No comments about The Mogul: Eddie Gottlieb, Philadelphia Sports Legend and Pro Basketball Pioneer.

5 comments about Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels.

1. I enjoyed it. And not just because my sister wrote it.
   
   For the detractors:
   
   1) It shouldn't threaten you. Virtually every group has its defectors at one time or another (it doesn't mean that the "rebels" are renouncing Hasidism; its structure may be too rigid for them for the time being). What's worse, someone who says that something is not for them right now, or someone who fiercely condemns a religion or behavior or way of life while pursuing that way of life on the sly (think Sen. Larry Craig or Gov. Spitzer).
   
   2) Hella was granted access into the lives of some Hasidic people. She doesn't pretend to be a lifelong Hasid, nor does she claim to be the definitive authority on these people. She is an astute observer and a well-educated woman who wrote about some of the people whom she observed. That's all. She does not trash the sect. She does not claim to be a spokesperson for them or against them. She is telling her story about several people's life stories. That's all.



2. Unchosen is interesting, just because it takes on a subject no one else has thought of, but the author doesn't actually come to a conclusion. The writing is good enough, and what she writes is interesting, but she leaves out any sort of analysis. She stumbled upon a fascinating subject, but she didn't do anyting with it. All she does is record the stories of half a dozen rebels and then drop it. She can't even say the extent of the phenomenon, because of course there's no way to find that out. So there's not much to get out of this, besides encouragement to doante to Footsteps, a charity organization she profiles. It was interesting, and worth reading I guess, but I was pretty let down at how little she did with the material. She didn't write any of her own ideas.
   
   For something better, I reccomend "Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers" by Stephanie Levine. She interviews and analyzes Lubavitch girls, and comes up with some fascinating insights. And she includes some "rebels" in the girls she profiles, and I think does it a lot better.
   
   And by the way, all you idiots out there saying Unchosen is just an excuse to critisize Judaism, she says like ten times that of course this isn't how most people feel about the religion, and even the rebels she interviews have things they loved about it. And I'm Orthodox Jewish, and I didn't think it was biased at all. So there.



3. I can't say that I enjoyed this book but I learned a lot about Hasidics and their religious practices. I would recommend this book to people who want to learn about religions other than their own.



4. I am a secular Jew with a great fascination and respect for Lubavitchers, and have read most of the available books on them, which I have found to be thoughtful, deep and illuminating, as well as honest. Hella Winston's book is the exception. The author seems not up to par in either intelligence, honesty or in an open-minded and respectful attitude towards the sub-culture she is supposedly researching as a sociology grad student.
   
   I can especially recommend "Mystics, Mavericks and Merrymakers." (which also includes rebels, depite Hella's claim that she is the only author who has dared to do so.)
   
   It is hard to believe she is an academic or earned a Phd, except that the liberal academic world is so bigoted about religious people that shoddy and superficial work like this was probably given a pass because it is so blatantly hostile to pious Jews.
   
   One small example shows the undercurrent of hostility that distorts the entire book. Winston describes the apartment of a Satmar grandmother "whose walls boast several innocuous paintings of flowers (no graven images here)." Why is the author mocking one of the ten commandments? Why the sarcasm? Why the nastiness? Is this a serious or respectful way to discuss another culture and religion? No graven images here? It seems floral paintings don't meet Hella's standards for Jewish culture, as she explains in the introduciton, "it was still hard for me to fathom that there really could be Jewish peoplelllwho actually believed that viewiing art...could be a bad, even dangerous thing....Didn't Jews ...pride themselves on producing and consuming culture?" As an ex-Peace Corps volunteer, I have troulbe with her difficulty in fathoming that different Jewish sub-cultures are actually...well, different. And that being a New York culture-vulture is actually not central to 4,000 years of Jewish identity. Isn't she weird?
   
   I also found winston less than honest. For example, she stresses the idea that the Hasidim are so strict because their rebbes planted the idea that if they fall away from strict observance, the holocaust could happen again. I will pass over how disrespectful this theory is, as if only fear of mass murder would make Jews observant...it is also dishonest, because she knows, but does not explain that the last Lubavitcher Rebbe taught that blaming Jews for the Holocaust was wrong. Instead she relegates his views to a footnote and disguises his strong stand against blaming Jews to a bland "we cannot know the reasons for the Holocaust."
   
