No comments about Lectures on the Religion of the Semites.

5 comments about The Mezuzah in the Madonna's Foot: Marranos and Other Secret Jews--A Woman Discovers Her Spiritual Heritage.

1. Alexy was a child in Prague, in 1939. When World War II broke out, her father suddenly announced that the family was leaving, and that they would be baptized as Catholics. Up to that point, the author had not even known that her family was Jewish. From Prague, they fled to France, and then to Spain.
   
   Years later, after she was living in America, she learned that many Jews had fled to Spain during the Holocaust, but that most had not converted or hidden their Jewishness.
   
   As she began to trace her roots, she discovered the irony of Jews seeking protection in a country that, centuries before, and persecuted and expelled them.
   
   There are a couple of books here, fighting for supremacy!
   
   The first book is about how and why Spain opened its borders to Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.
   
   "The irrefutable fact remains that, although the presence of Jews placed the whole country at risk of being drawn into another ar or occupied by Hitler's forces, Fascist Spain, both officially and unofficially, accepted thousands of foreign Ashkenazic Jews within its borders and allowed them to remain until they were able to secure residence elsewhere."
   
   Why? The question is probably unanswerable, though Alexy tries her best. Guilt over the expulsions of 1492? Maybe, but this does not account for the welcome to Ashkenazic, as well as Sephardic, Jews. Maybe Franco had Jewish ancestors? There's no proof of that. A political decision in case the Allies won? Perhaps, but in a country devastated economically by the Civil War, Spain gave much. One interesting suggestion is that because of the expulsion, and the concomitant absence of a Jewish population, Spain did not develop the kind of anti-Semitic attitudes seen in other European countries.
   
   Whatever the reason, the fact remains that thousands owe their lives to an official blind eye, and open Spanish arms.
   
   Alexy begins by explaining her quest, her need to understand her own family history that sent her to Spain, and to the New York archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee ("the Joint"), the organization that was responsible for helping stateless Jewish refugees in Spain. She interviews several people who found, or whose parents found, a haven across the Pyrenees, and in the section called "The Rescuers" she writes of those, Jews and non-Jews, who provided the means to safety. People such as Lisa Fittko, who acted as a guide, and Renée Reichmann, who from Tangier arranged material support, and Spanish diplomats who told the Gestapo, "these are our Jews" and taught the children a few words of Spanish in case they should be challenged.
   
   The next two parts seemed to me as though they should be in a different book. "The Reformers" writes of present-day liberalization of Spanish laws and attitudes about non-Catholics (not merely Jews). It's interesting but although it touches on some theories as to why Spain helped, it is really more focused on the present and seems out of place.
   
   The same is true of the final section, about contemporary Marranos and other "secret Jews". This is a huge topic about which a whole book could, and should (and probably has, I'll have to look) be written. In fact, the subtitle of this book suggests that that's what it's about. But it isn't.
   
   Either this book should have been much longer, and made into a history of Spain and the Jews (and that would be a seriously long book!), or it should have been shorter, and the last two parts saved to become another book or books.
   
   But those are quibbles. This is a fascinating, and very personal, discussion of an unexpected and little-known part of the Holocaust.



2. Highly-readable account of Spain's indirect role during the Holocaust as many Jews sought escape to the West through Spain. There are interesting portraits of both the rescued and rescuers, with additional chapters on modern Spanish Jews and Marranos or Crypto-Jews of Spanish descent. Alexy did a great service bringing these stories to our attention as very few have thought of Jews in Spain beyond the Inquisition.



3. This is a good book, all the stories gathered and told really paint the picture of what people went through trying to escape the Holocust, and how Spain really did help them.



4. Once you read this book,the title makes sense. The author was a holocust survivor and was so grateful and impressed with Spain that she felt compelled to go back to see if others felt the same. Lot's of interviews in this book regarding that perticular era. What a twist for Spain!

   Excellent Read!




