3 comments about The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir.

1. Marjorie Perloff's memoir was a complete pleasure from start to finish - it was a lucky accident for me that I came upon this gem.
   
   Absolutely delightful - charming in all ways, along with being particularly outstanding in combining the author's areas of professional expertise as a first class literary critic with her memories of an earlier Vienna and the traces that remain. This is not meant to slight at all her sharp remembrances of the events of growing up and the succinct clarity with which she describes them.
   
   Her memoir has many sections that point the reader to new areas for exploration: the Neue Gallery in NYC with its scintillating art collection (Schiele and Klimt), Arnold Schoenberg's writings and music, and the brilliant Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, just to mention a few.
   
   The other reviews do a thorough job of providing more details about this book. I'll add that Ms. Perloff, the complete professional, includes an excellent index, helpful notes to accompany the text, and thoughtful illustrations that augment the memoir. A quote from the book jacket's inside cover is particularly apt: "This is, in other words, an intellectual memoir, both elegant and heartfelt, by one of America's leading thinkers, a narrative in which literary and philosophical reference is as central as the personal."



2. 
   I picked up a copy of The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir, by Marjorie Perloff because the idea of a memoir about Vienna intrigued me, and because I've always been enthralled by the critical mind of this noted and innovative literary scholar. After I'd read it, I ordered some more copies to bestow on friends, most of whom have no particular interest in Vienna whatsoever.
   "Why are you giving me this book?" one of my more suspicious friends asked me. "What is there about this book that sets it apart from all the immigrant narratives, from all the nostalgic recounting of `old Vienna,' from all the other autobiographies that people turn to when they begin to realize that time is passing and whatever they don't set down will be forgotten?" The central distinction is this: Perloff doesn't just record her own experiences or those of her family and friends, she uses those experiences - the experiences of her extended family, experiences of other famous emigrants from Vienna, together with information about books, museums, websites, as well as restaurants, street guides and all kinds of other information - for other purposes than telling about her self. She's not seeking her own `roots,' but draws on those roots to examine some of the important and pressing questions that only a critic of the world with great experience, perspective and expertise can ask.
   What Perloff is exploring with her delineation and examination of the civilization in which her family was nurtured and from which it was expelled is far more complex than just where she comes from, or even what really were the negative effects of the Holocaust. She is asking what are the functions, the potential and the limitations of civilization: what should we value in culture, what should we discard, what can we know, what can we improve, and what are the individual limitations. At one point Perloff quotes Wittgenstein
   if we think of the world's future, we always mean where it will be if it keeps going as we see it going now and it doesn't occur to us that it is not going in a straight line but in a curve, constantly changing direction. (33)
   The lessons from history are not imperatives for the future, and therefore every detail must be examined, and it is the role of the artist and the critic to perform this examination, and to edify . Therefore Perloff delineates the achievements, on all sides, of her family - their successful careers in Austria and elsewhere, their connections, their accomplishment throughout - but she also notes their failure to perceive and/or act within Austrian society to counter or prevent what was to come. Except for some foreign bank accounts that came in handy for the family after their escape in August of 1938, there seems to have been little understanding of the dangers inherent in the historical situation. If Grandfather Schuller was allowed into Italy because of a welcome from Mussolini to his former negotiator, it was not political foresight that made Schuller prepare an escape route for a Jew, but belief in Austria transcending personal considerations that saved him.
   The technique of postmodern pastiche is everywhere, but it is not here an indication of the eradication of values. Perloff is an expert at weaving together associations, websites, museums, biography, memoir, gossip, lunch, poetry and making sense of them all. This pastiche is born from the sensibility of the multicultural, world-wise individual, comfortable everywhere in the universe. Perloff, in opposition to the refugee, the outsider, really believes in a society, but it is an ur society, which incorporates and transcends the differences. Her criticism of European disdain for American society, and American naiveté as to European society, is an attempt to bring the two together.
   More than anything else, there is a love story in this autobiographical account -- it is a love story with America, that country that whatever its cultural limitations in comparison to the hoch kultur of Vienna, gave her and her family shelter and opportunity to thrive to such an extent that politics could be safely and comfortably ignored. Written after September 11, when the US is besieged not only by enemies without but also by the intelligentsia within, this book serves as a reminder of perspective. So that although it begins with the story of Arnold Schoenberg who despite his appreciation for the United States, never found in it a lasting and appreciative audience, it concludes with Adorno, who longed for the taste of European culture and returned there after the War.



