No comments about On Colfax Avenue: A Victorian Childhood (Colorado History).

No comments about When Chores Were Done: Boyhood Stories.

1 comments about Spine Intact, Some Creases.

1. As important as this book is (not to mention just plain fun to read) I'm surprised there isn't a raft of reviews. Yes, it's a little pricey and I'm as cheap as the next person. But this one, trust me, is worth the money. Victor Banis was a hero who didn't set out to be, and doesn't even claim the title. But he is.
   
   I love good fiction, but I've always been partial to nonfiction, especially biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. I've read good, bad, and ick. There are many reasons to praise this book, not least of them is that Banis was a pioneer in gay writing at a time when that was a hazardous thing to be, an openly gay man before Stonewall, a time when there were no gay pride parades and gay pride itself was almost unthinkable. Homosexual characters in fiction were required to be miserable, self-hating, and preferably suicidal.
   
   Well, somebody forgot to tell Victor Banis that he couldn't create cheerful, brave, happy gay characters. So he did. If you've never read any of The Man From C.A.M.P. books you should. Banis was young when he wrote them and they are a trip. They're fall-down funny, and the indomitable hero, Jackie, makes Batman look like a wuss (although in appearance he may be closer to Robin). Banis is a writer who clearly delights in what he does and who he is. A master of the written word, he has written 150 books that he can remember and others he has forgotten, under various names, in a career that stretches across nearly fifty years. He knew everybody. He even talked to Hef inside the Playboy mansion, of all places for a gay boy to find himself. Jackie, of C.A.M.P., would have made the most of it.
   
   Spine Intact is a difficult book to write about simply because of its scope. It encompasses a tremendous amount of political history regarding publishing, censorship, gay people, homophobia, and more. Banis was subjected to spying by the government, and during his writing and publishing years he had the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head in the form of possible arrest, prosecution, and jail time. He saw the McCarthy Era as it happened. He had packages and letters opened by the Post Office. Yet through it all, the reader doesn't get the feeling of someone who is frightened, bitter, angry, or full of "why-me". He may very well have been all of those things from time to time; he would hardly have been human if he hadn't. But Victor Banis is quite possibly the most balanced (he would probably say, with a laugh, that he's unbalanced) individual around. Banis has become an icon without intending to be, and any author who writes books with gay characters and every reader who reads them, owes Banis and people like him. They took the lumps and the risks, and defended free speech.
   
   Spine Intact has humor, wit, gossip (but not the malicious kind), history, and compassion. He tells stories of a family that lived in poverty in every way except that of spirit. In fact, when you read about the Banis family you feel that you may be reading about the richest family on earth. They're not a group of Pollyannas and they had their ups, downs, and tragedies but they had each other. There's a delightful story of him and his mother in a bookstore, with his mom calling out the titles of books ("Here's Lesbians On Parade." Is that one of yours?") to the sound of dropping jaws. He doubts she even knew what a lesbian was. I fell in love with Mother Banis at that moment.
   
   There is so much in this book that a complete review would be as long as Les Miserables. My only complaint, and it's not really a complaint but just an observation, is that it should have been two separate books, one dealing with the his autobiographical material and gay history aspect, which were so intertwined, and the other with his sprightly comments on writing and the world, comments that are pithy and wise. It's hard to say if he is amused or bemused by life. Both, I think.
   
   Just as an example of the comments and of his breezy, reader-friendly way of writing, I hope he and his publisher will indulge me in quoting a couple of my favorite lines (there are so many!) "...regret [is] just another...way of flagellating oneself. ... If you like yourself what is there to regret?" (page 326) On supposed Biblical condemnation of homosexuality: " I just know some are dusting off their Sodom and Gomorrah mantelpiece villages at this very moment."(page 342) In the last chapter, writing about not worrying about offending someone because you're going to, sooner or later (he says it much better than that and throws in a great quote from Winston Churchill's wife) he ends by saying "...serve the cheese balls anyway. Someone will love them." (page 358). Trust me. There's a story behind that!
   
   ...Ruth Sims, author of The Phoenix

2 comments about From a World Apart: A Little Girl in the Concentration Camps.

1. Francine Christophe's account of her experiences at the French Concentration Camps at Poitiers, Drancy and Beaune-La-Rolande, it is a very interesting book. She tells the story in a very personal way. She leaves nothing out and tells an honest story about her experience in the camps. Her honest writing helped me understand the hardship that a whole group of children survived during War World 2. I would want people to read the book and see what those people went through at those camps.