5. I found this book at my Jewish boyfriend's mother's house. She checked it out of the library as part of a Sephardic reading group. I started skimming through it and couldn't put it down, had to buy my own copy here on Amazon! Trudi Alexy and her family fled Czechoslovakia to escape the Germans and were chased through France and finally Spain before they felt safe. Spain, in spite of its history of ultra-conservative Catholicism, Inquisition, expulsion of the Jews, etc., was one of the few safe havens for Jews fleeing the Germans during WWII. I was surpised to find this out, since Franco was a part of the Axis powers, a rigid ultra-Catholic, a dictator, and a Fascist. But I guess he wasn't an anti-Semite, because he basically looked the other way when Jews began pouring into Spain illegally to escape being killed in the concentration camps of Occupied Europe, especially Vichy-controlled France, which practically did all they could to deliver the Jews over to the Germans, nasty anti-Semites that the French are. In contrast, Spain not only looked the other way when Jews came pouring over the border, in many cases Spanish diplomats would demand that arrested Jews in other countries be released to them as Spanish citizens, even in cases where the Jews were Ashkenaz, not even Sephardic! The Spanish Red Cross also made a great effort to get food, clothing and letters shipped to Jews in concentration camps in the rest of Europe, even as the International Red Cross did absolutely nothing to help. There are horrific stories from the survivors themselves, tales of fleeing the Nazis with only the clothes on their backs, of escaping concentration camps and struggling over the Pyrenees in mid-winter without even a proper coat. Tales of getting to Spain and turning themselves in to the police to find warm beds, food and even money provided for them by kind hearted Spaniards from all walks of life. Then there are stories from the people who smuggled them into Spain, the risks they took to save thousands upon thousands of people from certain death. And tales of the Secret Jews, or Marranos, or Crypto-Jews, who were forced to convert during the Inquisition, or who were expelled from Spain, and the constant threats that they faced. Many of them continued practicing their Jewish rituals in absolute secrecy, in most cases not even letting their children know that they were of Jewish blood until age 12, when they were less likely to slip and give the secret away to outsiders. Many Crypto-Jews live in Mexico and New Mexico today, their ancestors having arrived in the 1500's after the expulsion from Spain. The Inquisition follwed them to the New World, however, so they continued practicing the most minimal Jewish traditions, such as ritual prayer, in absolute secrecy. Trudi interviewed some people who only identified as Catholics, but had listened to an NPR show on the Crypto-Jews and identified ancient and distorted Jewish traditions that their own family practiced! These people were utterly shocked to find out that they were of Jewish ancestry. I don't personally see the big deal, but I guess if you're a major Christian, then you might think it's a bad thing. In most cases though, the families were not only aware of their Jewish ancestry, but fostered it in secret while living a public life of Catholicism. They would intermarry only amongst one another and kept to fairly tight-knit communities. I liked the stories of the people who escaped to Spain during WWII best, since they were so full of heroism and drama, but really the whole book was fascinating.

1 comments about A Garden of Eden in Hell: The Life of Alice Herz-Sommer.

1. Music could always transport Alice Sommer into an autonomous paradisical world. This helped her when the real world turned hellish under the Nazis; and the central part of the book is about those years.
   
   She was born in 1903 into a Jewish, acculturated and German-speaking family in Prague. She started playing the piano at a very young age, and at 21, made her debut as soloist with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1931 she married Leopold Sommer and their son Stephan (later to be called Raphael) was born in 1937.
   
   With the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 their lives changed swiftly, with humiliating restrictions being imposed on Jews day after day. And then the deportations began. First, in July 1942 her 72-year old mother was deported from her Old Age Home to Theresienstadt (and from there to the Treblinka death camp). Then a year later, in July 1943, it was the turn of Alice, Leopold and Stephan, then aged six, to be sent to Theresienstadt.
   
   The physical conditions there were grim, but a few months before the Sommers arrived, the SS had decided to turn it into a `show camp= for observers from the International Red Cross - and so the deportees were provided with musical instruments (which had been confiscated from Jews) and were allowed to arrange their own entertainment. Alice gave many recitals, and the descriptions of these are very moving. Stephan, who was musically even more precocious than his mother had been at that age, was quickly roped in to rehearse and perform in Brundibar, the opera specially composed for the children in the camp.
   
   As defeat for Germany drew nearer in the autumn of 1944, the SS, possibly fearing an uprising of the able-bodied men in Theresienstadt, decided to send them to the extermination camps. Alice=s husband was among these: she never saw him again. She learnt later that he had survived the death-march from Auschwitz to Dachau - only to die there of typhus.
   
   But Himmler still wanted to preserve Theresienstadt as a `model' camp and to produce it in his defence at the end of the war. Alice had to work an eight hour day in barracks where slates were broken up to make insulating materials, work which was particularly hard on her hands; but in the evening she would often perform in the concerts that continued to be staged.
   
   In May 1945 Theresienstadt was liberated and in mid-June Alice and Stephan were able to return to Prague and to continue their music al lives there.
   
   But after the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, it again became dangerous to speak freely. In March 1949 Alice decided to move with her son to Israel, where she was to live for the next 37 years. There her musical career as performer and teacher continued, while Raphael in due course became a cellist of world stature. After his marriage in 1966, he and his wife were based in London, and there Alice joined him in 1986.
   
   The book ends with the saddest thing that can afflict a loving mother: in 2001 Raphael Sommer died of a heart attack while on a concert tour in Israel. Alice was then 98, and coped with this grief as she had coped with so many other crises in her life, drawing some comfort from music (she still plays the piano in her Hampstead home for three hours every day). Never did she give way to bitterness; she always remained life-affirming; her philosophy eschewed hatred, whether for Germans or for Arabs. Her 100th birthday drew tributes from people from many lands. This moving book is one of them.

4 comments about Embracing the Covenant: Converts to Judaism Talk About Why & How.

1. This is a good book for anyone considering converting to Judaism and wanting to read about the experiences of others. There are many case studies of those who have converted to Judaism, their reasons for doing so, the reaction of their family and friends, and their feelings about the whole experience. The examples are overwhelmingly positive, but there are a few who report difficulties "feeling Jewish" afterwards or feeling that they are totally accepted by their new Jewish community.

   The examples are mostly from those who either converted from Catholicism or had no real religious upbringing. I was disappointed that see few Protestant-to-Jewish conversion examples; the ones that were given, were mostly from those who had very limited Protestant upbringing as children, not really practicing Protestants who decided to convert to Judaism.

