Semel, Nava. “Isra-Isle: A Novel”, (translated by Jessica Cohen), Mendel Vilar, 2016.

Before Herzl

Amos Lassen

Many consider Theodore Herzl to be the founder of modern Zionism and to a great extent he was. But history tells us that before Herzl there was Mordecai Manuel Noah, an American journalist, diplomat, playwright, and visionary. In September 1825 he bought Grand Island that is downriver from Niagara Falls. He paid the local Native Americans their price so that he could create a place of refuge for the Jewish people that came to be called “Ararat.” However, no Jews came. We can only wonder how different the world might have been had they come. This book is alternate history in which Jews from throughout the world fled persecution and came to Ararat. Isra Isle became— there was no Israel and there was no Holocaust. In exploring this what-if scenario, Nava Semel gives us new ways to think about “memory, Jewish/Israeli identity, attitudes toward minorities, women in top political positions, and the place of cultural heritage”.

Semel has divided her novel into three parts. Part one is set in September, 2001 when Liam Emanuel, an Israeli descendant of Mordecai Noah, learns about and inherits this island. He leaves Israel intending to claim this “Promised Land” in America. However, shortly after he comes to America, he disappears. A Native American police investigator Simon T. Lenox, tries to find Liam. In part 2 we go back in time to the events surrounding Mordecai Noah’s purchase of the island from the local Native Americans. In part three we get the alternate history with the rise of a successful modern Jewish city-state, Isra Isle, on the northern New York and Canadian border. It is a city that looks a lot like New York City both before and after 9/11 and there the Jewish female governor campaigns to become president of the United States.

“What If” is a fun game and Semel plays it well. “In this changed world, Israel never existed, Native American and Jewish customs have been merged, and the American Jewish state affects many issues in the world. Each of the main characters struggles with issues of religion, spirituality, and identity in streaming thoughts and discussions. Through those voices, Semel explores issues of global importance—such as terrorism, prejudice, and politics—in this singular, thought-provoking novel.”

Semel changes the Zionist narrative by considering whether it would have been possible to change the history of the Jewish people. She creates a world in which there is a prosperous Jewish state under American patronage.

The book crosses genre from detective novel to historical fantasy, and to alternate history making this an exploration of modern Jewish identity for a postmodern world. With swift pacing and a sly wit Semel looks at the very serious topics of Zionism, multicultural politics, the attacks of 9/11 and we can only imagine the world she gives us.

“Shalom Italia”

The Anati Brothers

Amos Lassen

In 2013, three Italian Jewish brothers set off on a journey through Tuscany, in search of a cave where they hid as children to escape the Nazis. For the Anati brothers, Bubi, 77; Andrea, 85; and Emmanuel, 88 wanted to reconnect with their past.

The Anatis were raised in an upper-class family in Florence. In 1942, just before the deportations of Florentine Jews to Auschwitz began, the family managed to escape the city. They fled from village to village and eventually settled in a forest near Villa a Sesta, a town some 50 miles from Florence. Their father dug a cave with the help of others and the family lived underground for several months during the winter of 1944 until the end of the war. The family then moved to Israel, where the brothers have lived ever since.

“Shalom Italia,” is a documentary directed by Tamar Tal Anati (Bubi’s daughter-in-law) that follows the brothers’ return to Italy in an attempt to find the cave and seek some closure about those years. The brothers hike through the forest, meet with members of a family that helped them survive and eat Italian food as they look for the cave. Here we see that the brothers are true friends and still maintain good feelings about Italian culture. Bubi, worked at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science for years, is the guiding force behind the trip because locating the cave was something he had wanted to do for years. Andrea is an oceanic physics researcher and a jokester is seen whistling, humming and introducing himself to strangers is still in great physical shape. Emmanuel or “Meme” as his brothers call him is an internationally renowned archaeologist is the most serious of the three and has no desire to relive his Holocaust memories agreed to the trip to satisfy Bubi.

The brothers’ enjoy bickering with each other and it is endearing to see and hear. However, we never lose sight of the real purpose of the trip. The film’s lighthearted tone goes hand in hand with the brothers’ ghosts from the war. They share interesting thoughts about the nature of memory as they enjoy the food of the country. Andrea reminds his brothers of living in the woods, collecting mushrooms and playing Robin Hood games and having fun during the darkest period in world history. The boys were forced to grow up quickly. The film is a “testament to how memories are filtered through our attitudes and experiences, even the desires of those around us”.