2. It is horrible, very real and at the same time beautiful.

3 comments about The Cracked Pot: Finding Grace in the Cracks of Childhood Abuse.

1. Few people have gone through what Jim Cyr did as a child. The fact that he survived, and has created a successful life for himself, is a testimoy to grace. This book is shocking in mnay ways, but Jim is as graphic about the way to his healing as he is about the horrors he experienced. The stories he shares, and how they helped him heal, are especially fresh. Searing in its honesty, without a hint of self-pity ... I applaud Jim for his courage in sharing his story. I hope it points to the path of wholeness for many.



2. I know Jim personaly and wanted to tell everyone what a kind and compassionate man he is. To know now what he has been through, and to know him as I do just shows what Gods Grace can do for anyone of us, whether a sufferer of childhood abuse or not. Read this book, it will truly amaze you, and to know that their is help and a light at the end of the tunnel.



3. Jim has written a compelling and incredibly transparent account of what can only be described as a miracle. The story of his life is riveting - but most importantly, it is encouraging. Buy this book - read it and recommend it to your friends and family.

5 comments about Borrowed Finery: A Memoir.

1. The memoir genre has mushroomed in recent years and prospered on tales of wild dysfunction--true or not. Memoirs also seem to have become the last refuge of the self-indulgent literary ego: 'It really is all about me, and I suffered, dammit!' Paula Fox's 'Borrowed Finery' is an antidote to all those therapy-fed toxic dumps, telling a stark, beautifully crafted tale that persistently shifts focus away from the author and to her fascinating parents, both seemingly momstrous egos in themselves. Like Jeannette Walls' Glass Castle, this book transcends genre and provokes sincere reflection on the concepts of parenthood, childhood and resilience.



2. This is a book I want to love. The prose is precise and sometimes quite haunting. But it's hard to get fully immersed in the narrative. The author seems to be holding her readers at a distance--by giving us summary rather than scenes and reflection.
   
   That said, I am glad I read it. If you are a fan of Paula Fox, I think this is an important read. And if you are interested in memoir, again, this is a good book to spend time with.



3. Never got hooked on this book. Continued to read and finished the book because she is Courtney Love's grandmother and wanted some insight in that regard. I thought it was boring and all over the place. Best memoir I ever read is "The Glass Castle."



4. Returned the book. Started to read the book but within the first cou0ple of pages couldn't get past the word-jams and author's long convoluted sentence structure.



5. "Born in the twenties to nomadic, bohemian parents, Paula Fox was left at birth in a Manhattan orphanage..." What a range of people she had caring for her over her growing up years, what neglect at times, what an interesting range of geographic locations she lived in during her childhood. This "memoir" seemed to hold such promise, but really I found it a chore to read. A collection of memories, not always connected up, it never hooked me in, leaving me eager to find out what happened next. It also completely lacks any analysis - of the characters, events, Paula's reaction to them, the impact on her life, etc. Its main redeeming feature for me was its brevity - had it been longer, I may well have given up. Maybe if I was a fan of her novels (certainly her memoir is well written), or interested in other members of her family (apparently she is Courtney Love's grandmother), I would have been more motivated to enjoy rather than just tolerate this book.

1 comments about Chewing Gum in Holy Water: A Childhood in the Heart of Italy.

1. One of the most enjoyable books I have read in quite a while. I loved it

No comments about I Walked a Mile with Sorrow.

1 comments about Beans and Rice: Growing Up Cuban.

1. Beans and Rice is, without a doubt, one of the best books I have ever read. Martha brings great humor to her experiences growing up in Cuba. Beans and Rice belongs on a best seller list!

3 comments about Escape from Mount Moriah: Memoirs of a Refugee Child's Triumph.

1. This book is a winner within its own niche of brilliance, almost like the universe was holding a sun spot open for this author's childhood chapters, for precisely his, "Memoirs of a Refugee Child's Triumph."
   
   The book felt almost like a child's book, but not like the sometimes silly stuff which is presented as children's literature. Instead, this book felt like it was meant for the children among us who were born adult, in the good sense of the word, born wise, born serious, born knowing there's much work to be done here; not work of the body, but work for the soul of humankind, which has been lost, ignored, pushed down, and choked.
   
