arts & entertainment
L ove & Treasure
Dora Levy Mossanen
Special to the Jewish News
I
devoured all 331 pages of Ayelet
Waldman's gripping and powerful new
novel, Love and Treasure (Alfred A.
Knopf), in one 14-hour marathon on my
flight from Los Angeles to Israel. Before
the El Al plane made its descent into
Ben Gurion Airport, I began this review,
beginning with Waldman's interview with
Carolyn Kellogg for the Los Angeles Times
in which Waldman muses that "people
who read me expecting they're going to
get in-your-face sassy funny" might be "a
little taken aback" after reading Love and
Treasure.
In her fantasy, Waldman adds, "People
who read me thinking that, then think,
`Oh, wow, she can really write"'
Well, Ms. Waldman, you can really
write, and write brilliantly.
Two weeks later, on my way to catch a
flight back home to Los Angeles, the tragic
news of the discovery of the bodies of Eyal
Yifrah, Gilad Shaar and Naftali Frenkel,
the young Israeli boys kidnapped on June
12, was announced on the radio, and I
decided to start this review again, this
time with one of the many complicated
historical subjects Waldman tackles in
her novel: the importance of the existence
of the State of Israel to every Jew around
the world. (Readers may choose their pre-
ferred opening.)
In one of the most poignant scenes in
Love and Treasure, we are told that 18,700
of the 19,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors
who planned to immigrate to Palestine
and had to fill out a questionnaire listed
Palestine as their first and second choice.
Jews
Not only
that, but in the
Furth displaced
persons camp
near Nuremberg,
when a United
Nations
Relief and
Rehabilitation
Administration
worker said,
"They must put a
Ayelet Waldman
different destina-
tion for their second choice, a quarter of
the DPs filled in the word 'crematorium:"
Today — more than 70 years after
Hitler unleashed his wrath on European
Jews — anti-Semitism is on the rise again
in France, so much so that the number of
French immigrants to Israel is at a record
high. What then, one can't help but won-
der, would have happened to Jews around
the world if the might of the Israeli army
did not exist as a deterrent?
Waldman's novel moves seamlessly
from Maine in 2013, to March 1938, when
Hitler invaded Austria, to 1945, and back
to 2013 in Budapest and Israel, unfold-
ing against the backdrop of monumental
historical events that changed the face of
Europe and hastened the creation of the
State of Israel.
In 1945, after World War II, at the out-
skirts of Salzburg, Austria, Jack Wiseman,
a lieutenant in the American Army, is
ordered to guard the Hungarian Gold
Train filled with crates of personal belong-
ings — silverware, china, sheets, watches,
fur coats, wedding rings, coins — confis-
cated by the Nazis from Hungarian Jews
who perished in concentration camps.
his professional and
life partner, Wash
Westmoreland. By
the way, the story
that Flynn was a fas-
cist and secret Nazi
spy has been com-
pletely debunked.
Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
At The Movies
Opening on Friday, Sept. 5, is The
Last of Robin Hood, a film that tells
the story of swashbuckling actor
Errol Flynn's last affair – with aspir-
ing actress Beverly Aadland (Dakota
Fanning). Kevin Kline, 67, is aptly cast
as Flynn, who died in 1959 at age 50
of a heart attack.
In 1959, Flynn was, as one commen-
tator said, "a parody of himself, with
heavy alcohol use leaving him prema-
turely aged." Flynn thought Aadland
to be 18 when he met her but quickly
learned she was just 16. The affair
was encouraged by Aadland's mother
(Susan Sarandon), who thought it would
aid her daughter's career.
The film was co-written and co-
directed by Richard Glatzer, 50, and
60
September 4 • 2014
Ayelet Waldman's new book weaves a tale around the
fascinating, true history of the Hungarian Gold Train.
TV Notes
The Esquire cable channel has a new
talk show called My Friends Call Me
Johnny. It's hosted by Jean "Johnny"
Pigozzi, a wealthy Italian guy, who, we
are told, will travel the globe to ask
tough questions of celebs.
The show premiered on Sept. 3,
but you can catch a repeat at 10 p.m.
Thursday, Sept. 4. The two guests are
Hebrews with a bad-boy reputation:
fashion designer Dov Charney, 45,
and director Brett Ratner, 45.
