littlemiao's reviews
45 reviews

Where the Jews Aren't: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region by Masha Gessen

challenging dark informative slow-paced

4.5

Birobidzhan, the official Jewish Autonomous Region of the Soviet Union, was from its start an absurdity and an impossibility. It was a source of false hope and fatal betrayals. Gessen does not give us a systematic overview of the history, people, and geography of Birobidzhan. Rather, they tell one facet of the story of Soviet Jews through the “cracked and crooked mirror” of Birobidzhan. The book focuses in large part on David Bergelson, a Yiddish writer who, backed into a corner, tried, and failed, to make Birobidzhan a lifeboat for himself, for the Yiddish language, and for the Jews of the Soviet Union. In the author’s words, this is a book about “the concept of home, and knowing when to leave.”  It is the story of Jews trying, and mostly failing, to survive. But the frame of the book, the author’s own experience, brings a hopeful note: to escape is to survive, and they escaped.

I hoped for more of the author’s observations in Birobidzhan itself. Yet that would have been the retelling of absurdities and absences in multiple iterations of the same sad facts. A museum of early Birobidzhan history featuring photos from a random shtetl in the Pale of Settlement. A pork schnitzel as a restaurant’s “Jewish” menu. A Jewish region with practically no Jews.

One of the most chilling images that the book leaves me with is the 1949 book burning at the Sholem Aleichem Library, where tens of thousands of Yiddish books were burnt in an effort to purge the region of Jewish culture. The books were written by the same authors who, at the behest of the Soviet state, had served as propagandists for Birobidzhan. These same Yiddish writers also faced imprisonment, labor camps, and execution.

The Wikipedia entry for Birobidzhan reads like promotional advertising. One wonders what, other than absolute desperation, could draw more Jews to make this tragic, haunted, “ridiculous” place their home.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Genocide

Glastronen by Sarah J. Maas

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Diverse cast of characters? No

2.5

Fine for what it is. The characters were rather boring and predictable to me. I listened to it in Swedish, which made it fun.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Sexual assault

The Story of Medieval England: From King Arthur to the Tudor Conquest by Jennifer Paxton

2.0

For a brief, competent overview of medieval English history, this lecture series would seem a decent choice, but significant flaws in the portrayal of antisemitism mean that I cannot recommend the lectures.

In terms of antisemitism, the greatest problem isn’t want Paxton says, but what she omits, namely the entire context of Jewish history in Europe. She says there is a “fault line” between the king’s Christian and Jewish subjects. And where does this fault line come from? Well, Jews are “highly visible because many of them specialize in money lending.” Nothing is said of usury laws and restrictions on professions of Jews. Perhaps one might object that in such short lectures, there isn’t time to provide context - but Paxton had time for a digression about the great wealth of Aaron of Lincoln. “The downside of this kind of success is that it bred resentment.” Without the greater context, this kind of statement is nothing less than victim-blaming.

In speaking about violence against Jews, she uses passive language. “These anti-Jewish outbreaks spread over the next several months.” This is the extent of the explanation she provides: “Unfortunately these kinds of outbreaks did go along with periods of crusading fervor. The idea is, okay, we’re going to go kill enemies of Christ, but we’ve got them right here, let’s kill the ones who are right in front of us.” No further explanation needed. She is, in effect, looking for excuses for the behavior of the English, of whom she is clearly fond. Why kill the Jews? Well, they’re right there! People naturally resent the rich, and really, what could be more natural than killing the Christ-killers in your midst? Unfortunate but understandable, is how it comes across. I am not attempting to put words in Paxton’s mouth, but merely to make explicit the subtext of her presentation, and by extension much of European historiography. I suppose one should be grateful she didn’t simply write Jews out of English history altogether?

Speaking specifically of Richard the Lionheart’s coronation, she says that the Jews of London showed up to “curry favor,” a pejorative phrase that completely misrepresents the precarious status of the Jewish community in England, or in any other European country of the time. The English guards denied the Jews entry, and “Things apparently then got out of hand,” another passive turn of phrase deployed to obscure how disposed to anti-Jewish violence the general population was, and how the ruling classes enabled and participated in this violence.

Then comes the expulsion under Edward I. She calls it “disturbing.” “They all have to leave, and this is effectively the end of over two centuries of Jewish life in England in the Middle Ages.”

And that is it. No mention of the brutality of the expulsion. How an English ship captain stranded Jewish refugees on a beach to die. No mention of significant English contributions to antisemitism, such as the invention of the blood libel in the 1140s. No mention that the expulsion is the first (of many) expulsions of Jews from European countries. No mention of most of the many murderous attacks against the Jews. No mention of the Statute of Jewry that forced Jews to wear a yellow badge or live in specified sectors of towns. 

And finally, in her discussion of Chaucer, she misses the opportunity to discuss the persistence of antisemitism after the expulsion. Antisemitism is an integral part of English society, not merely a footnote to its history.

Her lectures are frustrating and disappointing to anyone who knows the basics of Jewish history in Europe. Everyone else, though, will easily come away from the lectures with a distorted vision of Jews in England and a complete lack of understanding of the major role England played in the history of antisemitism, which is essential to understanding the history of Europe as a whole.

Another thing I found problematic: The lecturer implicitly contrasts Christianity with paganism, suggesting that Christianity “probably gives them some spiritual consolation for the material privations that they suffered.” The implication is that Christianity may offer greater solace than preexisting non-Christian traditions. Times were tough, but at least the English were Christian.

The Weaving of a Dream: A Chinese Folktale by Marilee Heyer

adventurous hopeful inspiring fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

This is a reread. Beautiful detailed illustrations, filling the pages with vibrant colors. The story is a fairly standard fairytale quest plot, featuring three brothers - one heroic, the others not. The themes are filial piety and valuing of self-sacrifice above self-enrichment. The mother’s obsession with weaving is extreme, but beautiful. At least three cats are featured in the art, but they are not the main focus. 

The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger

mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

2.0

I listened to this because someone lent me the paper edition. It’s not my cup of tea. It is clear the author and many readers think this is a profound portrayal of small town Midwest US life in the 1950s. Racism and sexual violence are used as plot devices to basically show the heroic though flawed character of two law enforcement officials and a handful of other well-meaning townsfolk. 

The most quoted passage comes from the ending, and it is revealing:

“We all die, but some of us—those who are blessed or maybe just lucky—have the opportunity before that end to be redeemed. We can let go, forgive others, and also forgive ourselves for the worst of what we are or have been.”

The destructive effects of deep-seated racism, sexual assault in which the perpetrators face no accountability, and multiple murders, all harmonized away in a call for redemptive forgiveness. Such is the nostalgia of the 1950s, where naturally the victims have no voice.