   What most makes me want to read Engelhard's books, especially after The Bathsheba Deadline: An Original Novel (see my review), is the pleasant environment of his easy-flowing style, which percolates with a subtle sense of joy, possibly the result of his deep love of writing surging through every inspired or perfectly chosen word.
   
   The next appeal for reading this author's books is that I know I'll find truths in them I've looked for in print but have rarely found. The soul craves the freshness of finding something new, something regenerating, solidly hopeful in a quiet way which comes from facing ugliness without flinching, then moving forward again because there's still something of value ahead, something worth knowing. Nu, nu, nu (see the book's introductory essays for an explanation of that saying).
   
   I'm thankful that Jack Engelhard honored his resistance to attempting an overwhelming research project to write a different, redundant angle on this story. As he implied in his introduction, all the book needed was for his memories to be convinced he was dedicated, at that time, to collect them on paper.
   
   Having received two of Jack Engelhard's books together I couldn't decide which I wanted to read first. When I was ready to begin one of them, I thought I might decide by reading a few paragraphs of the opening story of each. By default, I began with MORIAH, thinking I'd stop after a page or two, then do the same with INDECENT PROPOSAL. But, I didn't quit reading MORIAH.
   
   By the following morning I had read the whole of that balsamic bible of a book. I loved it. I was impressed as much as I hoped I would be...
   
   When I first saw the book's cover, I had puzzled at the biblical scene. I didn't immediately recognize it as the Rembrandt representation of God's request of Abraham to offer his son on Mount Moriah. I appreciated having the factual details presented inside the cover as well as on it. I was intensely intrigued about that event being said to have led to the creation of the Jewish people. I wanted to know more.
   
   As I opened the covers of ESCAPE FROM MOUNT MORIAH, I was deeply curious about the childhood of a person who has come to write as Jack Engelhard has.
   
   As I read further into the flap copy and introductory remarks, I began anticipating reading something special, not just a book I would welcome getting lost in, living in as a refreshing contrast to my daily routines; but a book in which I would find something worth knowing, something new, different from the repeated density in the majority of books available to readers, maybe something of actual truth.
   
   The heart craves that, especially when it's rarely found.
   
   Usually, I'm not attracted to short story collections, even knowing they might be true, significant, and well-composed. But, I was immediately attached to the chapter titles and blurbs here, especially the appealing Jewish feel of them. The meaning and number of Chai was magnetic to me, as were the type styles.
   
   The book felt to me to be more of a bible than the established ones.
   
   -- Jack Engelhard may not have been the same type of prodigy as his father was (I have no doubt that his father, Noah ben Jacob, has gone to peace and is still there).
   
   -- Jack may not have assimilated every holy word and underlying truth in the Books of Moses, as his father had, but, with Jack's light touch, he has written his own holy words of truth, and has honored his father in the process.
   
   Jack wrote Noah as he was, as well as how he appeared to Jack in Jack's efforts to know him in both his dark/wounded and bright/spiritual exposures, and Jack related to his father to the best of his straight-on, eyes-focused nature.
   
   My favorite chapter was "A Telegram From Israel," conveying a holy moment confirming compassion, even though it kept Jack's father temporarily in the dark about his mother's death. Describing the moment of that sacred omen, Engelhard writes, "... from utter darkness came incredible radiance." The father's response to Jack's act of compassion was perfection, as was his father's conclusion about the coincidence of the experience of brilliance breaking through dark clouds.
   
   That situation made me wonder if God might have wanted Abraham to say "No" to His request of offering. I want to believe that Abraham's God was a loving one and would have made right either choice for that unique, splitting-of-universes decision.
   
   Possibly my second favorite chapter was Engelhard's holding to his words, "I resign," (the chapter's title) instead of damning himself with, "I quit."
   
   Or, was my next favorite the respect awarded to young Jack by the druggist, Mr. Roberts, following Jack's successful grappling with fears surged in "The Purple Gang" territory.
   
   The core of sadness for my empathy was in the uncle's reaction to love from a nephew in "Relatives from America," and the brutality trials Jack suffered in "The Fairmount Synagogue Choir."
   
   Jack Engelhard is the one who conveys emotion without emotion. (In his review of my Amazon Short, DARK DIAMOND TWILIGHT, Engelhard had said that of my writing style).
   