   The other disappointment I found with this book was due to all of the white space. This book is definitely not as long as it appears, and it will be a very fast read.

   Overall, I found this a helpful and interesting book that I only wished were a bit longer and had a few more examples.




2. The stories in this book are sometimes hauntingly beautiful. One woman expressed my thoughts so well that I read her story aloud at my bat mitzvah. This is truly a book for making connections.



3. I had this book posted to England where I was spending my year abroad. Part of the reason why I was looking forward to that time in England was the opportunity to find out whether Judaism was what I wanted in my life. This book helped immensely and gave me many thoughts to pursue in conversation with friends and my rabbi. I can only recommend it to people who contemplate conversion.



4. This book will sit prominently in my living room. I want everyone i know to read this book.

3 comments about The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides' Thirteen Principles Reappraised (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization (Series).).

1. This book is absolutely fascinating, and a must-buy for those who wish to know the details of Judaism's principles of faith. Dr. Shapiro does not merely bring obscure opinions rejected in their own time, but rather strongly-held opinions of prominent authorities of yore which are still alive and well for the learned.
   
   It is interesting that just this past weekend, I first saw this book, and I happened to read the exact same chapter as Mr. Lewyn describes in his review below. I will elaborate on Mr. Lewyn's sample, for the interest of those who want a more extensive sample of this book:
   
   Dr. Shapiro notes that Rambam himself knew as much, if not more than, anyone else of his time, about the different textual variants of the Torah, as Rambam was involved in arbitrating between different Masoretic texts available to him. So he could not possibly have meant to declare that no textual errors have crept into our Torah. In fact, Rambam's son refused (if I remember correctly) to arbitrate between alternative accepted texts.
   
   However, Rambam DID mean to say that no post-Moshe additions were (permissibly) deliberately made (presumably, they could be made, just as textual errors can be made, as this is the real world with real humans, but this would be a violation of the law). However, ibn Ezra says that individual verses could be permissibly post-Moshe, and Rabbi Yehuda heChasid says entire sections of narrative could be post-Moshe. Another view opines that Ezra haSofer could not add to the mitzvot, but he could add to the narratives. Most importantly, the Gemara itself has one view that the account of Moshe's death was written by Yehoshua. Dr. Shapiro cites a prominent modern Orthodox authority (I forget who) who says that the important thing is simply that "for all intents and purposes" the Torah is the same as given to Moshe, and that it is "from Heaven"; the Gemara itself requires belief not in the Torah being from Moshe's hand, but rather "from Heaven". So while Rambam personally believed that the Torah was written entirely by Moshe, surely Rambam could not hold the opposing opinion to be heresy, as even the Gemara itself offers one opinion to this effect.
   
   Now, we said Rambam could not possibly hold that no textual variants or errors exist. But he makes exactly this claim in his Iggeret Teiman! This letter was written for the layman, as was the Mishneh Torah. At this time, Muslims were claiming the Torah was textually corrupted by the Jews, and any admission of this fact, by rabbis, to the laymen, could impair the simple ignorant faith of the masses. For these, it was important to tell a lie that would strengthen their faith, rather than telling a truth that was difficult to understand. For those capable of understanding, the truth would be made known, but not through the popular channels.



2. Maimonides asserted that anyone who rejected his Thirteen Principles was a heretic who has removed himself from the Jewish people- yet most of these Principles were at one time or another rejected by leading rabbis both before and after Maimonides.
   
   For example, Shapiro writes that even the view that "the Torah in our hands is exactly the same as the Torah that Moses presented to the Children of Israel" has been widely disputed. To be sure, pre-Reform Jews universally accepted the Torah as Divine and as roughly the same as the original text. But Shapiro asserts that historically there have been minor deviations in Torah scrolls, and that even today nine letters in Yemenite Torahs differ from those in those used by the rest of Jewry. Shapiro also cites numerous medieval commentators' assertions that some non-halakhic portions of the Torah, although true and divinely inspired, were written by Joshua or Ezra rather than Moses.
   
   Shapiro also asserts that some of the Principles were arguably contradicted even by Maimonides' own later writings.
   
   A minor quibble: Shapiro's discussion would have been clearer if he had put Maimonides' own language in his book as an appendix.



3. There are those for whom their belief in religion will never quite approach their scholarly understanding of it. But the opposite is probably more prevalent. Many more people sincerely profess faith but are ignorant of the knowledge that should necessarily underpin such faith.

   It is to this latter group that Marc Shapiro is addressing himself in his book, traditional Jews who might know halakha but who are otherwise ignorant of what their great spiritual giants believed for millennia. Many of the beliefs espoused by these great men run counter to the Thirteen Principles set down by Maimonides (some disagreements extending into the present!), a situation that, ostensibly, should have prevented them from an afterlife and which would have excised their souls from the Jewish nation.

   Besides proving his point exhaustively, Dr. Shapiro is presenting a fine intellectual history of Jewish thought from the vantage point of its outer limits. The appendix even includes pictures of God on the title pages of sacred books written in the past few hundred years!

