exactly in this context, but it fits.

At any rate, this article sparked an interest as to who the writer was.  I looked her up and found she had written a couple of memoirs.  Her first book, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, focuses on the life of her father.  This second one, The Arrogant Years, centers around Lagnado's relationship with her mother and her own coming of age in an Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn.

I love to read about cultures and communities other than my own and Lagnado's book provides the reader with a rich, colorful account of life in an Old World household.

The book starts in the first half of the twentieth century in Egypt with her grandmother.  A small, nervous woman who had known wealth and status until her husband deserted her, spent her days sitting on the balcony of her small apartment drinking Turkish cafe and reading innumurable books.  She endowed this habit to her daughter Edith, Lucette's mother.  When Edith wasn't going to school she stayed by her mother's side on the balcony watching the busy streets below while drinking coffee and reading.

The book at this point digresses to fill in the background of the contemporary political climate of Egypt when Lagnado's mother and grandmother were young.  Jews played a prominent role in Egypt's government affairs.  Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived peaceably together.  Her mother eventually got a job teaching at a prestigious school and received the special patronage of the wife of the Pasha -an important government consulate.  As a result, she gained access to the Pasha's library, a treasure trove of thousands of books.  This was Edith's paradise. 

Eventually, Edith gave up her work, her friendship with the Pasha's wife, and her beloved library and, at her mother's insistence, got married.   In Egyptian-as well as Orthodox- culture this meant quitting work and staying home to raise a family.  Ms. Lagnado presents this as a sad development because now, instead of receiving daily intellectual stimulus and the reward of exercising her own teaching gifts, Edith became confined to a household, married to a man who spent his time carousing and socializing.

Edith now had the financial security her mother desperately wanted for her, but at the price of personal fulfillment.  At least this is how Lucette Lagnado describes it.  She was a baby when they left Egypt.  I wonder if this is how Ms. Lagnado's mother described her life (anybody who's stuck home raising children has to be miserable, right? ) or the conclusion she forms based on what her mother or others told her.

It didn't matter because by the 1950's, life changed for everyone  in Egypt with the rise to power of Gamal Abder Nassar and militant Islam.  Jews were ejected from every  walk of public life.  Finally, as with most of the other Egyptian Jews it was necessary for the Lagnado family to move. 

Many Jews moved to Europe and Israel.  The Lagnados moved to the United States and settled in an Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York.

This is where Lucette's own memories serve as the basis for her memoir.  She describes her growing up in a Orthodox neighborhood, the different personalities that made up the membership of her synagogue and her defiance at religious traditions that separated men and women and assigned them to rigid roles.

Her family lost the wealth and status they enjoyed in Egypt. They now struggled to make ends meet.  Her dad spent his days trying to sell men's ties in subways, but finally gave up in the end, a defeated man.  He does not enter much into the story.  Perhaps because he detached himself from his family.  Maybe because her previous book centers around him.

This did not, however, dampen her mother's spirit.  She was determined to make sure her daughter got the right type of education.  Lucette describes her mother in loving terms as a resourceful, energetic and unrelenting person who was determined to make Lucette the person she had failed at becoming.  Lucette's older sister had already abandoned ship, shed her Jewish identity, and had moved beyond the borders of the narrow boundaries of their Orthodox community.  Edith's entire hopes and dreams were planted firmly on Lucette's shoulders.  Edith depended on her "Lou Lou" to reconstruire le foyer (rebuild the hearth), an expression Edith often repeated to her daughter.

I wished that Ms. Lagnado had spent more time writing about her brothers and sister but they are mentioned only peripherally in her book.  I wondered if her sister ever returned to her roots or did she stay away.  I don't know if the brothers left.  They don't seem to have stayed Orthodox.  Perhaps they chose to be culturally Jewish but no more.

Lucette, even though she rebelled at her mother's ambitions, did receive a private education and ended up going to Vassar.  This chapter of her life details her culture shock as for the first time she leaves her community and is exposed to people of other religious and economic backgrounds.  She was surprised to discover that Vassar didn't serve Kosher food.  When she asked, they tried to accomodate her, but it made her feel even more different than the other students.

Lagnado bounces back and forth between her struggle to fit into a society that makes her feel foreign and out of place and the tenacity of her mother.  After her children are raised and living with a husband who has checked out on life, Edith gets a job at the Brooklyn Public Library.  Once again she is surrounded by her favorite friends, books.  Unlike Lucette, Edith seems to have no difficulty merging with the ethnic diversity in her work environment.  She spends her days working hard and developing friendships with men and women from various cultural backgrounds.

The overall tone of the book is sad.  Lucette never seems to gain a sense of belonging.  The Orthodox upbringing that she fought against- or at least its chauvinism-turns out to be her refuge against an alien world.

At university Ms. Lagnado resents her fellow students whom she refers to as "WASPs"(White Anglo Saxon Protestants) because of their dominate culture and wealth.  A sullen tone pervades the chapters of her college life.   It gives the reader the impression that she somehow feels that an apology is owed to her by the WASPs.  As though they are responsible for making her feel different or for the fact that her family didn't have as much money.

Yet as she tracks the lives of the people in her childhood neighborhood, she shows that none of them stayed. They all moved on.  Most acquiring their own wealth and education.  Her brothers and sister, as well as herself, all prospered materially. She follows her friends, members of her synagogue, to wealthy Bronx neighborhoods, upscale estates or to Israel.  Her neighborhood is a good example of the typical upwardly mobile families that dominated our country before the welfare system caused economic stagnation and generational poverty.

