BOOKS REVIEWS

ILIL ARBEL'S "THE LEMON TREE" : A MASTERPIECE

As soon as you begin to read Ilil Arbel's masterpiece, "The Lemon Tree", you start to feel the presence of a superb writer who has unveiled the intimate secrets of conversing with the depth of the soul and the warmth of a parallel world of beauty and love which dissipated in joyfully morose and cherished memories. Arbel's tender, heart felt and nostalgic style echoes the drama of Tolstoy and charming eloquence of Victor Hugo. The inner world of Tolstoy bursts in war and peace. The external world of Hugo explodes within fragile tableaux of human drama, romantic visions and half human, half divine lyricism. In her book, Arbel blends both, the human lava of Tolstoy and the enchanting world of the family, the loved ones, the painful memory of a lost child, the shadow of a hard destiny which still haunts those who survived tyranny and horror, and perhaps, just perhaps the sadness they feel, for they are unable now to share moments of joy and peace with the loved ones who are no longer around...This was the world of the man who wrote "Les Miserables", and Hugo's world takes form and place in the writings of Arbel.

Photo: Ilil Arbel, author of "THE LEMON TREE".

The past is romantic, but no one wants to live it again. In Arbel's book, the past continues on a different path. It is a joyful one, a hopeful road of life, despite the hard time, the suffering, the constant threat of typhoid fever and horrible deceases without cure, facing arrest at Port Said, the fear of being shot by Manchurian officials for smuggling "a few necessities of life", and desperately chasing runway trains, her parents went through, suffered from and barely made it to the promised land. Arbel wrote about all these unpleasant and horrifying events her parents experienced and suffered from. However, the sweetness and lyrical warmth of her style, the way she described how Marusia, Ilil family's nanny was concerned about Ida, (Ilil's mother) frozen nose, because Siberia's icy weather, where Ilil's parent previously lived, had no mercy on humans, and how papa used to rub her frozen nose with snow and goose fat, while hugging her. You will be touched by the simplistic, yet majestically eloquent and descriptive style of Arbel which brought back the memories of taking trips to the woods to collect bluebells and wild berries, skating on the Siberian ice, building huge snowmen with coal eyes, traveling in troikas, pushing their "child-size sleds", running madly with exuberant joy and innocence, jumping to lie on them and " traveling for unbelievable distances on the uninterrupted sheets of ice, feeling as if they were flying."

THE LEMON TREE": A TRIUMPH OF THE PEN AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT!

Photo: Ida Rosenfeld, Ilil's Mama and co-author of the magnificent book "THE LEMON TREE". A great woman with a heart bigger than the world we live in. Photo taken in Nancy, France.

In a heart-felt style and with an honest beauty, Arbel wrote: "Under the dining room window stood a tropical jungle. Mama could raise any plant, anywhere, even in the arctic weather of Siberia...Mama had a special piece of furniture built for the houseplants, shaped like wooden stairs, stained dark brown, and hand rubbed with oil to a high gloss. Diverse plants stood on the stairs, arranged according to height. The rich, dark green leaves moved slightly in the air currents created by the ever-present heat from the giant stove and the occasional drafts when the door was opened. The intricate greenery looked magical against the white world outside." Another passage from "The Lemon Tree" touched my heart and my very soul. It goes like this "The next day I woke up early, remembering that this was Sasha's tenth birthday.

I knew a big secret-the nature of the best present- and was terribly excited. It was still dark and bitterly cold, despite the stove in every room, and I hurriedly put on my wooly blue dressing gown and furry slippers before running downstairs to the warm kitchen. It smelled of cinnamon and cloves, since Mama was already creating the birthday cake, her arms deep into flour and sugar. No one could make and decorate cakes like her. Later in Israel, during a desperate shortage of eggs, butter, and sugar, she made cakes from powdered eggs, coarse flour and imitation margarine, and they were still the best cakes I ever ate. I remember her melting raw brown sugar with a tiny birthday candle to create decorations on those cakes, and I still firmly believe that if necessary, she could conjure perfectly good food from virtually thin air." This is how Arbel brought to life the fond memories of her parents, her mama, her grandmother, the aroma that floated in their warm kitchen, the loving, cozy and affectionate warmth which surrounded her parents in Siberia. But the tour de force is how she described the atrocious trip her parents took from Siberia to Israel. And the piece de resistance which will melt the ice in your heart and paint rainbows of one million splashes of rays, lights and mesmerizing tenderness is Arbel's depiction of a tiny potted lemon tree which traveled with the family on a yearlong hard journey. Arbel tells us that "Sasha, their son and brother, raised the lemon tree from a seed that floated in his tea. Dying at age ten, his last request was that the lemon tree would be planted in an orchard in Israel. Nothing would deter the family from fulfilling Sasha's dream." They barely escaped from being shot in Manchuria for smuggling the very few necessities they needed to survive. They chased and chased and chased trains, almost arrested at each port, threatened by illness and feared catching diseases and typhoid fever. Could they survive? Could the small lemon tree in a pot survive the unmerciful cold, the hard, hard and long journey?