   There is no doubt that this book, based on a controversial and satisfyingly unsettling essay that Shapiro penned just a few years ago, will both elicit praise and scorn, the scorn manifesting itself in book bannings and in the hiring of scholarly mercenaries who will be asked to trash the book, site unseen, in predetermined reviews.

   Well, these reviewers will have their work cut out for them because Shapiro's book is thoughtful and nuanced and, thereby, evades pigeon holing. Besides addressing out-and-out disagreements that people had regarding creed, there is the bigger problem of Maimonides contradicting himself in matters of belief, both within different contexts and at different times in his life.

   Shapiro also notes at length the recognized yet endlessly ironic fact that Maimonides himself was accused of not believing in his own Principles both during his lifetime and afterward.

   Most importantly, by invoking an authority no less central than Maimonides himself, Shapiro debunks the notion, embraced by some writers, that scholarly debate concerning the correctness of doctrine is a relic of the past, and that this pursuit of the truth has calcified into unwavering dogma.

   The historical realities are to the contrary. The search for what believers are supposed to believe is still driven by studying sacred texts, by our logic and, to some degree, by our intuitions.

   Excellent!

5 comments about Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village.

1. Since I was born in 1945, World War II and the Holocaust had always been history to me. So when I spent five years working in Germany, I constantly wondered about the older people I met--"How did you respond to Hitler's regime? What do you feel now?" Even with Germans of my own generation, the topic was one I felt uncomfortable raising.
   I have found Mimi Schwartz's book fascinating because she acknowledges very human conflicted feelings, the need for Gentile Germans to feel they did the best they could to help their neighbors, the deep-seated fear of a Jewish survivor who wants to believe people are basically good, the almost militant fervor of a young German Gentile seeking to discover the darkness of his parents' past. And Schwartz raises timely questions about conflicts between Christians, Jews, and Muslims that trouble this century.
   Beyond the topic, I am intrigued with issues of writing memoir which Schwartz's book raises. How much should an author reveal about personal feelings? How does the writer reconcile conflicting memories? Can a writer allow herself to become vulnerable? To be too naive?
   I have hardly been able to put this book down since finding it at the library, and now I want a copy for myself to highlight and reread.



2. In Good Neighbors, Bad Times, Mimi Schwartz writes a highly nuanced account of the Holocaust and how it affected the small German town where her father was born and which he remembered fondly until his death in the 1970s. While other reviewers have suggested this memoir for a Holocaust shelf or course, I recommend it to Christians seeking to understand how religious prejudice can blind us to the humanity of those who worship differently.
   
   Schwartz writes engagingly of growing up in a neighborhood of mostly Jews and longing to break out. She did this by first attending the University of Michigan and later (after marrying her Jewish boyfriend) assimilating into the predominantly Christian town of Princeton, NJ. Schwartz seems to have identified more with her mother, a city girl, than her father, who was born into a cattle trading family and left the village referred to here as Benheim to fight in World War I. As a soldier, he saw how Jews were treated in Russia and when, in 1933, he attended a rally at which thousands of enthusiastic Germans saluted Adolph Hitler, he knew to leave.
   
   While Arthur Loewengart and his brothers came to the United States, other villagers emigrated to Palestine, which was still under British rule. In the end, all but 89 of the village's Jews escaped. They were deported to camps where only two survived. Throughout her childhood, Arthur told Mimi that people in Benheim were different, kinder and more principled than the typical Nazi. After he died, she wondered if what he said was true. She began to connect the dots between survivors in New York and Israel and the German village where no Jews live today.
   
   Her journey both physical and metaphysical is told here. It is a story of small kindnesses (and cruelties) in the midst of unimaginable larger horrors, and how truth is deeply textured but well worth knowing.



3. "Before Hitler, everyone got along," according to the author of "Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village". This a true story of decency and compassion in a small German village and how its generosity stood in the face of an empire of Nazi hatred. Author Mimi Schwartz recalls tales from her father and goes on a journey that spanned over three continents and a dozen years to get the more complete story of her father's village and learns interesting details about it all from every interview and discussion. "Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village" is highly recommended for Holocaust studies shelves and for anyone seeking a more upbeat account of 1930s Germany.



4. As those who lived through the Holocaust are rapidly disappearing, this sensitive and open-minded work captures the anguish and inner conflicts of Jews and Gentiles living in a small German village during the Nazi period.
   Knowing a number of the people Mimi Schwartz depicts, I can enthusiastically attest to her accurate portrayals.
   For those of us born after this time, but still bearing some of its burden, there are important questions: What was the flavor of 400 years of mutual tolerance? How did this harmony disappear? What can we understand about ourselves in reflecting on the daily moral challenges of life lived under an evil regime?
   There are no easy answers here, but a moving and true story.



5. 2008 marks seventy years since the tragic events of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. On November 9, 1938, the Nazis unleashed a wave of destruction against Germany's Jews. In the space of a few hours, thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses and homes were damaged or destroyed. Mimi Schwartz, author of "Good Neighbors / Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village" wasn't born yet. She would be grow up in Queens, New York, on milkshakes and hamburgers, and her father's stories of life in Germany, a life she had very little interest in. Her father grew up in Benheim (the name of the village has been changed to protect privacy), a little village of Christians and Jews in southwest Germany where according to all accounts Jews and Christians lived peacefully side by side. No allied bombs fell on Benheim during WWII so much of it is still preserved. The synagogue which was attacked during Kristallnacht is still there, now as an Evangelical Church. One can still visit the Jewish cemetery with 946 old graves.
   
