Point of No Return: A Tragic Novel of An American Jewish Soldier in WWII

When I agreed to review  Point of No Return by Martha Gellhorn for the publisher of the new digital edition, I knew nothing of the author.  The name was familiar, but I should have known more of her.  She led an extraordinary life as a war journalist, novelist and the third wife of Ernest Hemingway.  Without this background, I began reading my ARC from Open Road Media via Net Galley without any expectations or preconceptions.

                                     

                                      
 Gellhorn wrote  Point of No Return soon after WWII.  It was first published in  1948.  According to her Afterword that appears at the end of the book, she had been a witness to events in this war as a journalist who traveled with British troops.  Although I have read quite a number of WWII novels, I hadn't read any that were written by a woman author who had experienced the war first hand.

Many combat oriented war novels tend to bore me because their action is abstract and distanced without the thoughts and feelings of soldiers.  They may have done their research, but their battle scenes aren't involving.  I read historical fiction because I want to know more than what happened.  I want to feel that I'm actually there.  Martha Gellhorn delivered authentic characters and showed us what they were really going through.   Now that I know that she was a participant as a journalist, I realize that this wasn't just research for her.

Although Gellhorn was involved in WWII, she wasn't on the ground with  American soldiers like Jacob Levy, the protagonist of  Point of No Return.  Yet as an American of assimilated Jewish background herself, she understood him.  Jacob Levy was brought up without religion.  His name remained as the only identifying marker of his Jewishness.   Many American Jews are completely secular and will find him very relatable.  I also found him sympathetic even though my upbringing was not similar.   I have known people like him who didn't  feel like they were part of the Jewish community.  They primarily identified with being Americans.   That's why Jacob Levy volunteered for WWII.  He wanted to serve his country.   My uncles, who came from a more religiously observant Jewish background, felt the same way.   They both fought in WWII.  One of them survived the Battle of the Bulge as Jacob Levy did.   This particular uncle never told war stories, so I never knew what the Battle of the Bulge was like for him.  After reading this book, I think I know why he never talked about it.   Gellhorn's depiction of that battle was visceral.  It had nothing in common with a Hollywood movie.

Jacob Levy had what he obviously thought was a romance with a woman.  It felt very significant to him, but it seemed to be largely based in fantasy.   I thought they had no common ground.  There is a myth that the attraction of opposites is a successful formula for a good relationship.   It has always seemed to me that such an attraction is like a soap bubble, and that a lasting relationship is built on commonalities.  Since this is a literary novel rather than a romance,  Gellhorn doesn't provide a happily ever after ending.   It's my hope that Jacob eventually found something more durable to sustain him.

The resolution of  Point of No Return is extremely powerful.   Gellhorn tells us in the Afterword that the reason she wrote the book was to exorcise what she saw at the concentration camp in Dachau soon after its liberation.   When she wrote the book so soon after that event, it must have felt like a raw wound.   Seeing a concentration camp after it had ceased operations can never be equivalent to the trauma of a survivor of the camp, but I imagine that it would still leave a mark on someone's soul.   She wanted Jacob Levy to be the keeper of that memory.   I don't imagine that you ever really can erase such images.  In 1948, Jacob Levy probably was a proxy for all those Americans who never thought such things were possible.   There may be current readers who optimistically believe that humanity can change for the better, and that we aren't a violent species.  If you are one them, reading this book to the end may engender some doubts about the perfectibility of humankind.  This is not the sort of novel that leaves illusions intact.

                                 

 

Aphrodite and the Rabbis--Greco-Roman Influence on Judaism

I knew about some of the things that Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky discusses in Aphrodite and the Rabbis from previous reading.  I even reviewed Sefer HaRazim , which Visotzky mentioned a number of times in his book, on this blog here.  Sefer HaRazim contains references to Greco-Roman deities, Pagan types of magic and theology that could only come from Pagan sources.   I also knew about Pagan images in ancient synagogues.  This review will contain the points raised in Aphrodite and the Rabbis that surprised me most.

                           

Contemporary Jews know that  we have historically been a matrilineal culture.   I was amazed to learn from Visotzky that Jews used to be patrilineal until the Roman period.   He thinks that the reason was that Romans changed their law regarding children born outside of wedlock.   They decided that such children would be viewed as having descended from their mothers.   Why was this Roman legal change so significant for Jews?  I think this implies that there was a massive and truly horrific problem during the Roman period of Jewish women being raped by Roman soldiers.   The Rabbis must have decided not to abandon these women and their children.    In a patrilineal descent community, they would be outcasts.   If Jews became matrilineal, their community could still embrace them.  It was a compassionate decision that causes me to think much more highly of Roman era Rabbis.   

I had been taught that synagogues didn't exist until after the destruction of Herod's Temple because Jewish practices were completely centered on the temple in Jerusalem.  Visotzky informs his readers that in the period before the destruction of the second Jewish temple, there were 394 synagogues in Jerusalem alone.  Why were they built?  They apparently had a number of purposes. I thought that I would mention two of them.  They provided Jewish ritual baths and they provided rooms for travelers arriving in Jerusalem on the Sabbath, so they wouldn't need to violate the Sabbath by continuing their travels.  The Sabbath is a day of rest, so this is an important function that is not usually associated with synagogues in the modern world.