   I also wonder how honest she is about her own motives for doing this research and her own Jewish identity. In the introduction she has a dishonest and superficial discussion of the attitudes of non-Jews to the Hasidim. She lists "a kind of admiration' (it would be too positive for Winton to say simply that some Jews have admiration)... for an "authentic" Judaism (her quotes - yet another example of her palpable hostility - she can't even allow the word authentic when describing Jews who admire Chasids' religious practices). Second attitude of other Jews: 'romantic longing'. Third, that Hasids are primitive, backward, dirty. Lastly, anti-Zionist.
   
   This list of other Jews' attitudes towards observant Jews leaves out any discussion of the truly vehement and irrational dislike of pious Jews by many secular and reform Jews who are threatened by Jews who remain 100% Jewish and are not trying to conform to and please and placate the majority culture. HOstility based on the pervasive fear of assimilated Jews of appearing 'too Jewish.' A fear that has been widely discussed in the sociological and historical literature, for example, in pre-war Germany. A fear and hostility towards Jews who are 'too Jewish' that perhaps our author shares.
   
   The most shocking part of the book was the conclusion, which again leaves the scope of her research and any pretentions at academic objectivity. She expresses revulsion at a culture that demands conformity and depends on shame, fear and ejecting rebels ... as if there is any traditional society on earth that does not require conformity, and enforce it by these universal cultural measures. Is she really this ignorant about cultures?
   
   The shocking part is that she then "concludes" ( my quotes - I suspect it was her initial motive to arrive at this conclusion, as it seems more like a held belief than a finding), she "concludes" that there is "a fundamental weakness in the belief system itself" and predicts "something might have to change sometime soon", quoting predictions of "the demise of these communities" because "so many" "are forced" out. (she makes no attempt to give us a number of her 'unchosen', but the only existing support group has a mere 200 members!)
   
   Leaving one more glaring dishonesty in this book - her total silence on the huge demographic success of the Chasidim. One reason many secular Jews who care about Jewish continuity love the Chasidim is that they - along with the Modern Orthodox - are the only Jews who will exist in America by the nextcentury, according to the juggernaut population trends which show a rush to self-extinction by the other Jewish 'sects' (her term for chasidic groups)who base their Judaism on what fits into the mainstream culture.
   
   The 2000 population study projects that for every 100 Yeshiva/Hasidic Orthodox Jews today, there will be 3,400 great-grandchildren. for 100 Reform Jews today, there will be 10 Jewish great-grandchildren. For 100 secular Jews today, there will be 7 Jewish great-grandchildren. These figures are well known and have resulted in heroic actions by non-observant Jews to try and reverse this death knell. And here is Hella, pretending it is the Chasidim who are in trouble.



5. the very definition of hearsay is: "unverified, unofficial information gained or acquired from another and not part of one's direct knowledge".
   
   that definition sums up this book to a "t". i suggest not wasting your time.

1 comments about The Triumphant Spirit: Portraits & Stories of Holocaust Survivors Their Messages of Hope & Compassion.

1. The photos of the survivors are piercing. The stories are unbelievable. Each survivor's story begins with their "normal" life in prewar Europe. We learn how they survived the war and death and slave camps in which most of their families perished. After liberation these people were able to create meaningful lives, create families, and make the world a better place. Though I have studied the Holocaust in depth I was shocked to learn the names of dozens more concentration camps. This book gives hope and strength to anyone who is oppressed on any level.

2 comments about Kasztner's Train: The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust.

1. Anna Porter has done a great job in bringing this story of a hero of the Holocaust to her readers.



2. An expertly researched, captivatingly written and long overdue book about the courage, ingenuity, successes and ultimate sad persecution of a great but much maligned hero. Brava Anna Porter!

2 comments about From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books.

1. Arie's writing style is very engaging! I couldn't put this book down. It's filled with beautiful illustrations of many of my favorite comic book characters, as well as self-portraits of some of their creators.



2. A wonderful journey through comic history...Arie seems to have captured the feel from every generation (of course my favorite is the Silver Age). The day I got the book I took it to a party and the son of a friend (age 15) couldn't put it down...I lent it to him to read this week. With all the comic book hero movies coming out the last two years there is a resurgance of comic book interest and Arie has captured that history in a fun and fascinating way.
   
   L. Broome
   Winter Springs, FL

5 comments about The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond the Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival.