Even though Tal had been married to Bubi’s son for years, she was not aware that her father-in-law and his brothers were Holocaust survivors. When Bubi told her about the planned trip to the Italian countryside and she learned of the cave and the reason for the journey, she felt that she had to film the adventure. What she found fascinating was that each brother had a completely different memory of the same event and she was curious to see how they would deal with the physical and mental challenge of such a journey as this. The brothers did not even think of themselves as true Holocaust survivors but since the filming of “Shalom Italia,” they have dealt with the memories of time. We need never to forget that who we are and how we see life are the result of our memories and if memories change, so do we.

The journey itself is fascinating and we also get glimpses of people who helped them survive.

“Koudelka: Shooting Holy Land”

A Creative Genius

Amos Lassen

Josef Koudelka is a Magnum genius photographer who journeyed all over Israel and Palestine looking for what would make a perfect photograph. Director Gilad Baram followed him on the search.

Septuagenarian Koudelka is known for unmerciful photographs and his ironic humor. His black and white photos have a real sense of loneliness, of desolation, of disconsolation. They are quite merciless and that mercilessness and ironic humor is what we see in Baram’s film, a documentary is which nothing really happens. For about an hour, nothing happens, hardly anything is discussed, scenes shift abruptly and, after about an hour, the film just sort of ends. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, however, “Shooting Holy Land” is immensely successful, enjoyable and instructive film.

Koudelka simply photographs Israel and the West Bank, with particular attention on the security wall. Despite the subject matter, “Shooting Holy Land” is not overtly political. Both Baram and Koudelka are clearly against the existence of the wall – Koudelka, at a couple points, even compares it to the “Iron Curtain” that he lived behind in communist Czechoslovakia and Baram’s editing choices clearly focus on the wall’s negative aspects, with particular attention paid to Hebron, one of Israel’s most obviously terrible situations.

The wall is concrete, imposing, foreboding, gray and ugly with all of the markers of authoritarian oppression. This ugliness seems to be Koudelka’s main objection to the wall. He really makes no comments on the political situation and instead has something to say the ecological problems of the wall and the violence done to the landscape. In “WALL”, the book that is made up of the pictures in “Shooting Holy Land,” the wall seems to be a wound upon the land. Many of the compositions show the wall splitting the landscape, the earth itself, in two. The focus, is on the land, not its people. It is about Koudelka and his process, about photography and about a way of seeing. The film follows a strict formula; static shots show Koudelka moving and fidgeting around a landscape looking for the perfect shot. We watch him, and wait for the sound of the camera’s shutter. Then, more often than not, we are given a look at the resulting image.

We are forced to be patient before the shot and to take everything in before we hear the click. Eventually, we start to look at the scenes from a photographer’s point of view, composing our own images and we see the scenes from yet another degree of remove – first, removed by the temporal and physical distance of film, and then again, the scenes on the film become potential photographs that they belong to us as much as the director who created them and the photographer who inhabits them. We are not given much insight into Koudelka’s method, we simply look at the care with which he takes his photographs. Missing are the contact sheets, the missed takes. The film shows us that, in addition to a good eye and good timing, photographers are totally dedicated to their craft.

Baram is also a photographer and we see this in the film’s photographic compositions and the static nature of the camera. Baram’s film is a collection of “moving photographs.” He sets up beautifully composed shots – which, due to the static nature of the camera, initially appear like photographs – and simply allows Koudelka to move around and become part of the process.

We come to see the wall as aesthetic violence and here political violence often takes the form of aesthetics. We see the relationship between Baram and Koudelka as well as the ecological destruction, the terrible blankness of the concrete that points to deeper issues that separate the land and its people, from each other and from themselves.

Sasson, Theodore. “The New American Zionism”, NYU Press, 2013.

