Life in Biblical Israel

For those of you who read my blog, it will be no surprise to you that I have an interest in Israel and Jewish history. My undergraduate and graduate degrees are both in history, and I also have a MLS in Library Science. So history and reading are central to who I am and the types of things I like to read - in addition to fiction, of course. I maintain a separate blog for Holocaust Resources for K-12 young people.

I am always looking for ways to self-educate on these topics. One great place is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's MIT OpenCourseWare with free access to over 2000 different college level courses. I am slowly working though the readings for the course: Jews from Biblical to Modern Times.

This book is a fascinating look at the domestic, economic, political, cultural, and religious life of the Israelites dating back to the eight century B.C.E. The archaeological records are matched to biblical verses creating a very interesting journey through Biblical history. In particular, I loved the domestic and cultural sections. Life centered around the home, which in many cases was a three-leveled pillared house. The ground level served as a manger for the animals owned by the family. The animals were taken out to pasture daily and the ground floor was cleaned. The head of the household and immediate family slept on the second level. The third level, or roof level, was used for outdoor family activities. Often a number of houses were found together in a family compound.

TITLE: Life in Biblical Israel
AUTHOR: Philip King and Lawrence Stager
COPYRIGHT: 2001
PAGES: 412
TYPE: non-fiction
RECOMMEND: For an academic text written by historians, this book was very readable and interesting. I am very glad that I was led to it.
SERIES: Library of Ancient Israel

Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival

Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival by Clara Kramer is an amazing story of survival. In addition to surviving with 17 other people in the dug-out basement of a house for 18 months, fifteen year old Clara (at the insistence of her mother) kept a written record of their day to day lives, the fears and sorrows, and the joys. The details of living under such stress are the moments which make this such a compelling story.

As if living under a house in a crawl space dug out with your own hands is not enough, it is incredible who lived above them in the house. Initially the house was inhabited by Mr. and Mrs. Beck who were both German. Before the war, Julia Beck has served as a maid for Clara's family and she convinced her husband, who was known to be anti-Semetic, to allow the families to hide under their house. In addition, the house was inhabited by Nazi trainmen and Nazi soldiers. Many times, the Jewish families lives were saved by only seconds of time - time to hide, time to eat, time to cry. After the war Clara and her family returned to their own home which became a gathering place for the mere fifty surviving Jews of the 5,000 who had lived in Zolkiew Poland before the war. I was stunned, but not terribly surprised, by Clara's statement after her return to life:

From the stories the survivors told us, I realized we had it better than most. (p. 310)

Still, for me, the most poignant paragraph in the book was written in Clara's diary near the end of the war, with the enemy in the rooms above them and the Becks under suspicion:

Tuesday, 9 May 1944. You could think that a person who looks into the eyes of death as many times as we do would get used to it. But it's the opposite with us. The more we are in danger of dying, the more we are frightened. One wants to live no matter what and no matter how. Every day we look death in the eyes and every day has its own history. If at least we had a verdict, a time, how long we will suffer. We are sitting here and we don't even know if it's for nothing. (p. 262)

To continue on day after day, not knowing when it would end - or how it would end had to have been such an emotional strain and yet these 18 people survived. Ultimately Julia and Valentine Beck were honored at Yad Vashem in Israel. The Beck's daughter, Ala, who lived in the house with the eighteen survivors for most of the war came to the service and planted a tree in the Garden of the Righteous. And Clara - she tries still to live her life worthy of the Becks and her sister Mania who died trying to escape the basement during a fire. She considers her work on Holocaust education a large part of her obligation to these people she loved so much.

Harper Collins provides the reader with the following message from the author (this is also in the book):
4/6/2009
To the Readers of Clara's War
Writing this book was like walking out of my kitchen door in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and straight into my home in Zolkiew. Although the events in this book happened over 60 years ago, they have never left me. As with many survivors, I relive them in the present. I am 81 years old, and I am one of the lucky ones. Ever since the day I left the bunker, I have done my best to live a worthy life. I have dedicated myself to the teaching of the Holocaust. The privilege of surviving comes with the responsibility of sharing the story of those who did not. Everything in this book is as I lived and remember it, although I have taken the liberty of reconstructing dialogue to the best of my recollection. I have also used the spelling and names most familiar to me. During the 18 months I spent in the bunker, I kept a diary which today is in the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. There was little light and less paper and only one nub of a pencil to write with. I documented as much as I could in my diary, but although I often spoke about my life, the idea of writing about it never occurred to me. Thank you (to my cowriter) for encouraging me and for taking this journey with me back to Zolkiew. And thank you for capturing my life so beautifully on paper. I am so grateful that my great-great-grandchildren will be able to meet those of us who came before.

From my memory to theirs, and to yours—

Clara Kramer
{accessed at http://www.harpercollins.com/author/microsite/news.aspx?authorid=35107&newsid=5447#5447}

And here is a YouTube video made by the author.