1. I was unfamiliar with the Kindertransport that moved 10,000 Jewish children to safety from the Holocaust. This biography brings that event to life through the memories of Lisa Jura. At 14, her parents sent her to London and the book covers that wrenching journey and the next six years of her life. Growing up during the blitz in a refugee home with 31 children makes a fascinating book.
   Lisa's devotion to music weaves the story together as she strives towards her parents' dream. Becoming a concert pianist seems unachievable under the circumstances, but this touching biography details Lisa's progress towards that goal. This account has appeal for both adult and teen readers.
   I also recommend In The Shadow Of The Cathedral: Growing Up In Holland During WW II by Titia Bozuwa



2. author of Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family
   
   from the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
   August 30, 2002
   
   Vienna, 1938. In the city of Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and Strauss, 14-year-old musical prodigy Lisa Jura looks forward to a promising career as a concert pianist. Hitler has other plans. With the breaking of glass on Kristallnacht, Jura's dreams are shattered.
   
   Internationally celebrated concert pianist Mona Golabek, with journalist and poet Lee Cohen, has crafted a loving, lyrical tribute to her mother, Lisa Jura, in "The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond the Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival."
   
   Jura was one of 10,000 Jewish children saved from the Nazis by the British and sent on the Kindertransport to safety from Eastern Europe. Already being compared to "The Diary of Anne Frank," this simultaneously heartbreaking and uplifting tale weaves together the stories that Golabek's mother told her about prewar Austria; the gut-wrenching separation from her family; life at the orphanage on Willesden Lane; and the power of music to help her survive.
   
   As Jura's mother, Malka, puts her on the train, she says the prophetic words that will sustain and inspire her daughter and future generations: "Hold on to your music. Let it be your best friend."
   
   In a world turned ugly, the beauty of music becomes Jura's strength, and, against tremendous odds, with the help and encouragement of the 30 other displaced children at the orphanage, she wins a scholarship to London's Royal Academy.
   
   "Each kid saw something in my mother's music that reminded them of what they had left behind in Czechoslovakia, in Austria, in Germany," says Golabek, a Grammy-nominated artist, "and that's what I tried to do in the story, not only to pay homage to my mother, but to all these kids and to their bravery."
   
   The book opens with Jura's tantalizing daydream of performing in a great concert hall and closes with the fulfillment of that dream, as she makes her debut before an exhilarated crowd. And in between, the pages burst with melody: Jura pounding the cadenza of the Grieg "Piano Concerto" to drown out the sounds of bombs during London's blitz, Jura visualizing Chopin fleeing a flaming Warsaw as she struggles with the somber coda of the "Ballade," Jura remembering her mother's Sabbath candles as she plays the solemn opening of Beethoven's "Pathetique."
   
   "My mom and her mother never cared if a piece is in C major. What really counts is the passion behind it, the image. If it's `Clair de Lune,' imagine the moon over a desert island. That imagination allowed her to survive the horrors of what she experienced, because a C-major chord will not inspire you through the horrors. It's the moonlight, the idea that maybe the composer wrote it for someone he loved. These things inflamed her imagination, and that's how she inflamed mine."
   
   And now Golabek's book will inflame the imagination of a whole new generation. The Milken Family Foundation, together with Facing History and Ourselves, an educational organization that teaches tolerance to 1 million students annually, are working with Golabek to bring the story to schools across the country by developing a companion curriculum guide.
   
   Plans are under way to launch the book in Austria, and make it available to teachers as part of the now mandatory four-year Holocaust education program for students.
   
   The saga of Golabek's 18-year struggle to get the story published is almost as harrowing as her mother's story itself. "It went through many, many writings; many, many ups and downs, starts and disappointments," Golabek says.
   
   Now the accolades and offers are pouring in. On Sept. 24, she will be an honored guest speaker at the California Governor's Conference for Women at the Long Beach Convention Center and will appear at Beth Am on Nov. 17 with her sister, pianist Renee Golabek-Kaye, and Jura's four grandchildren, all musicians: Michele, 16; Sarah, 14; Jonathan, 8; and Rachel, 7. Brandeis University will honor her at the Skirball Cultural Center next March 31.
   
   Last week Golabek was interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition and was the subject of a feature story by Andy Meisler of the New York Times. In the planning stages is a concert next year co-sponsored by the U.S. Holocaust Museum and the Austrian government. And, of course, Golabek is considering movie offers.
   
   On her syndicated radio show, "The Romantic Hours," which highlights stirring writings against a musical backdrop (Saturdays at 10 p.m., 105.1 FM), Golabek often quotes the poet Jean Paul Richter: "Life fades and withers behind us, but of our immortal and sacred soul all that remains is music."
   
   "That was a quote my mother taught me, and the whole reason why I wrote this book and why I created `The Romantic Hours' was that my mother felt through words and through music our souls would be immortalized."



