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Book review
The Hebrew Kings and
Ashes Out of Hope
by Edith Bllchsllver
THE HEBREW KINGS. By Joan Comay. 198 pp. New York:
Morrow. $8.96.
*FfES OUT OF HOPE. Fiction by Soviet-Yiddish Writers.
Edited by Irving Howe and Ehezer Greenberg. Hi pp. New York:
Schocken. $10.96.
In The Hebrew Kings, Joan
Comay, staff editor of the six
teen volume Encyclopedia
Judaica, tells about the four cen
turies during which the shaping
of the Jewish nation and the
Jewish religion took place under
three powerful monarchs, Saul,
David and Solomon and the
restlessness during the time
when two score rulers divided
the Holy Land. The book is
handsomely illustrated with
chronological charts and maps.
Ashes Out of Hope maps an
even more tragic period of
Jewish history, that of early
twentieth century Russia, when,
as its title reveals, the literature
represents the phoenix-like
rebirth of the words of three
dead men, whose talent and
literary potential ended tragical
ly during the Stalinist repres
sion. The authors, David
Bergelson, Moshe Kulbak and
“Der Nister” either were ex
ecuted or died in prison, but
their vignettes recreate what
Russian life for a Jew was like
between 1913 and 1931. They
mirror the literary movement
that linked early twentieth cen
tury European symbolic realism
with the nostalgic, religious
tradition of the shtetl ex
perience.
One story, for example, by the
first author listed, tells about
the introspective speculations of
an unhappy artist as he seeks a
profound explanation to justify
why his beloved wife suddenly
deserts him during the
Bolshevik upheaval in Kiev.
While pondering his actions, he
muses that if one loses “a three-
ruble note, the urgency is not to
find the bill, but the hole
through which it slipped.”
The moral dilemma of the
creative artist during an
ideological crisis is the same
problem that perplexed Boris
Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago and
“Der Nister” tells Kow a human
being tries to cope with shame
and guilt during such turbulent
times.
Kulbak’s poignantly
humorous family saga is not un
like Isaac Babel’s deceptively
simple Odessa tales, and one can
detect in several of these works a
high-pitched vibration of ner
vousness about the pogrom and
revolutionary world of Czarist
and Leninist Russia. One can
better understand the sinister
nature of that nervousness
which resulted in the death of
every major Yiddish writer after
reading the introduction by Ir
ving Rowe and Eliezer
Greenberg as they explain why
the flames, fanned by
revolutionary hopes, became a
towering holocaust converting
vibrant dreams into ashes of
total destruction.
(Mrs. Blicksilver is in the
English Department at Georgia
Tech where .she teaches a Soviet
Literature course.)
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Jewish film forum asks:
'What is a Jewish filrn 7
by Richard S. Goldstein
Young Jewish film-makers
have been expressing s growing
desire to give their art a
specifically Jewish character.
Thus recently in New York City
the Martin Steinberg Center of
the American Jewish Congress,
s center for young Jewish art
ists, and the New Jewish Media
Project presented s forum on
Jewish film in memory of Paul
ine Bernstein.
Open to the general public,
more than 150 attended the
forum. Between the meetings
many films were screened pro
viding a concrete counterpoint
to the more abstract discussions.
To inquire “What is a Jewish
film?” raises questions about the
relationship of art to the
cultural milieu in which we all
live. It becomes necessary to ex
amine the specific nature of the
Jewish cultural setting and how
it might be expressed in film.
The participants expressed a
variety of views on this subject.
Some of those present seemed to
be prescribing what a Jewish
film ought to be, feeling it
should be concerned with
specific topics such as ethics,
assimilation, theology or
brotherhood. Such notions seem
to reflect a peculiarity one-sided
view of being Jewish, implying
that Jewish life is a set of disem
bodied abstractions rather than
a multi-faceted human ex
perience. While these themes
may well be suitable subjects for
film, we cannot say that one, or
even all of them, sums up the es
sence of Jewish film.
If the characters in a film
react to their problems in a way
that is determined by the Jewish
experience — historical and con
temporary — the film is Jewish
whether or not there is any
religious or social content.
Conversely, for a film to be
Jewish, it is not enough that all
of its characters have Jewish
names and simply deal with
human situations. There must
be something Jewish about their
modes of behavior.
These realities of Jewish life
and art were noted by Julius
Schatz and Jeffrey Oboler of the
American Jewish Congress, Josh
Waletzky, an independent film
maker, and others. Jeff Obeler
alluded to the “unique Jewish
perspective on life” and noted
that to be Jewish a film would
have to employ something of
that perspective. Josh Waletzky
summed up by saying that a film
could justifiably be called
Jewish if it treats "... some par
ticular subject through a Jewish
vision, through some Jewish
perspective . . ..”
The films screened
represented various genres in
cluding documentaries, drama
and animation. Among the best
of these films were Bruce David
son’s “Singer’s Nightmare" and
“Mrs. Pupko’s Beard,” Jack
Rosenthal’s “Bar Mitzvah Boy”
(a BBC production), Brian
Kellman’s “Bashert,” Roberta
Hodes’ “A Secret Space,” Mirra
Bank’s “Yudie,” Johanna Spec-
tor’s “The Jews of India,” and
“The Cowboys.”
The Pauline Bernstein Forum
on Jewish Film has resulted in
the formation of a permanent
film-maker’s cooperative, s part
of the New Jewish Media Pro
ject, which now meets regularly
at the Martin Steinbeig Center.
One hopes that the nurturing of
Jewish film will provide an ad
ditional medium for strengthen
ing the Jewish sense of com
munity. Hie fostering of the arts
contributes importantly to the
channels through which Jews
may express the full range of
their personalities within a
Jewish context.
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Page 11 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE July 29. 1977