 Even though I enjoyed this book, the tone is a melancholy one.  Ms. Lagnado doesn't end the book with any feeling of resolution.  She doesn't impart an attitude that she has finally made sense of her life.

 Lucette is devoted to her Orthodox upbringing and even though she challenged some of the beliefs, she finally chooses to return to Orthodoxy. Orthodox Judaism colors and shapes her identity.  But one thing stood out to me. Lucette is devoted to the Orthodox traditions and liturgy, yet still remains a stranger to God.  God is not mentioned much, except as Someone far away and uninvolved.

She ruminates on the Messiah.  She once had great hopes for His coming.  But as she looks back at history and around at the present, she decides there really is no Messiah.

This is especially interesting to me since, as a Christian, our whole religion is centered around Messiah.  I believe her conclusion is based on a misunderstanding as to who Messiah is.  Her idea of a Messiah is someone who is going to exclusively save the Jews from physical persecution.  In her mind this Messiah never came when the Jews needed Him and now there really is no need for one.

She discounts that everyone still dies and that the Bible makes it clear that death is caused by sin.  Therefore, Messiah is necessary because sin exists as a barrier between God and man and causes eternal death. This is still a problem which needs to be resolved. What mankind still needs to be saved from. Christians see this accomplished when Jesus Christ sacrificed himself and replaced the animal sacrifices that the ancient Jews practiced as a covering for their sins.  And it's not an exclusive salvation.  It's offered to everyone under the sun. Hence, if we accept this offering, we are saved from eternal death and into eternal life, even if we die physically.

There is another reason I found Ms. Lagnado's memoir so interesting.  Her self- identity rooted in her Orthodox culture is in sharp contrast to my own.  As a Christian I don't worry about cultural identity or preserving my traditions.  Someone from China or Nigeria or anywhere in the world, who shares my faith is every bit my brother or sister as anyone who grew up a "WASP" like me.

The other reason I enjoyed this book is because Lagnado successfully paints a beautiful, if sad, picture of the history of, not only her own family's story, but of many people: Jews, Coptic Christians and Muslims.  I recommend this book to people like me, who love try to gain an understanding of someone else's perspective on the world and who enjoys learning about the life stories of others, regardless if-or especially because- their ethnicity and beliefs differ from their own.

Further links:
Washington DC Jewish Community
NY Times Lagnado review
NPR
Jewish Book Council

THe Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Barnes and Noble Classics Series) by Franz Kafka

I first read The Metamorphosis in high school.  No, it was not assigned reading.  I read my father's copy during Geometry class.  Suffice it to say I didn't have a future in engineering.  I could tell that the story symbolized something.  I just wasn't sure what.  I didn't know that Kafka was Jewish at the time, but since he was from Eastern Europe, I concluded that the protagonist represented Jews during Nazi- occupied Europe.  It made sense.  Here was a group of people living their lives like everyone else.  Going to work, raising their families, getting along with their neighbors, even had good friendships with non Jews.

Each Jewish person in Germany, and later throughout most of Europe, must have had a moment in time when they realized that they no longer belonged to the whole.  They had been cut adrift.  Had, in fact, turned into something as repulsive as an insect to the rest of society.  A society they had belonged to as a vibrant, productive member.  Kafka's short story seemed to be telling this story through allegory.

Yet when I  recently read  the story again, I discovered that Kafka had actually died during the  1920's. His work was published in 1915.   He wouldn't have known about the rise of Hitler or the  dark spell he cast across the European continent.    Perhaps it's just as well.  Not too many years later, the rest of Kafka's family died in concentration camps.

The Story:

Gregor Samsa is a hard working young man who struggles to provide for his family.  He has no wife or children.  He is financially supporting his father, mother and a sister.  His hours are long and he is often away from home. Yet he is devoted to his family and willingly toils away.

One morning he wakes up to discover that he is some kind of giant insect.  He no longer can work and his family is horrified.

As the story unfolds, we witness his parents overcoming their initial fear, and developing a sullen resentment against Gregor's plight.  At first his sister shows compassion but she too, eventually neglects him.  We come to understand that Gregor was working hard to pay off a debt his father had accrued.  Furthermore, we find out that there is no reason for his father not to work, he simply refuses to and expects Gregor to provide.  This Gregor had been willing to do until his present predicament. The reason for his family's outrage and resentment against Gregor is that he is no longer useful.

Eventually, Gregor starves to death.  His family is relieved, go out, get jobs of their own and carry on with their lives.  

One feels pity for Gregor, who never seems to resent his family's attitude but only regrets that he is no longer able to help them.

This leaves the reader with a number of questions.  Why was Gregor so submissive to such a selfish father?  Why did he enable his indolence?  Why did he never wake up to the fact that his family never really cared for him, had no respect for him?

I read some of the biography that this edition provided and I form the conclusion that Gregor represented Kafka and he put into parable form his perception of his relationship with his father.  In one letter to his father Kafka wrote, "My writing was all about you..."

This seems evident in some of the other stories included in this collection.  

The story is mostly told in third person/limited from Gregor's viewpoint.  We know Gregor's thoughts- how he feels about his discovery, his reaction to others' words and actions, how he learns to cope with his new body- this enables the reader to vicariously experience Gregor's life.  We learn to empathize with him.  His suffering becomes our own.