   Schwartz was in a village in Israel when she saw an old Benheim Torah and was told that "the Christians of Benheim rescued the Torah for us during Kristallnacht." That story sent her on a quest to discover all that she could about this little village, to determine if, like her father had always told her, Benheim was special in that the people there got along and would do anything to help one another.
   
   In "Good Neighbors / Bad Times" Schwarz interviews many old Benheimers, some in Israel and some in America. She also visits Benheim several times, a village which now has no Jews. The Jews that were there either escaped in time or were killed in the concentration camps. Only two Benheimers who were interred in the concentration camps survived. The other eighty-seven were murdered. On her journey, Schwarz discovers a series of individual stories and individual perspectives which each tell part of the whole story. She discovers both the Jewish and the Gentile perspective on what happened. She struggles with knowing what everyone knows now versus what people knew then. There was a large swastika that had been erected in the town in 1934, but as one Benheimer stated, "It was not important; no one knew what it would mean." She learned of other kind deeds that occurred in Benheim and of a second Torah that was saved and is now located in Burlington, Vermont. She learned of how good people struggled to live through such difficult times, of people too scared to take a stand and the punishments that came to those who did. She learned of children being indoctrinated with hate in the local school and parents who struggled to fight against it.
   
   "Good Neighbors / Bad Times" is a valuable work of social history. It is so important to preserve the stories of those who lived through these tragic events. In the end, Schwartz decides that Benheim was special, that decency managed to prevail there despite the Nazi hate that infected the land. As Schwartz states, "decency is often such a solitary act; it's evil that draws a noisy crowd." "Good Neighbors / bad Times" is recommended for anyone who wants to learn more about Jewish / Christian relationships during the World War II era. It would also make a wonderful text for a college course on the topic.

1 comments about Leo Melamed: Escape to the Futures.

1. Commodity Futures have been called "The Last Great Frontier of Capitalism". A characteristic of frontiers is that they produce interesting people. But while we know a good deal about the interesting people in other industries - Bill Gates in software, for example, or Peter Drucker in management consulting - until recently the public has heard little of the human side of the futures business.

   A few years ago a remarkable book was published by the options trader Jack Ritchie called God in the Pits - Confessions of a Commodities Trader. The book had much to say about author's spiritual journey and little about the financial markets in Chicago, but he described his motivation for writing the book as follows: "...the common stereotype is that integrity and commodities trading go together like Al Capone and Mother Teresa. While they are seldom accurate, neither are common sterotypes completely erroneous".

   Escape to the Futures goes a long way towards dispelling that stereotype, and therefore is a most overdue book. It is the memoirs of Leo Melamed, a former Chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (known in the commodities world as simply "the Merc") and one of the more important figures in the Chicago financial markets. As well as being better known than Ritchie, Melamed has more to say about his industry. One comes away from the book with an impression of the heroic qualities of the markets as well as an appreciation for the pioneering men who made this new frontier possible. The book's title refers to Melamed's origins. Like that other well known investment figure, George Soros, Melamed is of European Jewish extraction - he was born in Poland. His family managed to escape the Holocaust by fleeing, first to Lithuania, then, barely escaping the Nazi occupation of that country, emigrating to the United States via Japan (pre Pearl Harbour) after a long train ride across the Soviet Union. The twists and turns of this exciting story hints at the origins of Melamed's succ! ess. As Soros has said, describing his experience in the Budapest of 1944: "I learned the art of survival...that has had a certain relevance to my investment career"

   Like many careers prior to the arrival of post-industrial society, Melamed's began by accident - he answered an advertisement for a "runner" for what he presumed was a law firm but was in fact a member firm of the Merc. He quickly fell in love with the market: " I was enthralled with the open outcry system of buying and selling contracts, with the speed at which things happened, with the colorful players in this arena of capitalistic hope and sweat." (p.88). This appreciation of what Keynes called the "animal spirits" of capitalism seems to be decidedly lacking these days. In the 1990s, if one want's to be a "player" in the financial markets, the correct route seems to be via a bachelor's degree in business followed by some high-priced graduate study, an MBA or something. Contrast this with the advice the young Jimmy Rogers got in the 1960s: "Go short some beans and you'll learn more in just one trade than you would in two years at `B-School.' "

   Now, reading Escape to the Futures will not give you many trading "tips". Great traders are not going to give away their secrets like that. What it will give you an insight into is how an industry gets built. Melamend himself illustrates the phenomenal growth of the futures business in his preface to the book: "In 1971...14.6 million contracts traded on US futures exchanges. Twenty years later, in 1991, the total transactions of futures and options on US futures exchanges was 325 million contracts." How did it happen? Your average B-School guy would attribute the growth to the US dollar de-valuations of 1971 and 1973, to the commodity price booms of the 1970s, and the financial de-regulations of the 1980s. What he is missing is the role played by men like Melamed who had a vision about what they wanted to achieve with thei! r organisations. Reading his book one is struck by how his working days were more those of a politician rather than a trader.