TITLE: Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival
AUTHOR: Clara Kramer
CO-AUTHOR: Stephen Glantz
COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 339
TYPE: non-fiction
RECOMMEND: A moving story of heroism and determination.
AWARDS: 2010 Sophy Brody Honor Book

28. The Smell of Humans: A Memoir of the Holocaust in Hungary

The Smell of Humans: A Memoir of the Holocaust in Hungary by Erno Szep and translated by John Batki covers only one small period of time and life as it was lived by only one man of fifty. The war was nearing its end and the bulk of Hungarian Jews had already been deported. In October 1944, Szep , a sixty year old Hungarian Jewish poet, and 49 other older men were rounded up by young Arrow Cross Youths. Just days before Governor Horthy declared a unilateral cessation of hostilities - for which he was deposed. The Germans and their Hungarian allies used these last Jewish men to dig and build an earthworks around their city of Budapest to protect the city from the oncoming Russians. Szep was released on November 6 when the Russians reached the perimeter of the city and managed to live while many others did not. This is a story of only 19 days. But we learn many things from the attitudes of the author, his eye for details, and the brilliance of his thoughts. I would like to share a few passages that struck me as very important to the understanding of his writings:

A man's biography consists of his thoughts. Everything else that happens to me is something alien. As we slipped and slid around in that mud the work was slowed down, providing an occassion for more conscious reflection. We are always thinking about something, although we may not pay attention to our thoughts. Now, writing ten months after the events, I cannot recall a speck of what I had been thinking then. But I do remember trying to recall the thoughts of that day on the march back. And I was unable to recover a single snippet of what my mind had dug up during that day. Thoughts sink into forgetfulness as quickly as rain into the earth. (p. 130)

With bombs falling all around the area where the men slept and worked, Szep wrote about his feelings:

I saw, not for the first time, that one did not fear death in its immediate presence. Thinking stops at such times. Within seconds a process of shutting off takes over within the brain, so that the mind (and, we might say, the soul) rejects, refuses to acknowledge all the horrors accosting us. There is a beautiful wisdom in this built-in self-defence. (p. 142)

Much like shock perhaps. Or the disbelief that something so horrible could happen. I have often hoped that people faced with these tragic endings might believe to the end that there is truth and beauty just on the other side of the river or hill. And then be surprised by death, maybe bewildered. And sanctified. I have often said that while I do not want to die, I am in no way afraid of death. So many people have faced it before me and in less gentle ways perhaps, that I should follow them with delight in our spiritual reawakening.

TITLE: The Smell of Humans: A Memoir of the Holocaust in Hungary

AUTHOR: Erno Szep

COPYRIGHT: 1945 in Hungary, 1994 in English

TYPE: memoir Holocaust

RECOMMEND: a work of great interest

27. Songs for the Butcher's Daughter

Songs for the Butcher's Daughter by Peter Manseau was mesmerizingly wonderful. I am so thankful to other bloggers who reviewed it which encouraged me to pick it up. The story is told in two voices and two time periods. It is a story of love and loss, beauty and truth, and faith. It is an old man's memoirs and a young man's thoughts and dreams. The voices and stories are alternated between an old Jewish man, Itsik Malpesh, who has written his life story via the Yiddish alphabet and a young Catholic man who, through translator's notes written as he translates Malpesh's story from Yiddish to English, interjects his own story and problems.

Malpesh's story begins in 1903 in Bessarabia, follows him through the two world wars, and to Baltimore where the collaboration begins between the two men. The younger man is a college graduate with a degree in religions and languages. He has recently learned to read Yiddish and comes to meet with Malpesh. This is the great coincidence of the book and holds the wonder of both men's stories.

The writing in this novel is excellent and I was delighted with the format. Because Malpesh described himself first as a poet, writing love poems for a woman he never really knew, the writing in the novel includes many of his songs for the butcher's daughter, who was present at his birth. The author includes Jewish culture from the "old country" as well as descriptions of the immigrant experience. Additionally, the lives of both men shelter some wonderfully interesting characters which Manseau presents to us in a fullness that brings both worlds into sharp focus.

While I found myself loving both men, I was drawn to the younger man in this novel. Like him, I am Catholic. Also like him, I am drawn to Judaism - the history, the culture, the beliefs, by an unknown force. The translator's life was in some way changed by his interaction with a faith not his own, and I believe that mine is as well. I loved this novel. The focus on languages and hope uplifted me even in the face of sadness.

This is author Peter Manseau's first novel. You can listen to an interview with the author at NPR. Songs for the Butcher's Daughter was the winner of the National Jewish Book Award for fiction and the Sophie Brody Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Jewish Literature. The novel was shortlisted for the Mercantile Library First Novel Prize and was recognized as one of ABC Australia's Best International Books of the Year. You can visit the author's website as well.

TITLE: Songs for the Butcher's Daughter

AUTHOR: Peter Manseau

COPYRIGHT: 2008

PAGES: 370

TYPE: fiction

RECOMMEND: Best book I have read in some time! Please do give this book a chance.