After Gregor dies, the narrator switches to omniscient.  We see how the rest of the family reacts to his death and how they continue on.  Perhaps, we feel a certain amount of relief with them but I found it hard to respect them.

Kafka, needless to say, belongs to the genius class of writers because the reality he creates resonates with our own reality.  His work may be fiction but it is still our life story as well.  Our world, our plights and- for some people- a hopelessness in existing.

Each story in The Metamorphosis and Other Stories is so intriguing, I will have to write separate reviews for the "other stories" in future posts.

I bought this book.  

A Rabbi Looks at the Last Days by Jonathan Bernis

       It amazes me that many Christian authors who are focused on the last days do not seem to be aware of what is happening in the Jewish community around the world.

  Just as the Bible predicted, the Jewish people are being restored to their land and to their Messiah. 

   Although Jewish people who accept Yeshua HaMashiach are often ostracized by their families, friends and business associates, Jews all over the world are turning to him and becoming Messianic Jews in numbers not seen since the first century.

    This is how Mr. Bernis opens his book, A Rabbi Looks at the Last Days.  Bernis first describes his own Jewish upbringing and how he came to know the Lord (a girl he used to do heavy drugs with in college became a Christian and was instrumental in leading him to faith.)

      Bernis then goes on to give a brief history of  the Jews and how we can know that the last days prophesied in Revelation are near.

     In his chapter “Why Satan Hates the Jews", he gives a history of their persecution from the Roman destruction of the Temple, the thousands that were massacred during the Crusades, all the countries that expelled them, the Spanish Inquisition, the ghettos of 1826, Russian pogroms, and let’s not forget Hitler. 

     The infamous Adolf Eichmann (1902-1962), sometimes referred to as “the architect of  the Holocaust” and who was hanged for his crimes in 1962, once said, “Throughout history men have dreamed of destroying the children of Abraham.”

     True but the question remains:  Why? (pg. 31)

  Bernis then goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden and explains God’s purpose for the Jews and His plan of salvation for all of mankind through the Jewish nation.  This is why Satan wants to destroy the Jews.  Because he hates God and wants to destroy as many of His creation as he can.

    The second reason we can know that Jesus’ return is imminent is that the scattered Jews are returning to Israel from the four corners of the earth.  He discusses Israel becoming a nation and Jews from all over the world returning there.  He points to Biblical prophecy from the Old Testament that is being fulfilled today.

      The third reason is because many thousands of Jews are turning to Yeshua (chapter 4 "Something is Happening among the Jewish People" pg. 57)   Bernis describes his trips to the former Soviet Union where hundreds of Jews came to Bernis’ preaching venues and surrendered their lives to Christ. 

      In a country beaten down by atheistic values Bernis describes the hunger for the Gospel there.  He found the Jews there very receptive to hearing about Yeshua (as opposed to the U.S. where there is great resistance to belief in Christ and fear of losing one’s “Jewish identity”).

   He also has some interesting comments on the times of the Gentiles nearing fulfillment which ushers in the time for the Jews to receive salvation.

      The second part calls upon Christians and their responsibility to share the gospel among Jewish people.  

      Bernis points out that many well-meaning Christians won't share the Gospel with Jews because they don't want to offend them or even believe there's no need since being God's chosen people saves them.

    Bernis gives a helpful chapter in which he discusses what sort of semantics a Christian should use when sharing the Gospel with a Jewish person.  So much of Christianity has been so "Europeanized" that Jesus Christ is practically unrecognizable to Jews (he said he thought Jesus’ parents were Mr. and Mrs. Christ. Christ is the Greek word for "Messiah").

    He finishes with an interesting chapter on the Tabernacle feasts and especially the Passover and how they foreshadow the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as the Passover lamb “who died once and for all for all our sins, yesterday, today and forever”.

       All in all, I found this an interesting book and a good one for Christians to read to learn about the end times and witnessing to God’s special people from a Messianic Rabbi’s perspective.

I received this book for free from Baker Publishing.

Kindle: $8.79

Other links:

The Jewish Voice

The False Prophet by Ellis Skofield

The Harbinger by Johnathon Cahn

Called to Controversy: The Unlikely Story of Moishe Rosen

Book Review of Crash Course in Jewish HIstory from Abraham to Modern Israel by Ken Spiro

  Rabbi Spiro is an Orthodox Jew who wrote this book based on courses he taught at the Aish HeTorah College of Jewish Studies in Israel.  It is his intention to give Jews a simplified historical line to trace their beginnings as a people to their place in today’s world.

     Because it is a “crash course”, Spiro’s book is easy to read.  In a nutshell, Spiro’s intention is to delineate Judaism from other people groups in the world.

     Now that’s not hard to do or prove.  Jews are the offspring of Abraham with whom God made a covenant.  God does not change or go back on His word.  His plan for the Jewish people will continue until its fruition.  It's important to note that Rabbi Spiro's conclusions differ to what the Bible states in Romans 1:16.  He claims the whole point of the Jewish existence is to usher in world peace. 

      The first part of the book gives a basic run down of historical events that are in the Old Testament.  He skims through the beginnings of the world, the Patriarchs, the Exodus, Moses and the law, the chronicles of the judges, prophets and Kings and finally the Babylonian exile.  This much I already knew from reading my Bible.  Nothing new there. 