   But I use the word politician to mean "statesman", or "leader". One characteristic of such men is vision. Look, for example, at the Merc's International Monetary Market, the futures market for currencies: "Of one thing I was certain by the mid-1970s: agriculture was never going to be the future. But finance was. If the Chicago Mercentile Exchange had any future, it was on the back of the International Monetary Market. But that was something I couldn't prove in 1975 because the currencies and financial futures still had a long way to go. One had to believe" (p. 242).

   One of the downsides of financial statesmanship is that you don't get to concentrate as much on making money yourself. For instance, Melamed would show delegations of visitors to the Merc how a trade was executed, but the trade lose money! It is no surprise to learn, at the end of the book, that Melamed is now concentrating more of his efforts these days on building up his own firm, Sakura Dellsher.

   In Melamed we get a picture of a man who allied vision with an ability to persuade people of the virtue of his ideas, who knew how to cultivate relationships with people, and who knew how to effectively use his time and resources to achieve his organisation's goals. I commend this book to everyone interested in capitalism as people and not as abstract concepts as taught in the textbooks. Like another great book written by a trader but not about trading - Bernard Baruch's My Own Story - you will get an idea of how one man made things happen..

No comments about Memories of Babi.

5 comments about Nazi Hunter: The Wiesenthal File.

1. "Nazi Hunter: The Wiesenthal File" by Alan Levy looks at the life of Holocaust survivor, author, and Nazi Hunter, Simon Wiesenthal. The book describes fascinating accounts that go from the extremely sad, to the morbidly funny. There is a tension within, and for those who read Holocaust accounts, this book offers something that few others can: justice. One of the more amazing moments came when, in the case of Adolf Eichmann, Wiesenthal, used a studly friend nicknamed 'Manos' (Spanish word for hands) to seek out Eichmann via. seducing the war criminal's former lovers in order to get informmation. This vignette fits in well with Wiesenthal's life, because we find out that Wiesenthal was not only a Nazi hunter, but also a political humorist.
   
   Levy also demythicizes Wiesenthal, who seems to have occasionally manufactured facts in his quest for Nazis. These manufactured facts, however, are a pieces of a bigger picture painted by Levy. The author is to be commended for his research into Wiesenthal, especially because he seems neither committed to defending, nor debunking his subject.This reviewer does think, however, that Levy more often than not gives Wiesenthal the last word when criticism of his subjects arises.
   
   The structure is by sections, each focussing on the life of one person: Wiesenthal, Mengele, Eichmann, and others. With each story, we find a personal history and a psychological profile of the characters, followed by an account of what happened to them after the war. We also find some very interesting speculations, and, in many cases, evidence to either support, or argue against the speculations, most of which were made by Wiesenthal. One of the strongest sections is on Raoul Wallenberg, a man who saved tens of thousands of Jews and who disappeared into Soviet prison camps. Although the evidence presented about his imprisonment is scant, it brings to life an historical figure who should occupy the same household name status as others, including Oscar Schindler. Some critics point to lack of hard evidence by Levy in his descriptions of such characters as Wallenberg or even Mengele. This critic disagrees. Levy provides enough information for the reader to reach a conclusion on his own (please forgive masculine pronoun) without being pounded over the head with an argument.
   
   One of the stronger aspects of the book, to me, is the use of photographs. Although few in number, the pictures tell us a lot about the characters. Eichmann, the handsome and proud young Nazi, and a later photo of him in court looking more like an unemployed accountant. The younger Mengele, witht he gap between his teeth and the deranged elder Mengele, whose mustache comes into the narrative later in the story. Nazi, Franz Stangl, who is shown holding his daughter, and the mighty Raoul Wallenberg, whose face defiantly faces to the left, where other pictures of Nazis reside.
   
   The last one-third of the book loses its steam when it goes away from Wiesenthal's hunt for Nazis and into some of his high-profile rivalries. But any adept reader can skim those pages and still come away satisfied.
   
   Nazi Hunter is portable in its function. It can be taken to the beach, read in bed. It's narratives are well-written and engaging, yet they do not gloss over the profound moral obligations that are placed upon the reader. Who was responsible? How do behind-the-scenes tensions affect the lives of good people and the fate of evil-doers? How should the world move forward in the wake of a tragic period in history? Although about 500 pages in length, it is a page turner, yet, it is insightful in its explanation of different character types who emerged out of World War II, and, in the humble opinion of this reader, a great read for anyone interested in Nazi Germany and what happened to the perpetrators after its demise.



2. This is an unusually well written book. The sections on Weisenthal's early years are fascinating, but ultimately, this is not a biography, as it is the story of Weisenthal's " clients " which is the most haunting. Don't agree with other reviewers that the book is non critical of Weisenthal - within a supportive framework, the author makes it quite clear just how hopelessly wrong Weisenthal got it on Mengele, and there are plenty of quotes from his detractors, including leading Jews.
   
   One of the best books on the Holocaust and its aftermath I have read.



3. This book is well intentioned and should certainly be read, but it is not a work of scholarship. It is poorly written too. It is frustrating.
   
