The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History

 

The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History by Thomas Harding, is a story that can be told thousands of times by thousand of families.  Harding grew up hearing stories of his family’s small a cottage just outside Berlin.  As Jews, they fled Germany in the 1930s and the cottage and all of their property was seized by the Nazis.

Harding traces the history of Germany through the fate of the house.  The house and the property are first stolen by the Nazis, then under Russian control, followed by East German jurisdiction; when the Berlin wall is constructed, the house is in the security zone, and the wall prevents the residents from using the lake.  When the wall comes down the house starts a long decline.  When the author is on the scene, it is derelict, inhabited by squatters and drug users.

The book ends with Harding exploring the possibility of renovating the house and making it a kind common property.  In the years since the book’s publication, he and others have done this; the house is restored to the way it looked in the 1930s.  The Alexander House website explains that the house is “a Centre for Education and Reconciliation.”

Most importantly, exhibits in the house and on its property do not turn a blind eye to the fact that it originally was stolen Jewish property, even, or despite the fact that the house is placed within the wider context of modern German history.

The Great American Atrocities

 

My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness (Pivotal Moments in American History) 1st Edition, by Howard Jones tells the tragic story of the American massacre of over five-hundred South Vietnamese civilians in 1968.  This is a tale of poor leadership, confusing orders, and the lack of clear guidance of strategic goals up and down the chain of command.  My Lai is a moral stain.

But we do our history a great disservice if we think of this massacre as somehow isolated.  The conditions to murder unarmed civilians in war is ever present.  America is not immune from this.  For example, we do not think of the wars we engaged in with Native Americans as war.  In fact they were, and in many cases, old men, women and children were killed in hundreds of battles.  

We should disabuse ourselves of the notion that we are an immaculate people.  We have just finished our “longest war” in Afghanistan.  But the Indian Wars lasted from the arrival of Europeans in America until the turn of the 20th century.  The Indian Wars in the United States did not end until the subjugation of the Apaches in the 1890s.  That was our longest war, and a tragic and costly one for Native American civilians

As a country we need to wake up to our own history.  We have to understand how we use selective definitions to eliminate our need to take responsibility for atrocities of all sorts.  

The War on Terror & American Carnage

 

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer, revisits the unfortunate Bush years.  She lays out in exacting detail how the policies and wars of Bush/Cheney ushered in the Age of Trump.  The War on Terror eroded democratic principles and structures, paving the way for rabid populism.  Mayer lays out this case in this well written and persuasive book.  

Live a Large Jewish Life (but be prepared)

 

This is a very difficult book to review.  Dara Horn gets right at the heart of the conundrums, fears, and anxieties of Jews in America in the age of Trump and post-Trump.  And why not?  The rise of anti-Antisemitism and the violence it has spawned is deeply concerning.  American Jews sense looming danger.  

As a Jew, it is nearly impossible to read Horn’s book, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present, without the baggage we haul along as the topics she explores hit right at an existential Jewish dichotomy: we are not in existential danger, the place we live is safe or we are in existential danger (or soon will be) and the place we live is dangerous.

Shaul Magid has written, as of this moment, one of the few largely negative reviews of this book.  He thinks that seeing Jewish history as a series of catastrophes warps our sense of Jewish history.  As a Jew influenced by Bratslav, I understand his concerns; the Jewish life we live should be approached b’simcha, with joy.  Otherwise, Judaism becomes a nihilistic entity, enshrining victim-hood, and instilling a dangerous sense of entitlement to our own sufferings (after all, many other peoples have suffered catastrophes).  Why can't we Jews just deal if it?

I think we fail to because Horn’s sense of Jewish history, across a certain spectrum, is just as correct as Magid’s.  It is prudent, even wise, to enjoy our lives as Jews to the hilt, while at the same time realizing that our history has given us ample reason to be afraid of certain trends, and plan to protect ourselves.  