     What was interesting was the information he gave concerning the four hundred year gap between the Exile and the Messianic Era.  Here we learn about the Men of the great Assembly, the rise of the Greek empire, the Revolt of the Maccabees, the Romans, Herod and the events that led up to the war of the Jews, the fall of Jerusalem and the Destruction of the Temple.  While these latter things were prophesied in the New Testament (Jesus’ Olivet discourse in Matthew 24) they are not recorded there, presumably because the New Testament writers had all been killed during the Roman Emperor Nero’s persecution.  Much of this I had  read about in Josephus’ books on the War of the Jews but Spiro gives a quick recount which makes it easier for people who just want the skinny on the subject.

       After this, Spiro gives concise accounts of the beginnings of the Talmud, the rise of Islam, the different Jewish groups that scattered throughout Europe during the Middle Ages up to establishing the nation of Israel and the heroic individuals that helped make this historic occasion happen. Spiro describes Kabbalism and the beginning of the Hassidic movement

     Spiro’s main thrust for the rest of the book is how the last two thousand years of has been one long onslaught of persecution and sorrow for the Jewish people.  It is tragic and heart rending to read about.  He doesn’t exaggerate, it is all sadly true.

     Because of the relentless persecution and numerous attempted annihilations of the Jewish people, Spiro concludes that Christianity is a false religion. He also asserts that Christians claim that God changed His mind about the Jews and rejected them in favor of Christians.  On the one hand, I can see how he would think this based on how some Christians or even certain Christian denominations have acted throughout history.   On the other, for all his research, he apparently didn’t take the trouble to actually read the teachings of Christ in the NewTestament to see whether these professing Christians were actually obeying Scripture when they persecuted the Jews.  He might have concluded that instead of Christianity being a false religion that, in fact, some people falsely profess to be Christians.  Jesus said you can judge a tree by its fruit. 

      Interestingly, in Chapter 39 (Origins of Christianity) Spiro claims that Christians have mistranslated the Bible because they used only Greek and Latin translations.  That is a false assertion-every modern translation of the Bible is from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.  This is true even of the 1610 King James Bible. But then he goes on to say that the reason the United States have been a place of refuge for the Jews is because the Puritans who founded our country based their beliefs on Old Testament Scripture and, in fact, many of the founding fathers were Hebrew scholars! (Chapter 54:  Jews and the Founding of America) 

     Finally, he says it’s impossible to read the Bible without Oral Tradition and since time is taking us farther and farther away from Moses and Oral Tradition, the meaning of Scripture is becoming increasingly obscure.  So according to Rabbi Spiro, Christians are wrong because they don’t have an accurate translation of the Bible but then again, he asserts no one can really know what the Bible is saying anyway! 

        Also what I found fascinating was how Spiro acknowledges that the Messianic era began at the time Christ came to earth but doesn’t believe Jesus is the Christ.  He believes the Messiah is still coming and when he does, he will usher in world peace through the Jewish people.

     Yet Spiro doesn’t take into account the problem of sin.  Moses did.  What was the purpose of all those animal sacrifices?  What is the purpose of Yom Kippor and Rosh Hashanah?  Why did the animal sacrifices that were made to atone for the sins of the people stop at the ushering in of the Messianic era?  Isn’t it because the Messiah had in fact come and made the one and only atoning sacrifice when He sacrificed Himself for everyone’s sins- making animal sacrifices no longer necessary?  Does not Isaiah 53 prophesy this very event?   

    Rabbi Spiro ignores all of this and insists that the Messiah is only coming to bring world peace and he’s going to do it through the Jewish people.  He believes the time is very soon now that Israel is a nation again.  He never mentions mankind being reconciled to God. He also fails to share any belief Jews have of the after life. 

     A couple of other things I found interesting.  Spiro is against both the Hassids and the secular Jews.  Both have got it wrong, according to him.  Hassids have created an artificial legalism that isn’t necessary and the secular Jews have capitulated in an effort to assimilate with the Gentiles.  He insists this is also true of any Jew that becomes a Christian: it is merely an insincere effort to avoid persecution.  He doesn’t explain why Jews became Christians even when it caused persecution.  As it does for many today. Some Jewish friends of mine who have become Messianic believers (recognize Jesus Christ as Y'shua Mashiach) have told me that their families held a "shiva" for them.   This is a symbolic burial (literally “seven days of mourning”) for becoming an “apostate”.

     Do I recommend this book?  I don’t know.  I don’t think it is the most informative book out there-even for Jewish history because it is so superficial.  It certainly isn’t a reliable resource for Christians.  I think it’s value for me, as a Christian, lies in that it allows me to get inside the head of a Jewish person and understand why he and-I’m sure other Jews- think the way they do about themselves and how they perceive Christians.

I bought this book.

For more information or book reviews on Jewish literature and culture:
http://kenspiro.com/
The Chosen
Called to Controversy: The Unlikely Story of Moishe Rosen

Old Men at Midnight by Chaim Potok

   Ever since reading The Chosen by Chaim Potok (for my review go here), I have been collecting all the books I can by this wonderful author.  I have done this primarily by belonging to Paperback Swap  This is a web site where you can trade books for free.  For every book you mail to another subscriber, you get a credit that you can then use to request a book from another member.  I have gotten several books this way.  If you’re a cheapskate like me, or, if you’re trying hard to be a good steward with your money (also like me) this is a good place to feed your book habit without paying full price for a book.