   The book does not live up to its title. The author reveals little of Wiesenthal's files. For that, it is recommended you turn to Wiesenthal's books.
   
   The book is poorly structured, bounding together several biographical entries, largely unconnected with one another. Some entries span a few pages, others span over one hundred. The main entries concern Eichmann, Wallenberg, Mengele, Stangl. Raoul Wallenberg the hero finds himself squeezed between mass murderers Eichmann and Mengele.
   
   This is the sort of book that makes you want to read more, to look up details, to check facts, to find out more. It creates needs more than it satisfies them. It is a frustrating book.
   
   The book is well intentioned, but poorly written. It consists of a string of assertions that are not backed up by references. It suffers from the weaknesses of an eyewitness account, except that the writer, Alan Levy, has not witnessed anything himself. And he does not tell us where his facts come from.
   
   In several places, Alan Levy corrects Simon Wiesenthal. Wiesenthal's writings are full of mistakes, we are told. Alan Levy compares the two versions of Wiesenthal's memoirs to show how his views have changed over time. He corrects this or that assertion, but because he never tells us where his facts come from, this is a useless exercise bordering on the profane.
   
   Simon Wiesenthal was not a scholar and he has often been wrong. But this is mostly because he relied on eyewitnesses' accounts and anonymous denunciations. It is also because, driven as he was by a desire to bring to justice nazi mass murderers, his strategy was to keep the hunt alive by publicizing believeable nazi spottings as well as not-so-believeable spottings. What reasons does Alan Levy have for writing such a sloppy book?
   
   This is a frustrating book because it is full of facts we would like to check, but cannot because there are no references to the sources.
   
   Turn instead to: Raoul Wallenberg, by Sharon Linnea. Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder, by Gitta Sereny (this is a biography of Stangl). Mengele: The Complete Story, by Gerald L. Posner. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, by Hannah Arendt. The Sunflower, by Simon Wiesenthal.



4. I was quite disappointed by this book (I hesitated between 2 and 3 stars, and finally opted for 2, to balance the enthusiastic reviews that this book gets)
   When I started reading it, i had great expectations. Here was a book that would tell me the story of Simon wiesenthal, a survivor of the Holocaust that swore to hunt Nazi around the world, and bring them in front of justice.
   The description of wartime and the horror of concentration camps is quite good (although anything written by Primo Levi is much better). The wartime life of wiesenthal himself is well described, although it sounds a little romanticized. It could have set the ground to understand what drove this man in his postwar hunt. But that's where the disappointment comes : it doesn't. The book goes back and forth between a mere collection of facts and a blindly admirative account of Wiesenthal's life. Whatever Wiesenthal says is right, whatever Wiesenthal does is great. What this book lacks is independant investigation. The author seems to be satisfied with Wiesenthal accounts on pretty much everything in the book. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say Wisenthal lied on anything. But a biograph should not rely solely on the testimonies of his subject. And when he does quote somebody else, the quote is not properly referenced (there is a certain flakiness in Levy's journalistic methods).
   Rather than giving fuzzy criticism, let's look at one particular example:
   Page 136 is symptomatic of the lazy writing in this book : the first part of the page is a long citation of Annah Arendt, explaining how Eichman got out of Europe after the war (Levy doesn't give the reference of the quote). Then he goes on to quote an ecclesiast who helped Eichman getting out, testifying how he didn't realized that the person he was helping was a Nazi (Levy also ironizes about the fake innocence of the priest). Here, once again, we don't know where the quote is coming from. Did Levy directly asked the ecclesiast ? I doubt. More probably Levy got this quote from Wiesenthal himself (probably from one of his books). This is symptomatic from this book : it comes so close from a direct testimony of Wiesenthal that he even forgets to remind us when he actually is quoting him. So then, why not just reading one of Wiesenthal's books instead?
   This is just an example taken randomly. Other -more serious- points on which Levy doesn't take much distance from Wiesenthal include :
   -when Wiesenthal proposed that Eichman be dressed a a Nazi during his trial (page 156, Levy qualifies this idea as "emotionally right", I personally find it grotesque)
   -On the controversy between Wiesenthal and Israel's secret services as to who took the most important part in Eichman's capture (once again, all we have his Wiesenthal point of view, taken for granted).
   
   The function of a biography (and this book is advertised as a biography) is to give a balanced, honest account on one man's personality, not trying to hide its complexity. On that regard, Alan Levy partially fails.
   As I read again my comments, I realize that I have been a little bit harsh. The book is not bad, it is just that it is written more like a thriller than a book on history.



5. First of all, I'd like to state the book (most of it) was quite riveting. Levy begins with a look at Wiesenthal's experience as a young Jew in pre-war Europe. He later chronicles Simon's life during the war in the camps and his search for his family after the war. The stories make for fascinating reading. Then, Levy writes how Simon got into the business of Nazi hunting.
   