"THE LEMON TREE" IS MORE THAN A BOOK OR A DIARY. IT IS A SYMBOL. THE SYMBOL OF SURVIVAL, FAMILY VALUES, THE GOODNESS OF THE EARTH AND THE NOBLE SOUL OF ALL THOSE WHO SPREAD LOVE AND BEAUTY AROUND US...

One could say, what is so special about a lemon tree story? A cold nose in Siberia? Or a tough trip to Israel? The answer is not as easy as the questions, for the message of "THE LEMON TREE" is bigger than life and larger than the immensity of the beauty and decadence of the human race! Yes, it is the chronicle of an ordinary Jewish Russian family who emigrated to Israel.

Yes, it is true, you will be reading about an ordinary and loving Siberian family who lost their child and promised to keep his soul alive through an ordinary lemon tree, should they succeed to plant it in an orchard in Israel. I would give my life for a lemon tree, for a cactus tree, even for the hell tree, if that tree would keep alive the soul, the fragile whispers, the bleeding memory, the loving face of a child I lost and loved so much! This tree is not a plant. In Arbel's book, as well as on the roads of life, Sasha's tree becomes a citadel, a temple, a cathedral, a shrine, a human chronicle, perhaps a human drama, and perhaps too, a guiding light...a strong shoulder...and the reflection of myriads of hope, perhaps? Thanks to the magnificent artistry of Ilil Arbel, the whispers of Ida, the jokes and stories of Papa, the silly but tasty cakes of Mama, we learned that the very simple day by day experience of ordinary but "real" people, the songs they sang, the stories they heard and told, the family bond that ties together, mother, father, grand mother, children and grandchildren, naive but funny jokes are more significant, meaningful , tender and mightier than all the swords of the Iliad and Herculean exploits. Get a copy of the book. Get more copies, if you have real friends. "THE LEMON TREE" is a masterpiece. One of the 10 best books of the year. A triumph of the pen and the human spirit. Two thumbs up.

THE LEMON TREE: Publication date: February 2005. Price: $11.95. Size: 6x9. ISBN: 0-595-33982-4. Pages: 104. Illustrated. Available from Ingram Book Group, Baker & Taylor, iUniverse, Inc., Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.

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End of an Exile: Israel, The Jews and The Gentile World

By James Parkes

Review by Chaim Chertok, Professor of English at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva and author of the forthcoming book, He Also Spoke As A Jew: The Life of James Parkes, to be published by Vallentine Mitchell Publishers.

James Parkes, 1896-1981, is the British historian and Anglican theologian whose more than 20 books and many essays broke essential ground in the begetting of a new, positive Christian approach toward the Jewish people. As early as The Conflict Between the Church and the Synagogue (1934), decades ahead of the present tide of Christian revisionism, Parkes not only located the evil of anti-Semitism in the maw of the Gospels and the Church Fathers but denounced it not as an error but as a sin that had to be uprooted. Indeed, even earlier, Parkes was warning a complacent world about Hitler and, until he himself was almost assassinated, was active in spiriting Jewish refugees across the Continent. Years ahead of the curve and acting mostly alone, this maverick clergyman confronted the powerful missionary block with the Anglican establishment, arguing imperturbably that God did not desire the conversion of the Jews, that Judaism had never been superseded, that the age-old charge of deicide was a calumny which had no basis whatsoever, and that the teaching of contempt for God’s people was a sin again God. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that the Jewish people have ever had a better or better informed friend than James Parkes.