     Anyway, as I was saying this is how I am getting books written by Potok.  Chaim Potok is an interesting person.  He was trained as a Rabbi, but was also an editor.  His first book, The Chosen brought him international attention.  He continued writing for the next thirty years, producing several successful novels. Old Men at Midnight was his last book published before he succumbed to brain cancer in 2002.

    Old Men at Midnight is a collection of three short stories.  Each is about a Jewish man and his unique life.  The common thread is a woman named Ilana Davita Dunn.  Each man tells his story to her.

        In the first story, The Ark Builder Davita is a young woman, only eighteen years old.  She is hired by a Polish couple to tutor in English their teenage nephew, Noah, who has just arrived in New York.  As Davita tutors Noah, she comes to find out that he is the sole survivor from his Polish village of the Holocaust.  As their friendship develops Noah opens up and begins to relate his final days in his hometown.  He shares a particular story that continues to haunt him.  It is about a man in their synagogue in Poland who made arks out of wood.   Noah and his brother helped him make the ark in their synagogue. As Noah recounts this episode in his life, Davita comes to understand the tragedy that haunts this young man’s life and left him with deep scars.

        The second, The War Doctor, finds Davita as a college student.  At Columbia University, where she is enrolled, she meets a guest lecturer who has defected from Russia.  At her encouragement he writes his story.  It is a horrific one of someone who compromised his values, his Jewish faith and dignity as a human in order to work up the echelons of Stalin’s regime.

        The last one is called The Trope Teacher, and is the strangest.  Davita is now a middle aged woman who has moved in next door to a Professor at Princeton.  Again she is instrumental in getting someone, Benjamin Walter this time, to tell his story.  His is a story inside of a story.  It harkens back to his childhood where he is given musical instruction by a friend of his father’s, Mr. Zapiski.  Mr. Zapiski is a trope teacher and teaches Benjamin how to chant in Hebrew for his Bar Mitzvah.  Benjamin’s father and Mr. Zapiski were close friends in Germany where they fought in WWI together.  A tragic story exists between the two friends, but neither Benjamin’s father or the trope teacher will divulge what it is.  The story comes about in an unexpected way.  

    Those are the base plot outlines for each story but what makes them worth reading is the eloquence of style and ability of Mr. Potok to make each person- I can’t call them characters- not only extremely interesting but sympathetic.  Chaim Potok is a master storyteller that uses rich colors that draw the reader into each scene, making you want more and regretting when the tale comes to a close.  Or rather, when he stops telling.  One gets the feeling that the stories continue on in their own reality.  Which is why I am trying to read as many of Chaim Potok’s as I can get my hands on.

    

Or buy on Kindle for $11.99

Further links for Chaim Potok:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/472754/Chaim-Potok

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/potok.htm

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Potok.html

Crash Course in Jewish History by Ken Spiro

    Rabbi Spiro is an Orthodox Jew who wrote this book based on courses he taught at the Aish HeTorah College of Jewish Studies in Israel.  It is his intention to give Jews a simplified historical line to trace their beginnings as a people to their place in today’s world.

     Because it is a “crash course”, Spiro’s book is easy to read.  In a nutshell, Spiro’s intention is to delineate Judaism from other people groups in the world.

     Now that’s not hard to do or prove.  Jews are the offspring of Abraham with whom God made a covenant.  God does not change or go back on His word.  His plan for the Jewish people will continue until its fruition.  It's important to note that Rabbi Spiro's conclusions differ to what the Bible states in Romans 1:16.  He claims the whole point of the Jewish existence is to usher in world peace. 

      The first part of the book gives a basic run down of historical events that are in the Old Testament.  He skims through the beginnings of the world, the Patriarchs, the Exodus, Moses and the law, the chronicles of the judges, prophets and Kings and finally the Babylonian exile.  This much I already knew from reading my Bible.  Nothing new there. 

     What was interesting was the information he gave concerning the four hundred year gap between the Exile and the Messianic Era.  Here we learn about the Men of the great Assembly, the rise of the Greek empire, the Revolt of the Maccabees, the Romans, Herod and the events that led up to the war of the Jews, the fall of Jerusalem and the Destruction of the Temple.  While these latter things were prophesied in the New Testament (Jesus’ Olivet discourse in Matthew 24) they are not recorded there, presumably because the New Testament writers had all been killed during the Roman Emperor Nero’s persecution.  Much of this I had  read about in Josephus’ books on the War of the Jews but Spiro gives a quick recount which makes it easier for people who just want the skinny on the subject.

       After this, Spiro gives concise accounts of the beginnings of the Talmud, the rise of Islam, the different Jewish groups that scattered throughout Europe during the Middle Ages up to establishing the nation of Israel and the heroic individuals that helped make this historic occasion happen. Spiro describes Kabbalism and the beginning of the Hassidic movement

     Spiro’s main thrust for the rest of the book is how the last two thousand years of has been one long onslaught of persecution and sorrow for the Jewish people.  It is tragic and heart rending to read about.  He doesn’t exaggerate, it is all sadly true.