   The chapters describing the hunts for Adolf Eichmann (and the rivals between Mossad and Wiesenthal), Josef Mengele, and Franz Stangl were absoluting quality reading. After the chapters on these three Nazis, and the brief chapter on the concentration camp guards, the book takes a different path and describes the ordeal of Raoul Wallenberg. Although Wallenberg was not a Nazi, but a humanist dedicating to saving the lives of Jews, I had to ask myself what this chapter was doing in the book. Nevertheless, it was quite fascinating to read about the ordeal Wallenberg faced and to read what actually happened to him during the war, and especially, after the war.
   
   At this point, you can quit reading the book. The next chapters dealt with Bruno Kriesky and Kurt Waldheim. I didn't have a clue who Bruno was. (I believe he became chancellor of Austria during the '70s). Why was he in this book? As far as I can tell, it was due to Simon and Bruno not liking each other. Bruno was a Jew who claimed that he was not a Jew and tried to distance himself from Jews during the war. He didn't kill any Jews, so why have his story in this book? It's wasted space.
   
   As far as Waldheim is concerned, the jury appears to be out as far as his guilt is concerned. There never seems to be direct evidence pointing to Waldheim as to whether he was responsible for killing partisans (or at least KNEW some killings took place)
   in Yugoslavia. Waldheim's superiors (during the war) say that he did not have the authority to kill or order killings; a sargaent who reported to Waldheim said that he did. Some say he was present at the time the killings took place; others said he was not. Some say that as part of intelligence, and as a lowly lieutenant, Waldheim would not have known about partisan killings. Others said how did he not know? If no one knows the truth, why read it about in this book? Even the Yugoslavian government has refused to prosecute. So, I may ask, why fill 150 pages of this book if there is no conclusive evidence that Waldheim is guilty? The later part of these chapters were very boring. The book was about hunting murderous NAZIS, not about people who were ashamed of being Jewish or about German Army officers.
   
   The book should have included the hunt for Nazi Klaus Barbie and other Nazis who eluded capture for many years. Then, I would have rated this book 4 stars. But, to include chapters on Bruno Kriesky and Kurt Waldheim? A real time waster.

5 comments about Raoul Wallenberg: The Man Who Stopped Death.

1. I ordered this book because the homeschool curriculum we use recommended it. I was a little skeptical because I had never heard of Raoul Wallenberg before. I am very glad I went ahead and ordered it because I read it in two days (It only took that long because of Christmas parties). This is a story of a man who went above and beyond and did so in the face of Nazi controlled Hungary. I am sure that the people who stood up to Adolph Eichmann are few and far between. There is a very interesting chapter than describes the dinner that these two men shared. Chilling! My only regret is that they never found solid information on Raoul after the war. This book did, however, motivate me to search the web and do some further research of my own!



2. Raoul Wallenberg had a mission for his life from his youngest days. He was impressed with the story of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and wanted to save people in a similar manner. During World War II, Raoul worked at the Swedish embassy in Poland, giving Swedish citizenship to thousands of Jews. These "new" Swedes were protected by Sweden, since the Nazis were not at war with Sweden, and had no wish to be. Raoul helped them out of the country, and gave others work there in his department. He provided ration cards to the starving Jews. Secretly employed by the United States government, he hired a photographer to document the activities in which he lived. Some of those photographs are in this book. Raoul fought with Adolph Eichmann with everything he had: money, wits, subtlety, threats and power, and he had plenty to work with. He escaped several attempts on his life, but in the end, fell into the hands of the Russians, who he had supposed would be friendly to him. No one really knows, or has made public, what happened to him after that. The Russian government claimed that he died, but many people reported sharing a cell with him after that.
   
   
   
   This book was very easy to read. Linnea pulls her readers into the world of Raoul Wallenberg, and makes them care about his life. Certainly not a dry biography, it reads like a novel following an undercover agent. Even young children would be interested in his story. Read this biography, and learn of a daring and courageous man who defied the powers and authorities to save life.



3. The writing is clear and manages to convey many of the important details of Wallenberg's life, yet it was written for a typical young-adult audience. To a sopisticated reader this text can come across as a bit hollow and wooden. These amazing human beings and the incredible times they lived in appear somewhat simplified and one-dimensional in this book. It was lacking a bit too much in feeling and deeper exploration of human nature for this adult reader. Still Wallenberg's life is a great story and worthy of being told many times over. It's just that this one alone fails to do it complete justice.



4. This book should be read by everyone. It is informative, well written, and provides information one one of the true heros in the history of mankind. If you read "Shindlers Ark" (or saw the movie) you'll really enjoy this book.



5. As a parent, I know how hard it is to find excellent, high-quality nonfiction books for older children who are at an in-between stage - not quite ready for adult books but too old for "juvenile" books. This true account of Raoul Wallenberg, a man who saved more than 100,000 Jewish men, women and children from extinction during the Holocaust, is gripping and well-written. My kids could NOT put it down and one of them is a reluctant reader, so that says a lot right there. Watching my reluctant reader with his eyes glued to the page compelled me to pick up the book myself and I was glad I did. The author has used actual archival materals and even interviewed Wallenberg's family and friends. There are also photographs included, a special touch that brings a sense of immediacy to the past. Perhaps most importantly, the author has not "talked down" to the older children who are most likely to read this book (although it could be read aloud to younger ones). Adults, too, would find this one fascinating to read. A strong recommendation for this one!