There is nothing inherently contradictory in holding these two views at once.  This is not an all or nothing proposition.  After all, this is how we approach life.  Every day we wake up, and we know, at least in the back of our mind, that something terrible might happen today. This may be our last day in a job, a marriage, or as living beings. But we get out of our beds and we move on and live with as much joy as possible.  We live the most we can in the face of existential uncertainty; but we also plan for the worst.

Deep Shade

 

The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson is supposed to be the supreme example of literary horror.  Overall I found the stories lacking.  There are some standouts.  One is Pillar of Salt, which comes close to being suspenseful, and is certainly a surreal narrative. But the accomplished stories in this collection can be counted on one hand.  This is especially the case with the title story.  At this point the literary realm has stories of this nature that put The Lottery into deep shade.

“rediscovered”

In Arthur Green’s book Judaism for the World he discusses Rebbe Nachman’s grave, the site of one of the most famous Chasidic pilgrimages in the world.  During World War Two, the Ukrainian city of Uman was  destroyed, along with the Rebbe’s tomb.  He tells us:

…the old cemetery was plowed over by the Nazis, and the site was built into apartment blocks by the Soviets. Now the place of R. Naḥman’s burial has been “rediscovered”…

I find the quotations interesting.  It suggests a that the two tomb in Uman may not be Rebbe Nachman's at all. What grounds exist for such a claim?

This brought me to Against All Odds by Gedaliah Flier.  This is a fascinating book about the efforts of the author in the 1960s to reach the Rebbe’s grave behind the Iron Curtain.  He tells an interesting account on page 31 about the Rebbe’s tomb following the Second World War.  A certain Reb Zanvil searched in vain for the foundations of the small stone structure that had previously covered that grave.  He failed to find it.  Reb Zanvil pleads with God to help him find the grave.

That night, the Rebbe comes to him in a dream. Reb Zanvil implores the Rebbe, saying, don’t leave us!  The Rebbe’s says; I am not leaving... I am remaining with you.  The next morning Reb Zanvil unearths the foundation of the stone structure that once covered the Rebbe’s tomb.  These are the circumstances that Arthur Green alludes to by the rediscovered in quotes.  Although not specifically spelled out, we are led to believe that the dream gave Reb Zanvil vital information to find the tomb.

In his book, Green takes a tour of famous Rebbe’s graves. A rationalist by nature, he is more interested in the Torah they been left behind than appealing to them at their tombs.  Rabbi Green is a historian and rationalist. He probably finds the supernatural rediscovery of Rebbe Nachman’s tomb questionable.

In the end it doesn’t matter. Flier’s efforts to get behind the Iron Curtain to pray at the Rebbe’s grave are ennobling.  Without the tomb, and the Rosh Hashanah kibutz at Uman, Breslov would not be the same.  I believe Rabbi Green understands this and therefore does not explore this topic fully. 

Meaning is often found in the effort and devotion.  In the end that is all that counts.

some other plan for the way the world should be

 

Tuck Everlasting explores the theme of death, and why it is essential to life.  There are few surprises here.  The rules of existence revolve around two poles: life and death are two sides of our world.  Without death life has no meaning, and eternal life is a nightmare.  Without change and transformation, and the end which caps our individual life, existence is unnatural.

I enjoyed how softly the author provides an explanation for the ability of the characters to never die.  The fountain of water the characters drink, we are told, is “something left over… from some other plan for the way the world should be.”

999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz

999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz by Heather Dune Macadan is a holocaust story like no other.  It strikes at the heart of a community's future: its girls.  This book is a chronicle of Slovakian Jewish girls sent on the first transport to construction parts of Auschwitz-Birkenau.  The Slovakian Jewish community had no way of knowing the ultimate fate of their children.  The fact that they wore sent to camps early, when Germany's plans were still largely secret, adds to the tragedy and pathos of this story.  This is an excellent book and shows that not only shows the broad scope of the holocaust, but the heavy price paid of real people, giving them a name.