     Because of the relentless persecution and numerous attempted annihilations of the Jewish people, Spiro concludes that Christianity is a false religion. He also asserts that Christians claim that God changed His mind about the Jews and rejected them in favor of Christians.  On the one hand, I can see how he would think this based on how some Christians or even certain Christian denominations have acted throughout history.   On the other, for all his research, he apparently didn’t take the trouble to actually read the teachings of Christ in the NewTestament to see whether these professing Christians were actually obeying Scripture when they persecuted the Jews.  He might have concluded that instead of Christianity being a false religion that, in fact, some people falsely profess to be Christians.  Jesus said you can judge a tree by its fruit. 

      Interestingly, in Chapter 39 (Origins of Christianity) Spiro claims that Christians have mistranslated the Bible because they used only Greek and Latin translations.  That is a false assertion-every modern translation of the Bible is from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.  This is true even of the 1610 King James Bible. But then he goes on to say that the reason the United States have been a place of refuge for the Jews is because the Puritans who founded our country based their beliefs on Old Testament Scripture and, in fact, many of the founding fathers were Hebrew scholars! (Chapter 54:  Jews and the Founding of America) 

     Finally, he says it’s impossible to read the Bible without Oral Tradition and since time is taking us farther and farther away from Moses and Oral Tradition, the meaning of Scripture is becoming increasingly obscure.  So according to Rabbi Spiro, Christians are wrong because they don’t have an accurate translation of the Bible but then again, he asserts no one can really know what the Bible is saying anyway! 

        Also what I found fascinating was how Spiro acknowledges that the Messianic era began at the time Christ came to earth but doesn’t believe Jesus is the Christ.  He believes the Messiah is still coming and when he does, he will usher in world peace through the Jewish people.

     Yet Spiro doesn’t take into account the problem of sin.  Moses did.  What was the purpose of all those animal sacrifices?  What is the purpose of Yom Kippor and Rosh Hashanah?  Why did the animal sacrifices that were made to atone for the sins of the people stop at the ushering in of the Messianic era?  Isn’t it because the Messiah had in fact come and made the one and only atoning sacrifice when He sacrificed Himself for everyone’s sins- making animal sacrifices no longer necessary?  Does not Isaiah 53 prophesy this very event?   

    Rabbi Spiro ignores all of this and insists that the Messiah is only coming to bring world peace and he’s going to do it through the Jewish people.  He believes the time is very soon now that Israel is a nation again.  He never mentions mankind being reconciled to God. He also fails to share any belief Jews have of the after life. 

     A couple of other things I found interesting.  Spiro is against both the Hassids and the secular Jews.  Both have got it wrong, according to him.  Hassids have created an artificial legalism that isn’t necessary and the secular Jews have capitulated in an effort to assimilate with the Gentiles.  He insists this is also true of any Jew that becomes a Christian: it is merely an insincere effort to avoid persecution.  He doesn’t explain why Jews became Christians even when it caused persecution.  As it does for many today. Some Jewish friends of mine who have become Messianic believers (recognize Jesus Christ as Y'shua Mashiach) have told me that their families held a "shiva" for them.   This is a symbolic burial (literally “seven days of mourning”) for becoming an “apostate”.

     Do I recommend this book?  I don’t know.  I don’t think it is the most informative book out there-even for Jewish history because it is so superficial.  It certainly isn’t a reliable resource for Christians.  I think it’s value for me, as a Christian, lies in that it allows me to get inside the head of a Jewish person and understand why he and-I’m sure other Jews- think the way they do about themselves and how they perceive Christians.

I bought this book.

For more information or book reviews on Jewish literature and culture:
http://kenspiro.com/
The Chosen
Called to Controversy: The Unlikely Story of Moishe Rosen

Called to Controversy: the Unlikely Story of Moishe Rosen and the Founding of Jews for Jesus by Ruth Rosen

  Moishe Rosen died last year so his daughter, Ruth,  had the wisdom and insight to understand that this unique and Godly man’s life was one that needed to be recorded. Her father’s desire to reach people with the gospel even after death has certainly been fulfilled thanks to this biography.

Ms. Rosen begins with her father’s family. The Rosens were a typical Jewish family during the depression. They worked hard, not letting hard times prevent them from succeeding and making a decent living. They stayed inside their Jewish neighborhood and, even though their religious beliefs were mainly secular as most of their fellow Jews were, their identity in being Jewish was very strong, their sense of community intact. Moishe grew up living a normal life with the expectation that he would join his dad’s business, settle down, meet a nice Jewish girl etc...

Things were going on pretty much according to plan until he met the nice Jewish girl. Ceil came from an orthodox Jewish family that was so harsh and legalistic that she had become a firm atheist. They married while still teenagers but Moishe worked extremely hard at first his dad’s then another company’s business. Little did Moishe know it, but Ceil was going to turn his life in a way that was going to have dramatic repercussions.

It all started when Moishe struck up a friendship with a Christian couple, Orville and Juanita, that engaged Moishe and Ceil in serious discussions about their faith and comparing it to the gospel that claimed that Jesus Christ was the Messiah and, in fact, was God. This led to Ceil sneaking a Christian bible into the home where she began reading the New Testament for herself.

Ceil started reading:

Now she would find out who those Christmas carols were really about and why Jesus was described as the one in whom “the hopes and fears of all the years” resided. She began with the first verse of the first book of the New Testament: “The generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” What’s wrong with that? She thought. It’s saying that Jesus was Jewish!....

