'4*-7 A 14,
points that Lieberinan
makes in this brief but
notable memoir.
an
WC>.
— Reviewed by
Jonathan Groner
6/23
2000
..Ztamy
of soup whose ingredi-
ents consist of family
legacies is largely
unnecessary. The mysti-
cal visits of dead rela-
tives who share the
soup's preparation only
distracts from the phe-
nomenal accounts these
people have to tell.
Leonard, who is in
an interfaith. marriage,
is especially poignant
when she muses about
raising her children
with an ecumenical
upbringing. She
acknowledges that
there is richness in ritu-
al and faith that the
family stories reveal,
and that she failed to
give to her children.
This book may be
the first offering of this
gift of history and
belonging. Although it
is one family's -docu-
ment, in many ways it
is every family's story
The Soup Has Many Eyes:
From Shtetl to Chicago --
A Memoir of One Family's
Journey Through History
by Joann Rose Leonard
(Bantam; 184 pp.; $18.95)
10:5 1117 RI.Ve Le tiM a rd
If you look into any
family's history, you are
bound to find tales of
adventure, romance,
mystery and intrigue.
This is particularly true
of contemporary
American Jewish families
who can trace the details
of survival that marked
most Jewish immigrants
to this country within
the last century or so.
Whether these immi-
grants survived World
War II, left Eastern
Europe to escape the
Cossacks or suffered
— Reviewed by
other forms of anti-
Rebecca
E. Kotkin
semitism, their experi-
ences highlight their
Sex and Shopping: The
bravery, ingenuity, perse-
Confessions of a Nice
verance, faith and luck.
Jewish Girl by Judith
Sadly, many of these
Krantz (St. Martin's
stories never get told. As
Press; 386 pp.; $25.95)
people die, history is
She knows
lost. Parents fail to
absolutely
everybody.
recount the memories,
Wherever
she
goes for
and children grow up
dinner, she gets a
without any knowledge
great table. There isn't
of the extraordinary lives
a party she doesn't get
their relatives led.
invited to, a celebrity
Joann Rose Leonard
she
can't
get
on
the phone.
rectifies that in the The Soup Has.
Her
clothes
and
home furnishings
Many Eyes. In her introduction, writ-
are
gorgeous,
and
so
are the clothes
'ten as a letter to her grown sons, she
and
home
furnishings
of all her
articulates her regrets at having
friends. Men drop at her feet, until she
deprived her children of their histo-
marries a tall, adoring hunk. He treats
ry. She proceeds to spin a fantastic,
her like a queen. Every word she writes
though true, tale of her family's per-
is published, and every talk-show host
secution in Russia and their struggles
finds her scintillating.
to emigrate and establish a new life
That's life on what one magazine
in America:
called
"Planet Krantz." You and I only
The saga is gripping; each family
get
to
read
about it.
member conquered great obstacles to
Having rounded 70 years, pub-
arrive safely in the Goldene Medina.
lished 10 novels in 20 years, and
Leonard weaves together individual
hung out with more major and
adventures of hardship, fear, separa-
minor luminaries than Cher has
tion and pain to create an intricate
sequins, Judith Krantz has now
web of family history, strands of nar-
penned her autobiography, a some-
rative intertwining with her personal
times interesting, sometimes annoy-
memories of the relatives now gone.
ing mix of self-analysis, self-con-
The chronicle itself is so engaging
gratulation and name-dropping.
that the book's overarching metaphor
1
43N
,:„
ye8
Fans of Krantz's novels will eat it
up with a spoon.
Reading about her affluent
upbringing, her Wellesley years, her
long marriage to a successful.enter-
tainment executive who gratifies her
every wish — and her obsession with
clothes, furniture and other creature
comforts — it's hard not to stereo-
type her as a Jewish princess.
(Though, everything else being equal,
she'd be a princess if she were of any
other ethnic origin.)
While Sex and Shopping is never
exactly tedious, Krantz frequently
mentions her parents' cold and with-
holding natures, as if to convince us
that her life hasn't been all roses.
But Krantz isn't clueless; she real-
izes what a charmed life she's led and
is grateful for her luck. Moreover, the.
play-by-play of her career makes it
clear that however well connected
she's been, she's worked hard for her
phenomenal succe s s.
It's interesting to read about how
she turned real-life experiences (her
own and those of others) into fiction,
and there are some fun moments. She
lies about her age — at her publisher's
behest — when her first novel is pub-
lished, and Wellesley classmates across
the country blow the whistle on her.
But Planet Krantz is in a distant
galaxy, and ultimately its queen is too
alien a character for her memoir to be
a compelling read.
In 1994, Horovitz was one of the
first journalists to arrive in Hebron
after Baruch Goldstein, an American-
born doctor and West Bank settler,
had gunned down Palestinians pray-
ing in the Cave of the Patriarchs.
"[Behind] the eyewitnesses [to the
murders] milled a handful of teenage
Jewish boys, students at the nearby
yeshiva, emboldened by the guns that
they carried slung over their shoul-
ders to jeer at the tales of horror,"
Horovitz writes.
Although Horovitz's political views
are left leaning, in the book he illu-
minates the wide range of Israeli
opinion on domestic and religious
issues. He accomplishes this through
extensive conversations with his
American-born brother-in-law Natan,
a settler in the West Bank town of
Ofra, and his cousin Shai, who runs a
fervently Orthodox yeshiva in a sub-
urb of Tel-Aviv.
Horovitz's profiles of these two men
are affectionate, engaging, yet political-
ly charged, and this being Israel, very
personal as well. Although he calls the
settlers "my generation's misguided
pioneers," he nevertheless portrays
Natan as a thoughtful man deeply
committed to ideology and history
The same could be said of David
Horovitz, who has brilliantly captured
the inner life of a country seeking
peace.
— Reviewed by Judith Bolton-Fasman
— Reviewed by Ellen Jaffe-Gill
A Little Too Close to God' The Thrills
and Panic of a Life in Israel by David
Horovitz (Knopf 311 pp.; $26)
All politics is local. But as David
Horovitz's new book reveals, that
conventional wisdom runs even deep-
er in the Middle East, where politics
is also personal.
The British-born editor of The
Jerusalem Report, Horovitz has written
a lucid, intelligent and entertaining
account of living and sometimes just
coping in a country populated by
homicidal drivers, religious fanatics
and disoriented immigrants.
Part memoir, part punditry and in
many respects modern-day prophecy,
reading Horovitz's book is like sitting
down with an old friend and becom-
ing immersed in, and ultimately fasci-
nated by, the details of his life.
As Horovitz's work for The
Report, a biweekly English-language
magazine published in Jerusalem,
has borne out, more often than not
life in Israel is a tableau of surreal
juxtapositions.
Judith Bolton-Fasman writes
frequently about books and
authors for a number of publi-
cations. Jonathan Groner is a
Washington, D.C. - based writer
and editor. Ellen Jaffe Gill is
the author of The Jewish
Woman's Book of Wisdom, which
will be reissued later this year by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
Rebecca Kotkin is a contribut-
ing editor to Jewish Family
Life!. Susan Katz Miller, a for-
mer Newsweek reporter, is writ-
ing a book on the interfaith
movement. Alan M. Schwartz,
research director for the Anti-
Defamation League, began his
life-long love of baseball as a
young fan of the Brooklyn
Dodgers. Marlena Thompson
has a first novel, A Rare and
Deadly Issue, a biblio-mystery,
scheduled for publication this
fall. Dinah Zeltser is a graduate
student at Brandeis University
-