   After finishing MORIAH, I felt great admiration for Engelhard's father, and was devastated that Noah wasn't allowed to live his life as the highest, holy Rabbi he could have been.
   
   Yet, maybe he accomplished more, for his son, for himself, and for his world, through those dedicated times in the synagogues, in which he grew from a polite, quiet discounting of the officiating Rabbi's inaccuracies in reading scripture, into a bold countering of the corruption of truth. Maybe the reason Noah never found his equal with whom to argue into the truest interpretations of the holy books, was because he had no equal in that. He had only the truth of the meaning in, under, and above the words. I would bet that every Rabbi Noah encountered with his corrections never forgot what Noah had said. Maybe those Rabbis went forth percolating with the right vision from Noah, somehow radiating that cleansing of misconception into our future, the future of rightness to come.
   
   Through his books, Jack is continuing Noah ben Jacob's legacy of synagogue interruption, contributing his literary voice, which I believe has surpassed the golden choir boy (Jack's honed skill Vs the darling golden boy's luck).
   
   As I had read through each chapter, I noticed a flickering in the voice Engelhard used in MORIAH. He seemed to speak as the child he was, with flashes opening onto a voice of the present of his writing the book. One of my favorite uses of voice would be like that, the child writing about the child, except for those few cracks through time when the present heart slips back, sending wisdom gained through time, to heal the child that was, and still is.
   
   To the child in each of us, living eternally,
   Linda G. Shelnutt
   Shelnutt is the author of several books on Amazon Kindle and Amazon Shorts, including QUARTER MOON DUES.



2. "We are Hitler's children," Jack Engelhard's mother once sadly spoke, explaining the family of four's desperate poverty as they all crowded together in the one room of a house they were allowed. Explaining the loss of so much of the rest of their family in Nazi ovens. Explaining finally, their gratitude for life as only people who had to struggle for it every minute could know. "Lech Leja" intones the Biblical commandment. "Go forth!" And indeed this family had...straight out of Hell.
   
   This little book in its wise, humorous, and slightly sarcastic tone shows what awaited them on the other side. It is primarily an autobiographical sketch of Jack's life through his adolescent years, spent in Montreal. The book can easily be read in the course of a day, but while you're reading you'll be riveted by the stories, with their unique combination of pathos and humor, laughter and tears...their unique JEWISHNESS...their uncommon WISDOM.
   
   Everyone who has known the privilege of being born in a land with no war and raised in peace and freedom should read this book. It tends to remind you, as you share this family's appreciation of their blessings, just how great are your own. Five Stars
   
   John W. Cassell
   John W. Cassell is the author of five novels on the American Counterculture of the 1960's-1970's including Crossroads: 1969 and Odyssey: 1970 and numerous "Amazon Shorts" short stories primarily in the genre of military fiction, including Armageddon: 1973 and Leap into Darkness Part 1: Not my Best Birthday



3. Remembrance Enters Eternity
   Escape from Mt. Moriah
   Jack Engelhard (ComteQ Publishing)
   118 pages, hardback
   Reviewed by Eugene Narrett
   (Eugene Narrett is a writer and a Professor of Literature at Cambridge College in Massachusetts).
   
   Remarkable lives, lives filled with chiaroscuro, make for great literature, fiction or non-fiction, and Jack Engelhard's remarkable life has led to a notable literary gift. He has demonstrated this with novels so taut with ideas and action that they find their way to Hollywood (& inevitable simplification -- Indecent Proposal) and more recently, with a volume of memoirs whose succinct evocations of person, place and mental process allow worlds of sentiment to stand silently present without crowding or directing the reader's own thoughts and response. Impelled by his sensitivity to the ambiguities of motive, to empathy, ambivalence, & striving for a saving certainty, Engelhard is a master of the telling moment and phrase, of the summary comment (though his characters often get the last word) that implies even more than it clearly states. In evoking the fullness of a human person he has the simplicity and deftness of a master: a sharp mind, self-awareness, and a deep & feeling heart.
   
   The author knows that the roots contain the essence of the tree and its fruit, and that they live in its seeds, however far the winds of circumstance may carry them. And so in this volume, vignettes about his root, his father, are frequent for the man was an exemplary figure of loss and spiritual richness. Noah Engelhard was one of those immigrants who never adapted to the wrenching culture shock of his forced transplantation (from France to Canada during WW II). Originally a youthful Torah scholar & leather cutter in Poland, wars in the east brought him to France where he prospered as a master designer of leather handbags, and owned a factory in Toulouse. But the Nazi occupation destroyed that, and his generosity to other refugees exhausted the remainder. In Canada, his classic designs were out of fashion and he, Noah ben Yakov became "Joe," the guy who fetched Cokes in another man's factory: "Joe! Joe! Where's my Coke!"
   