…..The more she read, the more impressed she was that this was a Jewish book about a Jewish person who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah. (pg. 57)

Meanwhile, Moishe was having revelations of his own. It started when he met a man on a streetcar as he was returning home from Yom Kippur. Moishe had explained to the man, Orville, that he was fasting to atone for his sins. Orville asked Moishe if he now knew his sins were forgiven. After receiving a shrug and a “who knows” from Moishe, Orville began to explain the gospel and having full assurance for the forgiveness of sins.

The strangest thing was that as he explained the Christian religion, it sounded as though the whole thing was a Jewish idea. The part about Jesus dying to take the punishment for people’s sins, Orville said, was pictured in the original observances of Yom Kippur in Bible times when the Jewish high priest placed his hands on the scapegoat and recited the sins of the people. That goat was then led out into the wilderness, far from the camp of the Israelites. Another goat was sacrificed and its blood sprinkled on the altar as an atonement (covering) for sin. It all sounded weird and spooky to Moishe, but he couldn’t dismiss it as Christian mumbo-jumbo because clearly Orville was describing things from the Torah. (pg 52)

The turning point for Moishe was when he was shocked to find that Ceil had decided that Jesus was the Messiah. In a panic he ran to his Rabbi and presented him with all the arguments Ceil had given him in favor of Jesus fulfilling the prophecies in Isaiah and Jeremiah. What happened was completely unexpected. Each argument the Rabbi gave against Jesus being the Messiah only served to reinforce that Jesus was in fact the Messiah after all. The deal breaker was the argument over the Virgin birth. After going back and forth for a while:

The rabbi smiled mischievously… “well, think on this. It takes two to tango.”… The rabbi explained that when it came to the virgin birth, it simply was not possible.

Moishe later recalled, “What Rabbi Bryks didn’t know was that in that one statement, he completely undermined the case-not only for Christianity- but for Judaism and any kind of theism.”

….If God could not manage this one miracle, how did he mange to create the world, part the Red Sea, or do any other miracle? And if God couldn’t perform miracles, then the Bible must be wrong, in which case being Jewish meant no more or less than being Italian or Greek or African or Mexican- so why should it matter whether or not Jews believed in Jesus? (pg. 65)

The rest, as they say, is history. Moishe became a Christian, went on to seminary, and became involved in missions that specifically reached out to the Jewish community. This eventually led to his organizing the Jews for Jesus movement. The rest of the book describes the evolvement of the organization, the strategies Moishe and the staff learned to reach out to Jewish people and how to buffet “anti-missionaries”. This was a group of Jews that shadowed all the meetings and did their best to sabotage their ministry. Some of these anti-missionaries could get violent. It seems as far as Jewish people are concerned you can be an atheist Jew, a Buddhist Jew, a new age Jew… but you better not ever be a Christian Jew. Moishe and Ceil’s own family members received their conversions with such hostility that they disowned them. Ceil’s family even moved away to an undisclosed location without informing her. On her death bed, Moishe’s own mother told him that if he was going to try to talk about Jesus he could “go to hell!” (Introduction). Moishe dealt with every challenge with a strength and “chutzpah” that could only have come from God.

One area where the ministry was most effective was with the hippie movement in the early seventies. Because hippies had already bucked the system and rejected the established norms, Jewish hippies were much more receptive to hearing the gospel of Christ. In fact, they were responsible for a lot of the growth in Jews for Jesus at that time.

Ruth Rosen gives an honest portrayal of her father. She shows his strengths and also his weaknesses. Her book is a fascinating step by step account of one of the most controversial movements inside Christianity and also its leader. I highly recommend all Christians read this book and I hope they will be convicted as I was by Ms. Rosen’s final words in Appendix A, “Why Witness to the Jewish Peoples?”

Until recently...evangelical churches understood that (presenting the gospel) to all people included Jewish people.

Now there is considerable deviation….some question whether or not the Jewish people need the gospel at all. Others …challenge any method of evangelism that doesn’t begin with a Jewish person approaching a Christian…

Why has Jewish evangelism become so controversial? …(because) it’s easy to go with the flow-to evangelize those who are down and out. Jewish people are among the people groups described as ‘gospel resistant.’

…The other reason is Christians, whether or not they realize or admit it-want to be ‘politically correct.’

….Christians need to recognize that it takes courage to witness to someone who might be offended, angry, or argumentative. It takes courage to broach the subject to someone who may not only reject your message, but reject you…

…I have said it before and I will continue to say it: Bringing the gospel to the Jewish people is perhaps the most significant issue on which the church will prove its character, conviction, and commitment to evangelism.

I received this book for free from Thomas Nelson.

For more information or reviews go to:

http://jewsforjesus.org/

A Different Way a blog by a Messianic Jew

The Gospel Coalition

cheriehillblog

The Esther Project

biblereadingproject

Or buy from Kindle for $9.89

Book Review for They Are Still Alive: A Family's Survival in France during World War II

They Are Still Alive is a memoir by Philip Pressel. It is a recounting of his years as a young boy in Europe during WWII and his subsequent years growing up in America.

Really, anybody's life story is interesting if told well but Pressel's story is especially interesting because he came from a Jewish family from Belgium that had the misfortune of living during Hitler's reign of terror. Pressel's parents fled Belgium to live in France where they made a meager living while trying to escape capture from not only the Nazi's but the French police who acquiesced  to the Germans in trying to round up Jews.

In order to protect their son, Pressel's parents entrusted him to a local French Catholic family who cared for Philip while his parents went underground. Pressel does an excellent job of describing the hardship he and his family went through as well as the generosity of his French foster parents as they all tried to survive those nightmarish times.