The Wednesday, Sept.10, show,
airing at 9 p.m. and repeated at
As anyone who
has
visited Yad
LOVE
Vashem in Israel
or the United
TREASURE
States Holocaust
Memorial
Museum in
AYELET
Washington,
WALDMAN
D.C., can attest,
coming face to
face with such
personal belong-
ings — like a single red rhinestone-buck-
led evening shoe among a mountain of
dark-colored shoes — is a heart-wrench-
ing experience. Was the owner of the red
satin shoe on her way to the opera when
the Gestapo descended on her?
One such personal item, an enamel
pendant in the shape of a peacock — a
symbol of bad luck — is at the center of
Waldman's novel, which brings a cast of
disparate characters together to retell his-
tory in a fresh and engaging manner.
While on duty listing the train's cargo,
Jack falls in love with Ilona Jakab, a
Hungarian refugee and survivor of
Auschwitz and Dachau. The tormented,
but still passionate, Ilona succeeds in teas-
ing out Jack's connection to his heritage
and makes it difficult for him to keep
silent as his superiors go about borrowing
all types of objects from the train for their
personal use, never to be returned.
Jack himself, though, in hopes of secur-
ing something to remind him of Ilona,
steals the peacock pendant from the train.
Sixty-eight years later, in 2013, the
dying Jack is home in Maine. He recounts
to his granddaughter, Natalie, the story of
his youth in the Army after the war, his
midnight, features
Michael Douglas,
69, and famed chef
Mario Batali (whose
wife, Susi Cahn, is
Jewish; the two main-
tain a summer home
in Northport, Mich.,
Charney
and their son Benno
will be a freshman at
University of Michigan this fall).
Future interviewees include Calvin
Klein, 71; Jann Wenner, 68; and Lorne
Michaels, 69.
The fifth and final season of HBO's
hit show Boardwalk Empire premieres
at 9 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7. TV Guide
recently caught up with Sandra
Lansky Lombardo, 76, the daughter
of gangster Meyer Lansky, who is a
big Boardwalk character.
She is unhappy with the way her
father is depicted, contending that
her father didn't deal drugs and that
love for Ilona and how he came to own the
peacock pendant.
Plagued by guilt, Jack extracts a promise
from Natalie to return the pendant to its
rightful owner. In her quest to honor her
grandfather's request, Natalie, who is reel-
ing from a recent divorce, meets Amitai
Shasho, an Israeli art dealer who hunts for
stolen paintings, returning them to their
previous owners in exchange for a substan-
tial commission.
Amitai, who has been searching for a
Surrealist Hungarian painting of a woman
with the head of a peacock, agrees to help
Natalie trace the pendant to its owner.
After much traveling and tremendous
research, Natalie and Amitai manage to
connect the pendant to Nina S., a defiant
intellectual, and her friend, Gizella Weisz,
a suffragist dwarf, living in Budapest dur-
ing World War I at a time when Jews were
highly assimilated into the culture. But
whom does the pendant belong to if the
heirs are long gone?
It would be a mistake to call Love and
Treasure a Holocaust novel, although it is
that, too. More than anything, this is a tale
of hope and the unbreakable spirit of a peo-
ple, the transformative power of love and
the miracle of the birth of Eretz Israel.
❑
Dora Levy Mossanen is the bestselling author
of Harem, Courtesan and The Last Romanov;
her latest novel is Scent of Butterflies. This
review was first published in the Jewish
Journal of Greater Los Angeles.
Ayelet Waldman is scheduled to
appear on Nov.10 for Book Club
Night at the JCC's annual Jewish
Book Fair.
"personality-wise," the character is
unrecognizable to her.
Celebs For Israel
A couple of hundred Hollywood
notables signed a petition that – while
expressing their hope for peace – con-
demned Hamas' anti-Semitic ideology
and rocket attacks. It is posted on
the website "Creative Community for
Peace."
Signatories include Sarah
Silverman, 43; Tom Arnold, 55;
Mayim Bialik, 38; Josh Charles, 42;
Minnie Driver; Jami Gertz, 48; Ziggy
Marley; Bill Maher;
Seth Rogen, 32; and
Sylvester Stallone.
Nice to note:
Charles and his wife,
Sophie Flack, 31,
who wed last year,
are expecting their
first child.
Arnold
❑