   Like many immigrants, the author's father was a Jew too gentle and ambivalent to impose his teaching methodically on his son; he was an uprooted Jew who carried the House of Study within him and who searched every Sabbath for a synagogue in which the Rabbi was not a shallow positivist, affirming his congregation's attenuated Judaism; who searched even for a serious argument that would revive the world of Torah that had been violently uprooted.
   
   Left to his own choosing, the life of a scholar would have suited my father fine. He belonged in a House of Study, secluded from the turmoil of business, removed from the urgencies of daily cares. In a Yeshiva his knowledge of Torah could be stimulated, his wisdom put to the test -- and his worth as a scholar and a man could be recognized and appreciated.
   But that never happened.
   
   In that clarity of description, in that gift for succinct summary and alertness to pathos, in that sensitivity to the emotional demands and language a culture imparts, Engelhard's literary gifts shine.
   
   Along the way, in brisk but loving detail he sketches another world, a distinct culture not merely remembered but felt so fully it is reconstructed in spirit:
   
   Approaching the [factory] landing you could hear the roar of the sewing machines. Closer, you smelled the adhesives and the leather. Cutters were bent over huge tables slicing up giant stretches of animal hides. They were grinding in frenzy, never gazing up from their machines, as though somewhere in their urgency of livelihood they had lost the human sense of wonder and curiosity.
   
   As Engelhard paints it, the world of exile extends from the fashionable and also the back streets of post-war Montreal, from two-bit backbreaking jobs, to tenuous status as low-rent tenants at whim, to country vacations paid for by nerve, worry and improvised labor. Always aware and happy with what he's gained in the New World, especially as an American, he is keenly aware and deftly sketches the soul-wrenching loss & distortions that emigration, especially forced emigration, imposes on the individual and on relationships.
   
   But these experiences -- with rats in the weeds at a garden-nursery, with Jew-hating city toughs, with relatives, rich and poor, who couldn't relate, with eviction and frequent poverty -- did not defeat but aroused and deepened the author's sense of awe at the variety and mystery of human motive and deeds. His insight was quickened by seeing his parents various and imperfect efforts to adjust to the loss of one world and immersion in another in which he moved almost effortlessly; but like many first genera_tion Jews, never with a sense of fully belonging; always with a sense that something essential had been left behind.
   
   This volume's attention to up-rootedness (so like the masterly paintings of Samuel Bak, of whose art, and whose own memoir, this work reminds me), and a lifetime reflecting on the many facets of this experience, enable Engelhard to offer several wonderful epigrams about the singularity of three millennia of Jewish experience, so awesomely recapitulated in the past 60 years, the years of his life (born July 1940, as the Nazis overran France). In discussing the nearly untranslatable Jewish expression, "nu," a word that carries bemused acceptance within it, Engelhard speaks of the paradox of Jewish survival, of belief in or memory of a pure flame inside a soul repeatedly buried in dust and ashes. What results when filtered by centuries "is a kind of hopeful resignation," he writes; a will to live and somehow taste some of life's sweetness that always carries "both hope and hopelessness." The mind sees and the heart feels the defeats and impossibilities of realizing the dream; yet the flame in the soul still glows. As the Hassidic saying puts it, "the soul of man is the candle of God." And though God is only mar_ginally present in these stories, one senses that Engelhard is always ready, even eager, for Him to speak.
   