After the war, Pressel's family immigrated to the United States where his dad got a job as a translator for the United Nations. This portion of the book serves as a good example of how children thrived and succeeded in getting an education through the public schools despite being foreign, poor, a minority and not being able to speak the language.


I first attended the Arrandale Elementary School and, by necessity, learned English very quickly....In Europe, I had practiced speaking and reading English with my parents. Now I was forced to use my English and really learn it so I could keep up with my studies and socialize. ...I must have had a strong French accent, but it eventually disappeared as I became more “American.” It is amazing how being forced to speak and read English helps people learn the language quickly! Now, in my older years, I disapprove of teaching children in their native language instead of in English. (pg.88, 89)


The rest of the book is a chronology of Pressel's life in America. He got an engineering degree, got married, had kids, worked and pretty much lived a normal life. In his seventies he finally returned to France and was reunited with the family who took care of him there.

Pressel includes letters of his parents that were written during the war years. They can be quite heart rending as they describe their predicament and plea with family members and government officials in America to allow them to immigrate, something that the Allied countries seemed to be stubborn in preventing many desperate Jewish families from doing.

The most interesting aspect of the book for me, beside Pressel's personal account of surviving Hitler's regime (which most of his extended family did not) is the great detail he goes into in describing all the Jewish customs, traditions and holidays.

For my educational benefit, my parents joined Temple Israel, the Conservative synagogue in Great Neck. …


….We (celebrated) Hanukah at home. I lit the candles and she (his mother) made the traditional latkes, potato pancakes. For the New Year holiday Rosh Hashana, we would normally have dinner at her sister Sonia's house and Maman would make her carp dish. On Yom Kipper, the Day of Atonement, she fasted....


On passover, a holiday celebrating Moses leading the Jews from Egypt, we attended the Seder at Aunt Ruth's house..Ruth's husband was Orthodox and ran the service very strictly. He would sit at the head of the table in a white robe, leaning on some pillows. He made sure to recite each word on the Haggadah..... (pg 92,93)


Pressel describes breaking the Matzo and hiding one piece and how he and his cousins would contrive to steal it for presents, since the Seder couldn't be complete without both halves of the Matzo.

Both his parents came from Orthodox Jewish families in Europe, were great Zionists and zealous in preserving their Jewish culture and identity. Nevertheless, Pressel and his family didn't believe in God.

They were not at all religious and the war certainly had a tremendous negative effect on their faith, especially on my father. The loss of his family hit him hard and he lost any belief in God he may have ever had.


…..Maman told me of her own disbelief, but she always felt it was important to realize and be proud we were Jewish. She stressed being supportive of Jewish causes and Israel, even if we were not observant or true believers. (pg. 92)

As far as his own belief is concerned, Pressel has this to say:

..starting at age 8 I learned about being Jewish. Later I observed others...go through the rituals in the synagogue and prayers for various occasions... As I matured I could not understand why so many prayers were read or recited in a language (Hebrew) I could not understand...My parents did not actively practice religion but still wanted me to learn and be proud of my heritage. My father rarely went to synagogue, but he was a secular Zionist of the highest order.....

.....as I matured, I kept saying to myself 'If there really was a God, why did he let the Holocaust happen? …..'Why did God let my son die?... why did God let my father die so young? The more of life that went on, the less I believed in a God...

...What I enjoy the most is the traditional music during the Jewish service. My basic belief is that man created God, not the other way around, in order for people 'in power' to help control populations...(pg177,178)

Pressel's beliefs struck me as especially poignant since I have been studying the book of Isaiah and particularly Chapters 58 and 59:


Declare to my people their rebellion and to the house of Jacob their sins. For day after day they seek me out. They seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God..Why have we fasted, they say, and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves and you have not noticed?


Yet on your day of fasting you do as you please...Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife.....you cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high..(Is. 58:1-4)

Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from you God. (Is 59:1,2)

In other words, empty ritual, ritual practiced for the sake of tradition and preserving one's cultural identity is not God's original intention in proscribing these feast days and festivals to the Jewish people. It was to show them the way to unite with their God. One can't misuse religious practises by ignoring the One who handed them down to you. It renders them obsolete. It also renders the practitioner helpless and lost. Traditions never saved anyone from disaster only God's Redeemer can do that.

The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, He was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so His own arm worked salvation for Him and His own righteousness sustained Him...

The Redeemer will come to Zion to those In Jacob who repent of their sins. (Is 59:15-20)

I think many Jewish people, like Pressel, believe that Messiah is going to come and save them from their oppressors. He is. But first He is going to save them from their own sinful selves. Not only Jewish people but all of us.

I wish Pressel and others like him knew of God's plan of redemption for the world so they could see WWII and all human suffering as something that is coming to an end because one day God is coming to claim His own.
And it won't be practitioners of traditions that have lost sight of the One who has preserved the Jewish race since His covenant with Abraham.

In my next post, I am going to review a biography of someone who didn't survive the Holocaust, yet his conclusions about God were very different from Pressel's.


I received a complimentary copy of They Are Still Alive as a member of the
Dorrance Publishing Book Review Team. Visit dorrancebookstore.com
to learn how you can become a member of the Book Review Team.

You can purchase this book at http://store.yahoo.com/cgi-bin/clink?dorrance+7XZRvv+index.html