A new edition of End of an Exile: Israel, The Jews and The Gentile World is cause for celebration. Written more than 50 years ago, its argument for the justice and necessity for the return of the Jews to their homeland is as germane today as ever. It serves as a powerful corrective from within the Christian camp to so-called “liberation theology” espoused by trendy Protestant theologians who refuse to acknowledge that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism, and argue that the very existence of the Jewish State is the root of evil in the Middle East that needs to be effaced. Parkes was nothing if not a meticulous historian. In justifying the Jewish re-entry to a land that contained an Arab majority, for example, he demonstrates that Arab claims based upon historical continuity are spurious. As for Jews, however, if over the millennia their numbers in the Middle East have “constantly varied, is has been because of circumstances outside Jewish control, and not because Jews had themselves lost interest in living in their ‘promised land’. On the whole, it may be said that it [the Jewish presence] was always as large as possible in view of conditions existing at any one time.” Thus, End of an Exile is an elegant justification of classical Zionism. While strongly advocating a Jewish return to Zion, however, Parkes did not neglect simultaneously to caution Israel about her obligations: “One day she will recognize that it is wrong to evolve far-fetched arguments to deny any Arab rights in the land they had inhabited so long or to rest their case on the legality of the Balfour Declaration. She was allowed to override normal rights because she had unique claims. But the mission involved a deep debt of honour to those who lost by her gain.” Parkes’ comprehensive store of Jewish history enables him again and again to draw original, apposite comparisons. He points out, for example, how the 19^th century resembles the Roman period. In both eras, Jews “could move freely in a civilization which exercised a powerful attraction for them.” If the former situation gave birth to a new religion, in the 19^th century it was no ethical monotheism but the passion for social justice which provided the spark. “Consequently, the result was not a new religion, but the new political creed of socialism.” Similar stimulating, lively analyses may be found on almost every page. The editors Korn and Kalechofsky have not re-released Parkes’ writing, but have garnished the test with a rich array of essays. With two biographies soon to be released and this highly welcome reissue of this relevant Parkes text, 2005 gives every indication of being the year of Parkes.

End of an Exile: Israel, The Jews and The Gentile World by James Parkes, Edited and Introduced by Eugene B. Korn and Roberta Kalechofsky. Appendix Essays by Reinhold Niebuhr, A. Roy Eckhardt and Eight Others. Marblehead MA: Micah, 2004, 378 pp. $22.95

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Gutnick Edition Chumash - Bamidbar-Numbers -
Commentary by the Lubavitcher Rebbe

"Beautifully designed, rich with splendid features on every single page. This is a very concise and clear modern English translation of the Torah according to Rashi. Accompanied with traditional commentary by authoritative Rabbinic commentators, and scholars of Midrash and Talmud. This remarkable publication is one of the "Essentials".- World Jewish News Agency.

The book includes: A full Hebrew text of Rashi and Onkelos; Separate running commentary based on the Rebbe's sichos at the level of Pshuto shel mikra; Explanation of the name of each Parsha according to the Rebbe's sichos; Summary of Mitzvos found in each Parsha according to Sefer haChinnuch; Full text of Haftaros according to Minhag Chabad, with English Translation according to Metzudos. Ideal for all those wishing to study Chumash seriously, including: Those wishing to Study classic commentaries to the Chumash in English and Shluchim and Rabbonim seeking material for Shiurim and Lectures. (321 Pages). Publisher: Kol Menachem, 2005

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M.L. MALCOLM'S "SILENT LIES": A TRIUMPH! A MASTERPIECE!

Review by Maximillien de Lafayette

Anchor this in your mind: Silent Lies, a novel by M.L. Malcolm is a masterpiece. And let's find out why?

Photo: Jacket/cover of "SILENT LIES", by Burtch Hunter Design LLC.

Malcolm in a captivating story-telling style a la Paris-Berlin-Mata Hari 1912 and Charles Boyer told us and wrote the melodramatic story of LEO, a Hungarian boy who lived in a world of suspense, drama, adventures, mesmerizing sequences and avalanches of events of a world that no longer exists...a modern time romantico-existentialistic-adventurer-go getter young man who mingled with the powerful, the rich, the famous, the infamous, the dangerous, characters of the night, adventurers and threatening figures under the fog of Shanghai...a modern Victor Hugo miserable who reinvented himself with style and unusual persona, who on his first, second or third date asks the woman who met: "Delighted to make your acquaintance. Shall we live in Budapest when we get married?" Quite a character...a human face from a different world. Yet, that mystique world did exist some 70 or 80 years ago in Europe. With a magical narrative style, Malcolm brought back to life, this vanished, mysterious, nostalgic world...along with the intrigues, schemes, adventures, conspiracies, dazzling tableaux of real life, passion, love, mysteries and beyond. It is a fascinating story which enrobes so many facets and aspects of the human spirit, the glitzy and esthetically frightening world of the early 20th century...