   Many of these short vignettes have a clarity so vivid in detail and sparse in evocative diction that they shine, filling the everyday prosaic world with the spirit of the world to come. In this they are like Hassidic folk tales transposed to the cities of suburbs of the new world in the 1940's and '50s, tales whose traits kept their wonder for someone who saw one world in the context of another. This quality is very palpable in memoirs like, "Relatives from America," "A Sabbath Drive," "A Telegram from Isr_ael," and "A Sister from the Past." Mystery and ambiguity fill the unspoken spaces of these simple tales. Needing a lift into town on a Sabbath afternoon in the country, young Jack gets a lift from a friendly French Canadian driver though neither understands the other: one has no English; the other, little French. But the vignette is not one of simple goodness or trans-cultural compassion. Though seemingly no one knew or saw him riding in a car on Sabbath, a few weeks later the Rabbi of Jack's Yeshiva summ_oned him and his father to meet. "You were seen hitchhiking on the Sabbath," he charges. "When?" his father asks. "Where was this?" There's no answer, just the unexplained fact. Hadn't he learned over and again that "One sees"? That "on the Day of Judgment, even the walls will testify against you..." Was the kindly driver a tempting demon? Is it possible that just as was believed in the vanished world of Jewish Poland, nothing is hidden, not even in suburban North America for a family that is sporadically _religious; perhaps especially for those who are sporadically religious?
   
   Wonder arises from those simple moral dilemmas everyone finds as they walk their daily lives, or simply gets the mail. One day a telegram comes from Israel: Jack's father's mother, whom Jack himself has never seen and with whom his father has scarcely communicated in half a century, has "at age 102, been gathered to her people," in Israel. Why should his father, who treasures the memory of his mother's saintliness, know such a sad fact, one he cannot change? So the youth conceals the telegram until the ban_al routines of a laundry day bring it to light. And then, a guilty revelation dawns: "I had committed a sin; I had interfered with the mitzvah of sitting shiva and saying kaddish. My sin could never be undone." Walking the streets of Montreal that evening, the dark sky suddenly opened to reveal an intense brightness, as if in supernal confirmation of his thoughts. And yet, consoling the penitend, his father's forgiveness comes like a benediction: "You meant well; what's done is done." In the meantime, wonder and the Beyond have asserted themselves in a heart formed by millennia of exile and the imperative to remember and hold on. Common sense and the commonplace do not negate, Eng_elhard suggests, but serve as vessels for retaining wonder and faith. Assimilation is never complete; it too becomes a medium through which transcendenc will emerge and shine, layering people and events with eternal meaning and dignity.
   
   And these are remarkable people, teeming memorably in a book so spare and easy in its telling one reads it in less than two quick hours. And then one returns to reflect, to reflect on the warm-hearted but officious sister, whose loneliness makes her needy, and whose finely honed sense of shame leads her to depart as suddenly as quietly as she arrives. On a middle-aged man, a holocaust survivor, weeping at the sight of a newspaper photograph, of a Jewish soldier, finally; of a talented, bullying choirmaster_, and the shame of muddy boots at a wedding; of an adolescent watching the World Series at a malt shop while the local Romeos flirt and then go out back with the beauty behind the counter, taking the TV with them. These anecdotes are rich with a range of initiations and a broad palette of moods, insights, and memorable encounters with Truth packaged simply for our wonder.
   
   The collection ends with an anecdote in which Engelhard, remembering an annual visit to an Orthodox synagogue, finds himself among men of his father's generation and culture, looks at himself as a new father in the context of what kind of Jewish tradition, and what sources of Jewish strength he, an externally assimilated Jew, will be able to bequeath to his own son. As he listens to the chanted prayers and ancient melodies, he writes
   
   It occurred to me then, that I was now 42, and when my father was that age, he was an old man, one of the old men of the synagogue.
   He also knew everything.
   Years from now I wonder, who there will be to show me the right page? And will there be any old men left for my son? He is only two years old, and the old men cover him with love.
   To them he is the flame. He is their eternity.
   
   In his doubt, sense of loss, and in his love, Engelhard affirms his caring and his faith for the threefold intertwining of his son, his people and tradition. In the above question, his succinct but poetic description answers itself in an ancient verse. "In Zion there will be a remnant, and they will inherit..."
   
   These wonderfully readable memoirs have the vivid reality of a lived dream; they sparkle like the islands of an enduring world amid the dazzling, distracting sea-spray of our everyday lives that immerse us in the present. We know there is more to us: that there must be a living soul. He intentionally shaped his reminiscences into eighteen memoirs, explaining that the number '18' in Hebrew spells "life," chai, and also the affirmation, "he lives!"
   
   
   Memory and sensitivity, like self-restraint and shame, are branches of love and of
   understanding the mysterious beauty of life. To offer another metaphor, they are a well of soul distilled into generations of Jews for millennia by unique paths of suffering and hope. Beyond what the mind believes or reason can show, the vivid descriptions and memories in this book are forms of honoring this tradition, sparkling simple facts attesting to its endurance.