3. Marjorie Perloff, the noted and prolific literary critic and comparativist, has written a thoughtful introspection about the intersection of her life with the complexities of the fading Vienna of the 20's and thirties. It's a dizzying array of contrasts and passages: not only her (and her family's) adjustment to American society of the 1940;s and 1950's, but the passage of Arnold Schoenberg, and the contrast of John Cage and Schoenberg. Perloff sheds a personal light on the ambivalences towards Jewishness and the imperatives of conversions. The photographs of girls in dirndls and her prestigious grandfather in morning suit are stunning reminders of the power of illustration and the evocation of period. Though this is memoiristic, Perloff remains a literary critic and there are efforts to re-address Adorno and Gombrich (for example)in terms of their own refugee pasts. Marjorie Perloff changed her name from Gabriele to Marjorie, her school from PS 7 to the fashionable Fieldston, her academic address from Catholic University ultimately to Stanford. The book is about what change means, how it reiterates, to someone whose life was abruptly forced, by the Anschluss, into a totally new mode of looking at the world and thinking about it.

2 comments about Jewish Sports Legends: The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, 4th Edition.

1. This book is a comprehensive guide to Jewish achievements in sport throughout the world. It does not simply focus on the major spectator sports but covers the Olympic sports also.



2. This book chronicles the leading Jewish men and women who have achieved world class status as athletes and it also goes behind the scenes to list those men and women who have made outstanding contributions to the development of sport.

No comments about Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora.

5 comments about Head of the Line: A Holocaust Survivor's Memoir.

1. Very well written. I couldn't put it down! The author transported you into his experiances, and left you wondering at the human capacity to adapt to his condition in order to survive.
   
   I highly recommend this book



2. I enjoyed this book not only because it was well written and easy to follow, but mainly because it depicted yet another way in which the Jewish population was "used" for slave work during the war. It's news to me that some Jewish people worked/slaved for the Germans but weren't actually assigned to a concentration camp.



3. A very well told memoir. Heartrending and yet uplifting. Certainly a different tale from many and adds more detail to this awful period. Very worthwhile reading.



4. It's hard to imagine that a society could tolerate the killing of 6 million Jews. It's even harder to imagine how this happened only six decades ago. I have studied and read many Holocaust books, but I can not remember one that affected as deeply as Michael Jackson's memoir and story of survival in Head of the Line: A Holocaust Survivor's Memoir. Mr. Jackson not only recounts a personal tale, but he tells the story of European Jews prior to World War Two. His use of Yiddish reminded me of a language past that my grandparents spoke about. Mr. Jackson gives a first-hand account of growing up as a Jew in the Carpathian Mountain region of pre-World War II Czechoslovakia. He proudly recounts his days growing up surrounded by a large extended family that treasured life, religion and freedom. His memoir traces his journey through the Holocaust as he bore witness to the atrocities of the war and the destruction of his family. He tells his story of survival in detail, from his deportation from his home, to forced labor marches and slavery to Dachau and eventually America. It is through acts of unexplained miracles, courage and a strong will to survive that Mr. Jackson is able to share his story. In just a few years time, we will rely on books like Mr. Jackson's to teach and explain the Holocaust. It is from this memoir that I will teach my children and my children's children about the Holocaust. It is for that reason that I recommend this book. Mr. Jackson's memoir will forever remain on my bookshelf.