The book is written in a very unorthodox and hypnotically, mesmerizing beautiful style. Part, brief human chronicle, part, melodramatic fresco of events in the life of a man facing the world, alone and crossing the frontiers of odds and challenges in un-chartered territories, part, painfully rejoicing tableaux of human drama which is incomprehensible to those who shop a Wall Mart, part, analysis of a man's social, ethical-political priorities and choices, and part, the biggest image of REAL LIFE!

Photo: M.L. Malcolm, author of SILENT LIES.

The cradle, tie, drama, metamorphosis and the stunning magic of the book rotate, evolve and burst around a boy born into an absolute poverty in Hungary, who uses his linguistic abilities to create for himself a new world with a better future, a world with new possibilities, new choices and unknown frontiers. The Hungarian visionary boy is caught up in a series of events which he is unable to control. He leaves Hungary and heads toward Shanghai, hiding a stolen diamond necklace. That necklace could be his new passport to a world of salvation, fortune, or perhaps, fatal destiny!? Malcolm, so admirably in a very intriguing descriptive style ties together all what surrounds the life of this young man. Ernst Hemingway, Emile Zola and Victor Hugo would have loved the narrative style of Malcolm and her human tableaux. For, Malcolm's writing style, compositional structure, narrative sequences, choice of titles for each separate chapter, warmth and substantial depth in the dialogues between LEO and the people, the men and the women he encounters and the delightfully confusing, romantic, fragile, promising and deceitful passages on the road of his life, transport you to an era, to a universe, to suspended moments in time and space, where only giants of the novel like Hugo, Tolstoy, Proust and Zola can forge and throw on the human landscape. Malcolm did just that! Malcolm, despite her relatively new "grand entrance" to the world of novels, would and could rival the best writers and story-tellers of our generation. In addition to the romantic and lyrical aura projected and imbibed by and from the milieus and life stage of Leo, Malcolm succeeded in flirting with the struggles and reconciliations Leo faced, including his own nonreligious Jewish heritage amid the persecution of the Jews in Hungary during and after the first world war and particularly during Nazi Germany. Malcolm, the magician story-teller and writer talked about various events and stories that influenced her and caused major impact on her novel. One of them is the story of her husband's great Aunt Melitta who was an artist. "She used her skill to forge a Siamese (Thai) transit visa for herself and her family, and they escaped the Nazis by fleeing to Shanghai. Melitta and her husband evaded confinement in the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai, because, like Leo, they invented new identities for themselves. They lived in the French Concession for the duration of the war." said M.L. Malcolm.

Malcolm continues: "Hearing Litty's story began my fascination with Shanghai. I was intrigued by the idea that, for over fifty years, it was the only place in the civilized world where you could just show up, without a passport or visa, and begin a new life. The stories of the people who made--and lost--fortunes there were absolutely captivating. I was particularly interested in the period between the two World Wars, because it was a time of such dramatic societal change all over the Western world. At some point I came across a story about a notorious Shanghai gangster, the head of one of the Chinese Triads (which were like the Mafia families, only worse). He supported Chiang Kai-shek's revolution in rather nefarious ways, and that became the genesis for part of Leo's story. In fact all of the events—the fall of Budapest, the Hungarian counterfeiting scandal, the bombing of Shanghai—actually happened the way I describe them. I just inserted a fictional character." The author was asked this question: "In many ways Leo is not at all heroic. Why did you make him the main character?" and Malcolm replied: "For the same reason Margaret Mitchell made Scarlett O'Hara the heroine of Gone with the Wind. To misquote Faulkner, "sin and redemption" make for the most interesting stories. Leo doesn't have a lot of moral guidance growing up. Most of what he does as an adult is motivated by his desire to protect his wife and daughter. Like Scarlett, Leo is a survivor who has to pay a very high price to learn that deception, especially self-deception, often has unintended consequences." And hear this..."Another interesting parallel is the development of the intelligence community. I discuss the development of the Office of Secret Service, the precursor to the CIA. There was a huge amount of disorganization prior to World War II, which the OSS was created to solve. After the war, Congress split the jurisdiction of the CIA and the FBI in ways that didn't make a whole lot of sense, and here we are, fifty years later, trying to figure out how to do it better." This what Malcolm replied to the question "Do you think there are any lessons to be learned from the historical events you write about?"

SILENT LIES is pure magic. A triumph. A masterpiece. Your new passport to the enchanting, nostalgic, sinfully beautiful and melodramatically frightening world that was tailored-made to figures and characters, heroes and villains, lovers and dreamers, people larger than life who came back from Homer's' Iliad to talk to M.L. Malcolm. Get a copy of the book. Get two copies if you have two good friends.

