FN FORUM BOOK CLUB
Cry of the Giraffe by Judie Oron (Annick Press) Tis is the true story of one girl’s harrow- ing trek from Ethiopia to Israel. In the early 1980s, thousands of Ethiopian Jews fled the civil unrest, famine and religious persecu- tion of their native land bound for Israel. Wuditu and her family made that life risk- ing journey, which led them to a refugee camp in Sudan, where they were separated. Terrified, 15-year-old Wuditu returned to Ethiopia alone. Eventually, Judie Oron, a journalist now living in Toronto, risked her life to save Wuditu and take her to safety in Israel, where she still lives today.
How to Make Peace in the Middle East in Six Months or Less by Gregory Levey (Free Press) Following a stint writing speeches for the Israeli government, Gregory Levey returns to North America, thinking he is leaving the madness of the Middle East conflict behind. Tink again. He discovers that everyone on this side of the Atlantic seems to think that they have the solution to the ongoing con- flict. Tired of all the debate, he decides to try to solve the conflict himself by asking why the Middle East situation continues to go unresolved and why so many people are so obsessed with it? Levey sits down with poli- ticians, lobbyists, journalists, former Israeli spies and hundreds of Jewish grandmothers.
Living Legacies - A collection of writing by contemporary Canadian Jewish Women edited by Liz Pearl (PK Press) In Living Legacies, Liz Pearl gathers a compilation of motivating stories of lives lived and cherished. Everyone — parents, children, teachers, students, spiritual leaders and other professionals — each have a personal story to tell and this book shares the views and hopes of women across the country, reaching deeply into their inner thoughts and beliefs. Te book is organized with in- teresting biographical information about each contributor.
Reaching Beyond the Religious by Elan Divon (iUniverse) Dispelling the idea that we can create our destinies by tapping into the power of our in- tentions, Reaching Beyond the Religious flips the paradigm on its head and challenges our basic assumptions about the world, G-d and the human enterprise. Te book unearths seven universal wisdom themes from across the religious spectrum and maps these onto the complexities of modern day life. From Genesis, Job and the Hindu god, Shiva, to the dramatic presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the book charts the teachings of the past onto the present while exploring humankind’s most pressing and difficult questions.
Puppet by Eva Wiseman (Tundra Books)
Novels about European Jewish history are seldom cheerful. Expulsion, forced conversion, ghettoization, pogroms and genocide are dark and prominent themes that often threaten to overpower the Jewish meta-narrative. It is imperative, however, to retell these stories to chil-
dren old enough to hear them: not only to ensure history is not repeated, but also to emphasize that we are a people that has survived the worst history has to offer and yet we are still strong. Eva Wiseman has chosen the blood libel for Puppet, a book aimed at
middle- to high-school age students. The myth that Jews use the blood of Christian children to bake matzoh for Pesach originated in the Middle Ages, but persisted in the public imagination in Europe until almost the 20th century (and still, amazingly, persists today, in a few dark corners of the Internet). Puppet is loosely based on the Schiff trial in Hungary in 1882.
A young servant girl disappears, and the village’s Jews are blamed for the crime, based on heavily coerced testimony from Morris Scharf, the son
14 friday night Winter 2011 Gene Wilder
Inspiration through Adversity by Gerald Ziedenberg (AuthorHouse) Born in Toronto in 1939, Gerald Zieden- berg grew up with a serious arm defect called Erb’s palsy. Despite adversity, Zie- denberg managed to get through phar- macy school, eventually own and oper- ate three profitable downtown Shoppers Drug Mart stores, complete several mara- thons and frequently cycle more than 100 miles a day. Ziedenberg examines the struggles and the successes of a first generation Jewish Torontonian, who aſter a career as a pharmacist, became a historian, lecturer and community contributor, despite horrendous pain and lack of mobility.
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of the synagogue’s caretaker. The story is told from the point of view of another non-Jewish servant girl, Julie, whose coura- geous and truthful testimony finally wins out over Morris’s coached words. The book succeeds on many levels. About a third of the
book is a compellingly written police procedural that rivals episodes of Law & Order. It is a story honouring the righteous gentiles who have often protected Jews, even to their own detri- ment. It is also a family drama, and although Julie’s family — sick
and dying gentle mother, evil alcoholic father without redeeming feature, vulnerable younger sister — is perhaps overly simplified, the eventual resolu- tion will satisfy and comfort the young people for whom the book is written. Most of all, perhaps, it is the story of a prodigal son, Morris, and his journey
from terrified puppet of the ruling regime to victimized false consciousness, and back to the forgiving and welcoming arms of his father. Here we find a thread in Jewish history even stronger than death and destruction: love and devotion to one another, even in the most terrible of circumstances.
Dr. Jessica Langer teaches at the University of Toronto and Humber College. She received her PhD in English from the University of London in 2009.
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