3. This is one of my all-time favorite books. If you are a musician, you will fall in love with it. The story is inspiring and moving and will make you appreciate music to the greatest extent possible.



4. Full of history. Easy to follow. Great read for young and old alike.



5. This is a story which every parent should read to their children. Talk about the history of WW2 and discuss the extremes of humanity. A book which once read you will never forget.

5 comments about The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps.

1. Written in the first person, this book describes in vivid detail the horror of day to day life in a Nazi concentration camp. It's one man's eyewitness account of the camps, the death and degradation he faced on a daily basis, and how he clung to his humanity ~ and his life ~ against such unbearable odds.
   
   Most telling ~ though not really very surprising, given the vast power differences between prisoners and their guards ~ was his recollection of camp politics. He managed to survive by taking advantage of a guard whose friendliness toward him turned into sexual interest.
   
   This book is not for the faint of heart. The scenes of horror that play out ~ the executions, the torture ~ are not graphic in their description, but the stark, terse language in which they're conveyed, married with the sense of hopelessness you read between the lines, speak more to the brutality of the Nazis than a thousand descriptive paragraphs ever could.
   
   But this was probably one of the best books I've read on the Holocaust. I wish it were required reading for every person, everywhere, as a testament of the human spirit in adversity and a warning to us all. Perhaps then we could begin to move past our differences to a more peaceful co-existance.



2. This is a must read for everyone who wants to discover the whole truth abut the concentration camps that the devilish Nazis set up during WW2. It's also a must read for every gay man in the world because it documents an important chapter about how gay men were so ill-treated (starved, beaten, horribly tortured, dishonorably killed) during ww2 and afterwards. I'm just sorry that the author didin't identify himself, because if he was living today I would try to find him and thank him for telling his story. It also documents the horrible descrimination that the gays suffered after 1945 until the 70s and how differently they were treated than the jews. These had the holocaust horror recognised immediately after the war was over, but no such luck for the few gay men who survived the camps (mostly Sachsenhausen and Flossenburg). Don't miss this book if you're setting up any kind of document, museum, documentary about gay people in the 20th century. I'm so touched by the men who died in those camps, I just can't believe how much they suffered....I've been at Sachsenhausen 2 months ago, and they had a sign in memory of the gay people that have died there, but I didn't realize the horror in it's full scope. All this just makes hate more and more anyone who defends the nazis and that deny the holocaust. I hope the nazis who did these crimes burn and suffer in hell for all eternity for everything they did. But I think it won't be enough punishment.....



3. The dirty closeted secret of the Nazi Holocaust is and was the persection of gays and the subsequent systematic effort to exterminate them. This book is an eye opening account of an actual gay survivor of this 20th Century atrocity. It is absolute MUST reading for anyone who wants to understand aspects of the Holocaust, or for any gay man or woman in America today. Eye opening and brutal, this book will provide the reader with a glimpse of history not often told.



4. Such a good book. It gives a different perspective on the Holocaust. It's a page turner...I couldn't put it down once I got past the first few pages. Everyone one should read!



5. A sodomy law had been on the German law books since 1871, a law known simply as Paragraph 175. Only a few people were ever sentenced under this obscure law until June of 1935 when, after the rise of Hitler and Nazism, the Nuremberg laws were enacted and the consequences of Paragraph 175 strengthened. Where once before, you had to be caught in the act of same sex relations, now simply receiving a letter or the spreading of idle gossip would have you sent to a concentration camp.

   "The Men with the Pink Triangle" is one anonymous man's account of the harshness and cruelty faced by gay men at the hands of the SS and the ruling Nazi party, as well as by the other prisoners -- criminals, politicals, emigrants -- who viewed "filthy queers" as lower than the rest of them. They were distinguished by the large, pink triangles sown onto their prison outfits, making them easy targets for taunts and punishments. Also, homosexuals labored through the worst of the work details and "volunteered" for medical experimentation, which usually resulted in their deaths.

   Some advantages also appeared for gay men. The "Capos" who were in charge of the prisoner barracks, often made lovers of some of the prisoners, giving them some protection and better rations and clothing. As is says in the book: "Homosexual behavior between two 'normal' men is considered an emergency outlet, while the same thing between two gay men, who both feel deeply for one another, is something 'filthy' and repulsive." The anonymous man used this to his advantage and survived the camps and the threat of being sent to the front lines.

   Ths is a moving and powerful story about survival and about the right to be who you are, during one of the darkest times in world history. Highly recommended.