5. It's hard to imagine that a society could tolerate the killing of 6 million Jews. It's even harder to imagine how this happened only six decades ago. I have studied and read many Holocaust books, but I can not remember one that affected as deeply as Michael Jackson's memoir and story of survival in Head of the Line: A Holocaust Survivor's Memoir. Mr. Jackson not only recounts a personal tale, but he tells the story of European Jews prior to World War Two. His use of Yiddish reminded me of a language past that my grandparents spoke about. Mr. Jackson gives a first-hand account of growing up as a Jew in the Carpathian Mountain region of pre-World War II Czechoslovakia. He proudly recounts his days growing up surrounded by a large extended family that treasured life, religion and freedom. His memoir traces his journey through the Holocaust as he bore witness to the atrocities of the war and the destruction of his family. He tells his story of survival in detail, from his deportation from his home, to forced labor marches and slavery to Dachau and eventually America. It is through acts of unexplained miracles, courage and a strong will to survive that Mr. Jackson is able to share his story. In just a few years time, we will rely on books like Mr. Jackson's to teach and explain the Holocaust. It is from this memoir that I will teach my children and my children's children about the Holocaust. It is for that reason that I recommend this book. Mr. Jackson's memoir will forever remain on my bookshelf.

2 comments about The Life of Jews in Poland before the Holocaust: A Memoir.

1. This book is a compeling read. It describes in minute detail the religious, social and economic structure of the time. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to have a glimpse of life in Poland before WWII.



2. As the Holocaust recedes further into the past, it becomes increasingly difficult to treat it as more than an abstraction. It becomes defined by numbers: Six million or more dead, numbingly large. Yet, how can one who did not live in that era imagine what it truly meant, and even more so for a goy such as myself?
   
   Ben-Zion Gold's memoir is truly a treasure, because of its portrait of Jewish life before the Holocaust. He describes his boyhood living in an Orthodox household in Radom, Poland in the 1930's. He paints rich pictures of family members and gatherings and a host of unique individuals. He depicts his religious schooling, cut short by the war.
   
   The last few chapters briefly describe how Gold survived the war, and the impact of his ordeal on his faith. His candor and insights are deeply appreciated.
   
   Gold originally wrote his story with his daughters in mind -- to tell them about the family in Poland, all of whom were murdered well before his daughters' birth. Fortunately for us, he has expanded the tale in such a way as to make it accessible, even to those of us with no familiarity with Jewish life or customs. I was particularly grateful for how terms are defined on first use.
   
   The Holocaust becomes so much more meaningful now. With Gold's story, we see the faces of those who perished, their personalities, community and culture. We understand a little better what was lost.
   
   I highly recommend this book.

5 comments about The Reichmanns: Family, Faith, Fortune, and the Empire of Olympia & York.

1. The Reichmanns
   
   The book, "The Reichmanns; Family, Faith, Fortune and The Empire of Olympia & York" by Anthony Bianco is a 668 page mind boggling tale of a family dynasty that came from nowhere and rose to one of the most wealthy families in the world in one generation. The book explains how through Paul Reichmann's insatiable drive and willingness to parlay the profit from each successful project into a much larger endeavor, their wealth exploded to over $10 billion at the peak, just before risking everything on Canary Warf on London's East End.
   
   At times it's a bit of a fight to get through the sections that are not related to business and real estate, but those sections give you a good idea about the family's morals and values and bring you closer to understanding their thinking.
   
   A memorable section is when they braved the NYC real estate slump of 1976 - 1997 and purchased eight skyscrapers from the Uris Building Corporation for $46 million down. Within a decade the package would have a value of over $3 billion.
   
   The book is packed with similar anecdotes that both inspire and encourage someone wanting to build a real estate fortune of their own.
   
   By Kevin Kingston author of, "A 20,000% Gain in Real Estate"



2. The book discusses in great detail the Reichmann family's role both in Jewish culture over the last couple hundred years and in the real estate developement business over the last 40 or so years.

   The part I liked the best was the descriptions of 18th and 19th century Jewish life in the "oberland"(sp?) of Hungary. A lost culture, thanks not only to the Nazis but also to Jewish Emancipation.