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"Learning From the Tanya":
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, prominent authority on Jewish mysticism, offers authentic look at classic work of Kabbalah

By Amara Levine-Reich

Photo: Rabbi Adin Even Israel Steinsaltz is a recipient of Israel's highest civilian honor, the Israel Prize. "If the Bible is the cornerstone of Judaism, then the Talmud is the central pillar, soaring up from the foundations and supporting the entire spiritual and intellectual edifice. In many ways the Talmud is the most important book in Jewish culture, the backbone of creativity and of national life."

Amid a frenzy of New Age and pop-culture spirituality symbolized by red strings and bottled water with magical healing powers, renowned scholar, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz offers an authentic look at the ancient wisdom of the Kabbalah in his latest book, LEARNING FROM THE TANYA: Volume Two in the Definitive Commentary on the Moral and Mystical Teachings of a Classic Work of Kabbalah (Jossey-Bass: A Wiley Imprint, August 2005, $24.95 cloth, 384 pages, ISBN 0-7879-7892-2). Rabbi Steinsaltz is the author of numerous books on mysticism and Kabbalah, including the critically acclaimed Opening the Tanya, the first volume in his series of companion guides to the Tanya, and the modern classic The Thirteen Petalled Rose.

Photo: Cover of the book "LEARNING FROM TANYA". Learning from the Tanya offers a key for unlocking the mysteries of one of the most extraordinary books of moral teachings ever written. A seminal document in the study of Kabbalah, the Tanya explores and solves the dilemmas of the human soul by arriving at the root causes of its struggles. Though it is a classic Jewish spiritual text, the Tanya and its commentary take a broad and comprehensive approach that is neither specific to Judaism nor tied to a particular personality type or time or point of view. (384 Pages)

In LEARNING FROM THE TANYA, Steinsaltz speaks to readers on all levels of familiarity with Kabbalah and provides an eye-opening and easily comprehensible line-by-line commentary on chapters 13-26 of the Tanya, a seminal work of Hasidic thought. Throughout his commentary, Steinsaltz offers many insights into basic concepts in Jewish mysticism through the use of metaphors, parables, and real-life stories of the Hasidic masters, helping him to transform an often cryptic source text into applicable life lessons and a formula for spiritual growth. In line with the goal of the Tanya itself, Rabbi Steinsaltz aims to reveal the root causes of human failings and to devise comprehensive solutions," thus directing readers in their quest for self-improvement and achieving closeness to God.

LEARNING FROM THE TANYA

LEARNING FROM THE TANYA seeks to explain the role of humanity in the world and their place vis-à-vis God. To that end, Steinsaltz boldly addresses fundamental questions of spiritual existence, such as:
* What is the meaning of truth?
* How can one understand the nature of human experience?
* How does one grow closer to God when He feels so far away?
* What does it mean to serve God?
* Can one approach God without love in his/her heart?
* How does God sustain the existence of the physical world?

Photo: Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz (right) and Ichil Pogranichniy, a Shargorod Jew, converse in Yiddish, as Pogranichniy shows the Jerusalem rabbi some of the Jewish parts of his native town.

The Tanya was written in 1797 by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, one of the most influential leaders and scholars in the Hasidic community of White Russia (now Belarus). Steinsaltz calls Tanya, so named for the Hebrew word meaning "it has been taught," a "lucid and systematic articulation of the fundamentals of Hasidic teaching." LEARNING FROM THE TANYA, along with its predecessor Opening the Tanya, is Steinsaltz's response to a concern that much of modern society is unprepared to tackle difficult source texts on spirituality like the Tanya. He endeavors to bring the universal ideas of the Tanya to a level which every human being can grasp and bring into his/her own life. The Tanya's significance in Jewish philosophy can be primarily attributed to its main character - the intermediate man, or beinoni. "The aim of the mussar (moral teaching) books, and the ideal to which they strive to elevate the human being, is the ideal of the tzaddik, 'the perfectly righteous individual,'" he writes. "In contrast, Tanya was written for intermediates...Not everyone can achieve [being a tzaddik], and not everyone is expected to. Instead, the beinoni is presented as the ideal that everyone can and must attain." It is the Tanya's realistic approach to character growth and its recognition of natural human shortcomings that gives it the universal appeal Steinsaltz builds upon in his commentary.

