Category Archives: Book Recommendations

Book Recommendation – “Bending Toward the Sun: A Mother and Daughter Memoir,” by Leslie Gilbert-Lurie with Rita Lurie

09 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Book Recommendations

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This wonderful memoir is so beautifully written, heart-breaking and honest that I cursed my exhaustion when sleep interrupted my reading. The author’s mother, Rita (Ruchel) Lurie at the age of 5 years with 14 members of her family were forced to flee their homes in Poland and were taken in by righteous rescuers who risked their own lives to hide this family in a dark attic for two years between the summers of 1942 and 1944 while Nazis frequented the farm and wandered menacingly around outside.

Rita witnessed the death of her baby brother Nahum and then her mother Leah two weeks later (from a broken heart?) in that attic. Rita and the remnants of her family (her father Isaac and sister Sara, soon to be renamed Sandra) wandered around Europe for 5 years until the United States took them in. The damage, of course, was done, and this was only the beginning of Rita’s life-long challenges to cope with the wounds she suffered with the loss of her mother and brother, her father’s marriage to a woman possessed with her own demons as a survivor of Auschwitz, and a father who loved her dearly but was limited emotionally and unable to give Rita what she really needed and wanted.

Yet, this beautiful little girl grew into a beautiful woman, married a prince of a man whom she loved and who loved her, and mothered three exceptional children of her own, all of whom have spent their lives in one way or another trying to make right for their mom what was beyond their capacity to do.

Rita’s oldest daughter Leslie, in elegant prose and with keen insight into her mother and herself, tells their story following nearly a decade of writing, researching, returning to Poland, and seeking out both the rescuers, neighbors and relatives who lived in the attic.

Rita’s and Leslie’s candor is ever-present and exceptionally self-revealing. They share some of their deepest secrets, fears, passions, and drives, and their courage in doing so speaks to their strength as individuals and to the power of their family “enmeshment” and loving bond. Leslie’s daughter Mikaela, now a teenager two generations removed from the Shoah, carries the DNA of her grandmother’s and mother’s experience into the next generation. The cover photo of the book shows the three of them walking away down a country road towards the sun.

There are many Holocaust memoirs, and they all break-the heart. This one does that but it also uplifts, and I recommend it highly.

For more information, see Leslie’s blog and an overview of the book at http://www.bendingtowardthesun.com/bending_toward_sun.php

 

 

A Strong Recommendation to read “A New Voice For Israel” – by Jeremy Ben-Ami

24 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by in Book Recommendations, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism

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If you read any book this year on the American Jewish community and its relationship to the State of Israel, let it be Jeremy Ben-Ami’s A New Voice for Israel: Fighting for the Survival of the Jewish Nation.

This book is a must-read for anyone seriously interested in the long term survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Jeremy writes clearly about who we are as a people, what we have become and where we have to go in order for Israel to fulfill its own Declaration of Independence as an embodiment of the prophetic vision that we be an or lagoyim, a light to the nations. Jeremy’s views are at once cogent, pragmatic, seasoned, nuanced, realistic, rational, moral, emotional, and visionary. In reading this book, which I finished this morning, I found myself nodding in agreement on virtually every page.

Jeremy writes of his own personal history (so the book is part memoir), and that of his grandparents who made aliyah in 1882 and settled in Petach Tikvah, and his parents. His father became a follower of the revisionist leader Zev Jabotinsky and later of Menachem Begin, and was aboard the Altalena ship when Ben Gurion ordered an attack upon it.

As it happens, my own family history intersects with Jeremy’s in those earliest of years of Zionist settlement. My great-great uncle, Avram Shapira, known as the Shomer of Petach Tikva (he was the first Jewish policemen anywhere in Palestine), also with his family made aliyah in 1878 from the Crimea, settled for 2 years in the Old City of Jerusalem (there wasn’t a “new city” at that time) before moving in 1880 to Petach Tikvah when only 3 other families lived there.  I met Uncle Avram at the age of 7 in 1956 when he visited our family in Los Angeles, but that is a story for another blog. I’m delighted by this connection with Jeremy and his family.

Jeremy’s book will mark, in my view, a turning point in the conversation between American Jews and Israelis, even as his creation of J Street has transformed the dynamics of American Jewish political life. Yasher koach to him and to the legions now joining this movement that he has inspired.

You can order the book on-line at Amazon. No, I receive no kick-backs for recommending it, just the satisfaction in knowing that if you read it, you will begin to understand what is at stake in a new way and hopefully to join in the work for the peace and security of the Jewish people and the Palestinians in our shared land.

L’shalom,

John Rosove