Un-unified Voices

Amos Lassen

Theodore Sasson in his “The New American Zionism” shows us that American Jews are shifting their feelings for and support of Israel. It seems that they are moving from a “mobilization” approach, which began with the creation of the State of Israel and relied on centralized organizations to provide that support to an “engagement” approach that is made up by direct and personal relations with the Jewish state.  We see more and more American Jews traveling to Israel, reading news of the culture and politics of the country and now using their philanthropy and lobbying as it fits into their own politics. We especially see that now regarding the Israeli government’s decision on prayer at the Western Wall and conversion policies. While today many American Jews feel that Israel has become more meaningful, they do not have as much ability to impact the policies of the country and the unified voice that once distinguished support for the country is no longer there. The concept of support has certainly changed greatly and has become more personal. This is not necessarily a bad thing or critical as we see that more and more American Jews are supporting the country but they are doing so in their own diverse ways.

Certainly programs such as Birthright as well as other trends in the American Jewish community have something to do with this support. Writer Sasson provides the information we need to make our own decisions and there is no unified answer to any of the questions that we face here. However, we must look at the framework in which ideas and theories come about.

We are given the history of the American Jewish community’s relationship with Israel as well as supporting data and then are left to think it all out and see where we fit. Sasson’s analysis of American Jewish public opinions shows that this relationship is ever changing and evolving and we see that at times the relationship is uneasy (like in any other relationship). The present situation is complicated because of its almost constant change. While the recent Pew report shows that today there is

decreased religious affiliation among Jews giving to Israel has increased and we sense more engagement by Americans with Israel. Sasson says that we are not in a critical situation and that recent reports of distancing from the country are erroneous. Rather there is a new pluralism that distinguishes the current relationship between American Jewry and the Jewish state.

American Jewish engagement with Israel is not simply a matter of personal identities and feelings of attachment but an institutionalized collective behavior “has moved the debates from social psychology to sociology”. , shifting the terrain of the debate from social psychology to sociology.”

Lavi, Aharon Ariel. “About Economy and Sustenance: Judaism, Society and Economics”, ContentoNow, 2016.

Economics and Society

Amos Lassen

It is impossible to look at society without looking at economics since it is one of the strongest forces of said society. There is commercial activity in every purchase, sale, and commercial and even reading a book is an economic activity. Economic activity is what shapes society and we are all aware that there are many ways to manage and examine the economy through ethical decisions on cultural, social and spiritual problems. Here we learn of the contribution of the Jewish cultural world to economic thought and to understanding the structure of society. We find new answers for the most basic questions that shape economic activity and society in general as we look at questions such as “what is property? What is efficiency? What is trade? How do human beings make economic decisions, and how do these concepts dictate the relations between man and material, man and man, and man and God?”

The book is composed of articles written by different authors, of which the majority are leaders in their respective fields. With the coming together of Judaism and reality, there is much to be learned.

This is an eclectic and intellectually engaging selection of essays on Jewish thought and economic life. These theologically constructive explorations have important contributions on both methodological and substantive levels. We live in n era of looking for practical and existential approaches that came to be due to extreme forms of capitalism and collectivism. We see how the Jewish way of life, laws, philosophy, and culture have contributed to economic thinking and the way the world works. The observations that we read here are astute with deep insight. Here is a

discussion on all things financial, and the thoughts within the world “of Jewish and rabbinic literature on creating a sound economy based on empirical evidence as well as moral, Torah-values”. We see how the history of Jewish thought influences the assessment of capitalism and its alternatives. The authors explore their own distinctive arguments and ideas and do not advance a single line of argument about how Jewish thought relates to capitalism. Instead, they leave us with questions to think about and to decide if capitalism is consistent with traditional morality. The basic question is if, “the capitalist economy also be a moral economy”.

Twenty articles regarding the ways in which traditional Jewish theology can deepen our understanding of economic reality are presented and they were collected between 2007 and 2008 in Israel and translated from the original Hebrew.

The first and second sections are the sabbatical year and the “internal structure of society in light of Jewish Mysticism.” The third and final sections are detailed discussions of Halachic approaches to the business world and include topics such as interest rates, welfare, charity, and inheritance laws. We see that on the one hand “extreme capitalism” has generated rapid development at the cost of alienation and devastation of the environment while, on the other hand, we see the contrasting system of “socialism-communism” has often come together with totalitarian methods that have brought about the collapse of entire countries.