Photo :Opening the Tanya: Discovering the Moral and Mystical Teachings of a Classic Work of Kabbalah

Scholar, teacher, mystic, scientist, and social critic, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz is regarded as one of the greatest rabbis of this century and hailed by Time as a "once-in-a-millennium scholar." In the United States, he is best known for his monumental translation and commentary on the Talmud. He has been a resident scholar at Yale University, the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, and the Woodrow Wilson Institute in Washington, D.C. Rabbi Steinsaltz has founded a network of educational institutions and outreach programs in the United States, Israel, Great Britain, Australia, and the former Soviet Union. He is the author of hundreds of articles and more than 60 books, including We Jews: Who Are We and What Should We Do?, which was issued by Jossey-Bass earlier this year. He has been featured on Good Morning America and National Public Radio, and in publications such as People and Newsweek. This fall, Rabbi Steinsaltz will embark on a U.S. book tour to promote LEARNING FROM THE TANYA, including public appearances in New York City, Atlanta, and Miami.

Read Column of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People under Siege. Author: Kenneth Levin, Smith and Kraus Global 599pp., $35 Reviewed by P. David Hornik

Kenneth Levin, an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a Princeton-trained historian, has written a definitive, magisterial book about what went wrong during the Oslo era. The malaise, Levin argues, was not just an Israeli one but a Jewish one, typical of both Diaspora and Zionist history in the modern era. It was strikingly evident among pre-Holocaust German Jewry, many of whom attempted to win the favor of the surrounding anti-Semitic society via self-reform, and among American Jewry during the Holocaust, many of whom did not seek to aid their European brethren out of fear that such "nationalism" would offend Americans. This Jewish pathology, in Levin's view, resembles the psychology of abused children who seek to propitiate the abuser by becoming "good" and purging themselves of their supposed failings. The syndrome often entails a "delusional grandiosity"—the idea that one can control one's environment by appeasing the aggressor. Surveying the history of the pre-modern Jewish Diaspora to find out why it was immune to this self-abasing syndrome, Levin finds the answer in the strong communal institutions that reinforced identity and pride despite hostile environments. Even among parts of Spanish Jewry that had secular educations and relatively high access to the surrounding society, the sturdy communal scaffolding prevented wide-scale defection. Similarly, much of East European Jewry showed resilience in the modern era even when religious institutions eroded, by replacing these with secular ones like Jewish labor unions and political parties. Among the Jews who led the Zionist movement, however, there were many who were scarred by Diaspora anti-Semitism and for whom Zionism meant, in part, purifying Jews of their alleged defects. Socialist Zionism sought to create a "new Jew"—a sunburned, virile laborer cleansed of the religious and bourgeois corruptions of the Diaspora. The circle of German Jewish academics surrounding Hebrew University's Martin Buber and Judah Magnes fervently opposed statehood and insisted that Judaism was strictly an ethical, universalizing mission that would win the Arabs' affection if so presented. A countervailing force was David Ben-Gurion, an energetic realist who was able to synthesize modern secularism with healthy pride in Jewish peoplehood, land and tradition. If this affirmative Ben-Gurionist nationalism basically prevailed in the first three decades of Israel's existence, there were two factors, Levin contends, that partially unraveled it. One was the persistence of the Arab siege, even after the victory of the Six Day War that to many, at the time, seemed decisive and final. The other was the triumph of Menachem Begin's Likud Party in the 1977 elections, which finally gave much of the Labor and Left sector a Jewish bête noire—in the shape of Begin's largely religious and traditional constituency—analogous to the "primitive" East European Jews whom an anxious German Jewry had once reviled and blamed for its woes. In the decade and a half leading up to Oslo, the self-blaming mentality quickly gathered steam among the sector susceptible to it.

Largely offspring of Zionist pioneers whose own Jewishness was wounded and ambivalent, lacking inner resources to cope with persistent Arab hatred and aggression, they now had the despised “Other Israel” of the Right on which to project the bewildered self-indictment that the Arab siege induced in them. As the more assertive, Ben-Gurionist trend within Labor Zionism was increasingly conflated with the Right, a school of New Historians arose who reinterpreted Zionist history to show the Jews as colonialist aggressors and the Arabs as passive victims suing for peace. Writers and artists increasingly expressed alienation and even loathing toward the Jewish state. Post-Zionist educators stripped curricula of Jewish content in hopes of producing deracinated, “universalist” Israelis whom no one would perceive as objectionable. Most significantly, and unlike in other democracies, the anti-nationalism of the elites found a wide resonance in the populace. Many Israelis, worn out by the siege, were eager to believe the peace camp's promises of an end to conflict achieved via self-reform—meaning, in this case, the relinquishment of all territorial claims, the suppression of specific Jewish-Zionist values, and the creation of a Palestinian state in whatever borders were demanded. They were enticed by the view that Arab hostility was a function of Israel's misbehavior, and thus within Israel's power to palliate.

