Arts & Entertainment

ON THE COVER/AW

Introducing Bre

Oa's Kitchen is the story of a
little girl named Cara whose
mother and sister die in a fire.
One way that Cara manages to grieve
and move forward is by baking her
mother's chocolate-chip cookies. Ferber
includes the recipe in her book, which
is suitable for readers in grades four
and up.
A University of Michigan graduate,
Ferber now lives in Deerfield, Ill. Raised
in "a wonderfully happy home with
loving parents and great siblings," she
did well in school and belonged to a
Conservative congregation. She wor-
ried a lot, but she was confident that
God would be there for her and listen .
to her.
Ferber speaks about her book,
which won the 2004 Sydney Taylor
Manuscript Award,11 a.m. Sunday, Nov.
5, at the Jewish Community Center in
Oak Park. Her talk is co-sponsored by
Temple Emanu-El and Young Judea.
There is no charge.
Unlike the main character in Julia's
Kitchen, "I never lost anyone when I

er

thing I had to actually make an effort
to accomplish."
. Ferber spent a long time researching
the publishing industry, reading books
for young adults, taking a correspon-
dence course on writing for children
and listening to members of her writ-
ing group, where she happily received,
rather than feared, criticism.
"My goal is to do the very best I can,
so I welcome criticism," Ferber says.
When she hears negative comments,
"I understand that it's not criticism of
me."
Ferber, whose husband, Alan, grew up
in Farmington, is already at work on her
next book, which takes place at a sleep-
away camp. It started out as a fairly
lighthearted story, Ferber says, "but,
of course, it turned into one about the
heartbreak of friendship.
"But that's the interesting part of
life: how you deal with it when it's not
going too well."

was little, but I .
had a very close
relationship with
God the way Cara
did," Ferber says.
While a real-life
catastrophe didn't
challenge her faith,
it did cause her
to wonder — and
it inspired Julia's
Kitchen.
Ferber was
already married
and a mother of
three children
when she learned
of a house fire in
her neighborhood.
It had been home to three boys and
their parents. The mother had died
months earlier, then the father and one
son perished in the fire.
"Every day, I would drive past their
house as I was running my errands,"
Ferber says. "I would wonder how those
boys were and how they were surviv-

ing."
"I also wondered,
'What if this had hap-
pened to me? What
would my thoughts
of God have been
then?"'
Ferber wrote the
book in short spurts,
when her children
were in school or
playing with friends.
The work, though,
was never haphazard.
"I'm a big planner,"
she says. "I abso-
lutely needed to know
everything about my
character and what
would happen before I wrote."
She spent a long time planning
scenes and conversations and under-
standing her characters. And she was
committed to finishing the book.
"I had a lot of optimism [that it would
be published], but rather than just
dream about it, I decided it was some-

the stress that remains," explains the
director, whose family made aliyah
when he was 8.
"I take no political stand in this film,
which is a story of survival. Mike's
Place is not about politics, and I'm not
about politics either. This is very dif-
ferent from my other films because
viewers usually don't see or hear me or
know what I'm feeling."
The movie, which runs for 85 minutes
and is done in English and Hebrew with
English subtitles, recalls the events
of April 30, 2003, when Asif Hanif
entered Mike's Place with explosives
packed in his hollowed-out Koran. With
live footage of the tragedy, the produc-
tion has won awards at the Hamptons
International Film Fest and the Wagon
Film Fest.
Faudem, who visits Michigan twice
yearly to see his sister, Rabbi Michele
Faudem Ershler, attended the Israel
School of Performing Arts, served with
the Israel Defense Forces and studied
film production in Prague. He has done
work in short and extended cinema
— including Russki Battalion, which is

about immi-
grant fighters
in Israel, and A
Will to Dance,
which is about
the romance
of a Holocaust
survivor and a
German soldier.
"I hope
people who
see Blues by
the Beach will
have lots of
questions,"
Faudem says.
"The produc-
ers, Jack and
A memorial at Mike's Place
Fran Baxter,
are writing a
book about the
be blown up at any moment; what the
attack."
fight for Israel is like." L T
"It's a documentary, but it's in dra-
matic form," explains Film Festival
- Suzanne Chessler
Director David Magidson about Blues
by the Beach. "Along with the deni-
zens of Mike's Place, we learn what it
means to be in a place where you could

- Elizabeth Applebaum

Introduci

T

**4441041,

he Lenore Marwil Jewish Film
-Festival will sponsor a film
during Book Fair. Blues by the
Beach, a documentary about a suicide
bombing at a Tel Aviv nightspot, will be
screened at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, at
the Jewish Community Center in West
Bloomfield. All seats are $9.
The film is directed by Michigan
native Josh Faudem, 31, who will intro-
duce the film - and conduct a discussion
after it is shown.
Mike's Place, a Tel Aviv live-music
bar filled with young people, offered a
bartending job to Faudem as he began
building a film career on his own time.
When he was not working at the popu-
lar hangout, Faudem returned with his
movie equipment to use the spot as a
subject for a light documentary.
What the former Hillel Day School
student did not anticipate — a terror-
ist attack killing three and injuring
50 — moved his project in a dramatic
direction, and the result is Blues by
the Beach. "I will explain how the film
was made, how people coped with the
bombing and how victims deal with

68

October 26 • 2006