5 comments about Have You No Shame?: And Other Regrettable Stories.

1. If you are Jewish, from Generation X, or fulfill both of these criteria, you will find this book quite charming. Shukert's writing is witty, irreverant, and full of wry humor. The book explores some of the finer moments of growing up Jewish in small town America. I'm recommending this book to all of my friends.



2. This is the funniest book I've read in years, and captures my generation better than anything I've encountered to date. Rachel Shukert's hilarious Jewish family picks up where early Philip Roth left off. Her sense of humor is relentless, and her "experiences" make the David Sedaris prose that we were all so recently shocked by look tame by comparison. To top it all off, I found myself very attached to the leading lady, and totally heart broken at the book's conclusion.



3. I loved this book so much that over the course of the 2 days I was reading it (couldn't put it down, also didn't want to finish it) I read excerpts of it outloud to people in my apt, a restaurant, a bar, and even a Chase bank. Since finishing it I have recommended it to friends, parents friends, hair stylists, and dentists alike and I recommend it to you. I haven't enjoyed a book as much as this in a long time.



4. Wise beyond her years, Rachel Shukert's Have You No Shame? is at once a calm testament of long-since, learned from experiences and an ecstatic, orgasmic and immediate confession of a twenty-something. Her stories are vivid, emotional and hilarious. She came from Omaha to conquer the world. Have You No Shame? is great start. BRAVO!



5. This book is so friggin funny that it aggravated an old war wound from all the laughing I did. It's like some painfully intimate HBO screenplay where no taboo goes un-turned.

No comments about In Defiance of Hitler: The Secret Mission of Varian Fry.

5 comments about Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story.

1. This is a good read but it is not exciting. I could take it or leave it. Its interesting to see how they recall and tell the events of the holocaust that they went through, but its not something that I would run out to get to read. I think Number the Stars, Annie Frank or The Hidding Place are more gripping that this one.



2. This account of the Holocaust doubles as a succinct retelling of the German history that brought it about, making it not only a moving personal account of one family's journey, but a valuable informational source for those wondering how and why the Holocaust happened.
   
   Marion Blumenthal is only 5 when the story begins. Her German Jewish family got caught up in the inexorable tides of history, tried but failed to escape to Palestine or to the US, and ultimately fled to Holland. Unfortunately, Holland was overrun by the Nazis like much of mainland Europe, and the Blumenthals (father Walter, mother Ruth, brother Albert, and Marion) wound up first in Westerbork and later in Bergen-Belsen (yes, back to Germany).
   
   Young readers will get a first-hand account of what life was like as a child in the Nazi internment camps. Not as graphic as, say, Elie Wiesel's NIGHT, this book nonetheless is honest and forthright in its narration of Nazi brutalities. At times, the point of view (shifting between quotes of the mother, Ruth, and the first-person point of view of Marion) is a bit off-putting, but overall, this short, large-font memoir with pictures is a worthy choice for middle-school-aged and high school readers -- especially those new to this dark chapter in history. Recommended.



3. A child's perspective of the Holocaust and her life in the United States after liberation. Excellent reading suggestion for a children's Holocaust book.



4. I had the honor of meeting the author, and no wonder she survived! This lady was as tough as they come! Liked the book, loved the author.



5. Marion Blumenthal was a little girl in Germany when Hitler came to power and began his programs to rid Germany of Jews once and for all. With her family, she experienced the tightening grip of restrictions and humiliations forced on German Jews, including her father, a recipient of the Iron Cross for his bravery in WWI. Finally, they fled to a refugee camp in Holland, waiting for their visa to the United States. It was issued, but their passage on a ship was delayed two months, and in that terrible window of time, Hitler's armies conquered Holland. They ended up in one of the most infamous concentration camps in Germany, then, near the end of the war, were put on a "death train" to nowhere, moving from place to place in cattle cars infested with typhus as prisoners died, until finally being liberated by the advancing Russian army.
   
   
   
   This book is written for youth (I estimate 6-10th graders). It focuses more on the psychological stress of being a prisoner in ones own country, and glosses over the horror associated with Nazi death camps. That atrocities occurred are noted, however, this is a book about a family staying together from a pre-teen's perspective. I don't fault the book for not focusing on the atrocities; there is a haunting photograph of two women preparing dinner with hundreds of dead stacked up behind them. The horror of it all! But how does a child process this experience? That is what is missing from this particular book.
   
   
   
   Easy to read, and well-edited. The Holocaust continues to haunt... and to teach.