Although the Labor Party, in winning the 1992 elections, still made the traditional Labor Zionist concerns about land and security a centerpiece of its campaign, this quickly emerged as political cynicism when Prime Minister Rabin—who had been portrayed as a holdover of the old, centrist realism—embraced the Oslo program of superdoves Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin, and their comrades. The rest of the history is painful and familiar as Yasser Arafat and the PLO, perennial terrorists brought to the territories in the name of peace and reconciliation, lost no time turning them into staging grounds for brutal attacks while the Oslo camp blindly persisted in its delusions in the face of all evidence. It is a history, however, that Levin, with his consummate grasp of both the political and psychological dimensions and their interaction, traces with great eloquence and brilliance. Although not exactly picking up his earlier theme of the importance of strong communal institutions, Levin in his last chapter makes the related argument that, along with political pragmatism, the main remedy to the Oslo syndrome—the proneness to internalize the indictments of enemies and seek to prove one’s “goodness”—lies in imparting a stronger Jewish background to Israeli young people. This means “educat[ing them] in Jewish history, Jewish faith, Jewish ethics . . . , Jewish culture. . . . Educating the young in their intellectual and spiritual heritage can go far to inoculating them against the depredations of the ‘post-Zionist’ institutions they encounter as adults.” Such education should not, Levin clarifies, be “comprehended in chauvinistic terms, nor [promote] a particular strain of Jewish religious practice.” This basically sound position does not, however, anticipate two possible problems: how an adult elite that is itself infected with post-Zionism could be gotten to institute such a program; and whether it could be successfully implemented in a society that categorizes its non-Orthodox majority as “secular” and hence to some degree separate from Jewish tradition. If somewhat open-ended, Levin’s last chapter is still a thoughtful culmination of a great, indispensable book.

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LEEWAY COTTAGE by BETH GUTCHEON

To novelist Beth Gutcheon, the rescue of Denmark's Jews during the Nazi occupation more than 60 years ago was an inspiring but little-known story

To novelist Beth Gutcheon, the rescue of Denmark's Jews during the Nazi occupation more than 60 years ago was an inspiring but little-known story that demanded to be told. Gutcheon was astonished that so few Americans were aware that the citizens of that small country spontaneously rallied in the autumn of 1943 to hide nearly all of its 7,000 Jews and then shuttled them clandestinely to safety in Sweden. She decided to relate that story by weaving it into a novel. "I'm not a non-fiction writer," she said. "I'm not trained as a reporter or a historian, and I have spent my whole adult life becoming a storyteller. So for me that was going to be the only option." Denmark's profile in courage is the centrepiece of her latest novel, Leeway Cottage, a family saga of four generations that is set in large part at their summer colony in the fictitious town of Dundee, along the Maine coast. The story revolves around Sydney Brant, an unhappy young woman born to wealth and privilege who moves to New York to pursue a singing career and get away from her hostile and overbearing mother. She falls in love with Laurus Moss, a gifted Danish pianist. The two marry as war clouds envelop Europe. When the Second World War breaks out and the Nazis invade Denmark, Laurus' concerns about his country and his family - his mother is Jewish - lead him to England, where he helps to build a Danish Resistance movement. In her quest for historical accuracy, Gutcheon combed books and documents and spoke with Danes who experienced the occupation or had relatives in the Resistance. She spent about a week visiting the places in Denmark that she describes in the book, even though she had a familiarity with the country after working there as an au pair when she was 18. What Gutcheon discovered led her to expand her focus beyond the rescue operation to the work of the Resistance, which blew up railroad tracks, sabotaged factories helping the German war effort and smuggled downed Allied airmen to safety. "I realized that the real untold story was that the Danish Jews were all saved, but the young Danish partisans suffered by the thousands, and they suffered terribly," she said. Among them is Laurus' sister, Nina, whose capture leads to a horrific confinement in Ravensbruck, a Nazi concentration camp for women that was infamous for gruesome medical experiments conducted by the SS.