   In a way, it is inspirational, as it shows how one family managed to integrate a healthy, traditional religious expression with philanthropy and business acumen. It also shows that you cannot understand what makes that family "tick" without understanding the rich culture and religion of orthodox jewishness.

   The greatest strength of this book, in my opinion, is that it is a _history_ of the family and its business, religious, philanthropic, and cultural dealings. It isnt the hagiography that so many business biographies in the popular press tend to be.




3. As the Reichmanns anticipate another rush to the top of the heap we shall watch with amazed eyes as this family woos our imagination, yet again! As renowned as the Reichmanns have been there are still followers of scrappy success stories that do not know much about what this family, with brother and son Paul at the helm, contributed to New York City's skyline. The World Financial Center was a creation of their delicately named Olympia & York. Read this from beginning to end so that you can grasp the rise and fall and now, again, rise of this amazing family. As is usually indicative of most business minds through time, the children are not as capable as the original "originators" themselves.



4. For those interested in real estate development, I recommend skipping through the first half of the book and starting at page 256. From there on it is fascinating reading on the possibilities of development for those with seemingly infinite capital on hand. Paul Reichmann's passion, drive and high tolerance for risk makes for better reading than most novels.



5. Though well researched and well written, the author accepts rumour as facts, and thus published reports of personal misconduct which are totally false. It does not do justice to the tragic story of the collapse of the fortunes of a family that was world reknowed for their kindness and generosity. For those that were acquainted with the true facts, and recognize the Reichmans as the great men that they truly are, this book is a travesty.

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.

2 comments about Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness.

1. The power of Heschel's influence on the philosophy of Jewish America cannot possibly be underestimated. Dr. Kaplan's valient attempt to analyze and research the life os this great thinker is to be commended. His descriptions of the piety of the man he calls a Prophet, may be distasteful to some of his more liberal admirers, but remains the unadulterated proud truth. For the great liberal thinker and activist never swayed from his religous beleifs. Though considered a leader in the Conservative movement, he remained an Orthodox Jew. Though Kaplan's descriptions of Heschel's father, who was a Chassidic Grand Rabbi and miracle worker are lacking understanding in Spirituality and therefore rather inacurate, which is troublesome to his more knowledgeble Chassidic readers, I eagerly await Volume II, on Heschel's years in America.



2. Among the American intellectual community, Abraham Joshua Heschel is probably the best known Jewish spiritual leader. of the 20th century. This resulting from his activist stance on the issue of Civil Rights in the early 1960's and his active and vocal opposition to the Vietnam War a bit later. Yet as time goes by ,few Americans,Jewish and gentiles alike are aware of Heschel, the scholar, Heschel the particularistic Jewish activist, and Heschel, the spiritual seeker. This biography throws light on the youth and education of this prophetic figure. We learn about Heschel's Chasidic background, his "royal" lineage, his sojurn in Vilna among secular Jews, his education and activities in Germany as well as his foray into the world of Yiddish poetry, and his scholarly publications.The book is well researched and finely written, with many illustrations. I only feel that those parts dealing with Heschel the Chasidic Jew and Yiddish poet lack some authenticity. The authors seem to go overboard to stress Heschel's ritual observance in Vilna and Berlin, such as strict adherence to the Kosher code ,to the laws of Shaatnez and the like.Its ironic that at the same time that a number of books and articles have recently appeared about the Lubavitcher rebbe's stay in Berlin, subtly questioning his Jewish committment,this book about a future leader of the Conservative Jewish movement maintains Heschel's strict ritual observance in Berlin.All in all this volume is a fascinating portrayal of the life of an East European Jew seeking new horizons and an education in the West, yet never forgetting his roots. It is an important contribution to the study of European Jewish life and thought in the 20th century.

No comments about Second Generation Voices: Reflections by Children of Holocaust Survivors and Perpetrators (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust).

No comments about Abraham's Search for God (Bible Series).