Leeway Cottage Beth Gutcheon Laurus' work with the Resistance and his siblings' experiences under the occupation lead to a psychological gulf that develops in his marriage after the war when he returns home to Sydney and their first child, born while he was in London. Sydney, a woman of enormous needs and marked limitations, shows little interest in her husband's wartime activities and displays scant sympathy for Nina, whom she finds cold. Laurus, who values peace and contentment, understands Sydney's good qualities and tunes out the others. While their differences might drive them apart, their love for each other is genuine and the marriage - like that of many like-minded couples of that era - endures. Gutcheon first learned of the Danes' rescue of the Jews when she was 10 and watched Danish-born pianist and humorist Victor Borge relating on television how King Christian X told Adolf Hitler that if he ordered Jews to wear yellow armbands, he would put on one, too, and all other Danes would follow suit. That story, although untrue, was widely accepted, Gutcheon said, because it spoke to the character of Denmark's people and their deep belief that all Danes should be treated equally. "It has its power as a story because it really is essentially true," she said. What led the Danes to take a stance unlike that of any other nation under Nazi occupation is a question that Gutcheon has pondered. "The story about what happened in Denmark is a mystery about character, and the mystery of the character of an entire country," she said. She cites the influence of N.F.S. Grundtvig, a remarkable 19th-century minister, academic and philosopher who is best known as the father of folk high schools and a pioneer in adult education. He believed that an essential part of being Danish is that all Danes are valued equally. "He established that every Dane is as valuable as every other Dane," Gutcheon said, a belief that was absorbed by Danes in the same way Americans were shaped by the Declaration of Independence and the Bill or Rights. So when Danes are reminded about the heroism of their countrymen, they tend to dismiss it as nothing out of the ordinary. Although Laurus and Sydney spent most of the year in New York, and later Connecticut, most of the narrative of Leeway Cottage takes place in Dundee, a setting similar to where the author spends her summers and where her own extended family has deep roots. Gutcheon's father first vacationed there in 1911. The author, who grew up in western Pennsylvania and has lived for decades in New York City's Soho neighbourhood, said the beauty of coastal Maine is energizing for a writer who spends much of her creative time alone. "Here, looking out the window is enough. It just feeds you," said Gutcheon, a tall woman with salt-pepper hair whose presence and intellect reflect her prep school and Harvard University background. Her postmodern shingle-style home, designed by her ex-husband, Jeffrey, who studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, mirrors the vernacular architecture of the area and echoes design elements of the house in which she grew up. Surrounded by woods and a meadow strewn with wildflowers, it sits near a saltwater cove on a hilly, forested peninsula frequented by artists and writers who occasionally rub shoulders with local farmers and fishermen. Leeway Cottage is the second novel that Gutcheon set in Dundee. The first, More Than You Know, was a critically acclaimed ghost tale melded with a love story. Her next book, which she'll start writing in September, is a sequel to Leeway Cottage and explores what happens to Sydney and Laurus' children.

Photo: Writer Beth Gutcheon.

Novelist Ben Cheever, a fan of Gutcheon, said Leeway Cottage is her best work, one that has the makings of a classic and is reminiscent of William Thackeray's Vanity Fair. "There's this tremendous depth," Cheever said. "The characters are all complicated and unpredictable." Even though he knew through Danish friends of what the Danes had done during the war, Cheever said he was deeply moved by Gutcheon's account. One of those whom Gutcheon drew upon for advice was former soap opera star Alexandra Moltke Isles, whose father served as a courier to the Resistance. Isles, who produced and directed the 1995 documentary film, The Power of Conscience: The Danish Resistance and the Rescue of the Jews, said she was amazed at the depth of Gutcheon's research. "The details are so on target," she said. "And there were things I hadn't known." Gutcheon's earlier novels include Still Missing, which was made into the 1983 movie, and Without a Trace, about a mother's desperate search for her six-year-old son. Gutcheon wrote the screenplay. Before she became a novelist, Gutcheon was an acclaimed fibre artist who wrote successful books on quilting. While she enjoyed quilting and teaching, she tired of the travelling involved and thought she might try her hand at fiction. Her first book, The New Girls, about five young prep-school women in the 1960s, was published in 1979.

Beth Gutcheon grew up in western Pennsylvania. She attended the Sewickley Academy, Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut and Harvard College where she took an honors BA in English literature. She has spent most of her adult life in New York City, except for sojourns in San Francisco and on the coast of Maine. In 1978, she wrote the narration for a feature-length documentary on the Kirov ballet school, The Children of Theatre Street, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and she has made her living fulltime as a storyteller (novelist and sometime screenwriter) since then. Her novels have been translated into fourteen languages, if you count the pirate Chinese edition of Still Missing, plus large print and audio format. Still Missing was made into a feature film called Without a Trace, and also published in a Reader’s Digest Condensed version which particularly pleased her mother. By Jerry Karkawi.

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