 I knew that many Jews in the Roman period didn't speak Hebrew, but I thought it was because the language of the majority of Jews was Aramaic.  Apparently, Aramaic was the language of village Jews, but the language of the urban sophisticates was Greek.   Visotzky tells us that in the Talmud, Rabbi Levi wanted the Jews of Caesarea to stop reciting the Shema in Greek.  The Shema is the most essential Jewish prayer.  It is a statement of monotheism like the Islamic Shahada.   Rabbi Yose responded that if the Jews of Casearea didn't recite the Shema in Greek, they couldn't recite it at all.  They knew no other language.   That amazed me.  I've always thought that urban people in the ancient world were cosmopolitan and multi-lingual.   Apparently not.

 I liked Visotzky's conclusion that the syncretism in Roman era synagogues such as the numerous zodiac mosaics, validates Reform Judaism which interprets Judaism through the lens of the surrounding culture.  This was apparently the same choice that Roman Jews made.  So Jewish history has repeated itself .  Perhaps the central theme of Visotzky's book is that there are more continuities between ancient and modern Judaism than his readers might have thought.

                                       

The Other Einstein---A Novel About Einstein's First Wife

I received my copy of The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict from Net Galley.  On Flying High Reviews, I'm participating in the blog tour.  On this blog, I'm expanding on that review. So now I'm wading into the really interesting controversy surrounding Einstein's first wife.


                             

Mileva Marić wanted to be a physicist when she was young. She was admitted to Zurich Polytechnic to study physics and mathematics with two strikes against her.  The first was being a woman in a very male world.  The second was being from Serbia which was considered a cultural backwater in Western Europe.   I am citing facts at this point. There is a Wikipedia article dealing with Mileva .   If you want to see how much about that article is in dispute look at the Talk section.  There has been an editing war over this article.   Both sides are absolutely certain about things that can't be known with absolute certainty.

This is what is not in dispute.  Mileva met Einstein at Zurich Polytechnic where they were both students.  They fell in love and she became pregnant.  She had to drop out of school without finishing her degree, and they married.   This is a sad story, and it has happened to a great many women.  She never realized her dreams.

Historical fiction deals with what isn't part of the historical record.   How did Einstein treat his wife when they weren't in public?   Did Mileva contribute to Einstein's scientific work?   These are questions that are open to speculation.   No one can really claim to know the truth about them.  Marie Benedict has as much right to an opinion as anyone else.   She did the research and came to a conclusion that isn't at all palatable for supporters of Albert Einstein.  Some sources say that he was verbally abusive toward Mileva in public, and that he called her ugly.  Below is a public domain photo of Mileva that I found on Wikipedia.  You be the judge.

                                  

  It's said that Einstein burned out early because he never did any great work after he developed the theory of relativity and published it in 1905.   Could his estrangement from Mileva be the reason why he no longer produced any other brilliant new theory?  I don't know, but I'm willing to entertain the possibility.

Benedict's version of Mileva isn't a feminist icon.   She made choices that I wouldn't have made in her circumstances.   In fact, Marie Curie appears briefly in this novel.   This great woman scientist tells Mileva that the only differences between them are the choices they made and the men they married.   Madame Curie's husband dedicated his life to supporting her career.   Benedict portrays Einstein as having deliberately undermined Mileva.  I wanted  her Mileva to be stronger.

There's a Serbian word that applies.   While I was researching this review, I remembered that fantasy writer Alma Alexander, who wrote several novels that I loved, is also a Serbian.  So I did a detour and ran a search on Alma Alexander's blog  for references to Serbia.   I found the word "inat".  She said that it could be translated as stubborn, but it's in a whole different order beyond stubborn.  Given the circumstances in which Mileva found herself, she needed to be more than stubborn.  I was waiting for her to find her inat.

I wanted to comment on Benedict's portrayal of Albert Einstein.   I noticed that he was repeating phrases and I didn't think they were a response to what Mileva said or did.   My theory is that these were phrases he heard from his own father and that he was seeing his parents when he spoke them.   He had become his father and Mileva had become his mother in Einstein's mind.  He was replicating the relationship between his parents.  He may not have realized that he was doing  this on a conscious level.   This is how patterns of abuse repeat themselves.   I thought that this depiction of Einstein's behavior showed insight into this syndrome and allowed me to understand his motivations.

A number of reviewers believe that  Benedict's Mileva was a product of her historical environment and the dominant culture.   The truth is that the 21st century isn't that much kinder to women.   Any woman who becomes involved in a relationship with a man in the same field may still face the same problems.   She may be ignored and her work may go uncredited. Then like Benedict's Mileva, she may be shoved out of her field while her significant other or husband is lionized.  This is why this book has significance even if the real Mileva wasn't a scientific genius.   It could be a wake up call to young woman readers who may be on the verge of making a terrible mistake that could destroy their future careers.

For me, the value of The Other Einstein is learning of Mileva Marić's existence.  Whatever the truth might be about her, she deserves to be known rather than buried in obscurity.   Now anyone who has read this book can examine what is known about her, and make their own decisions about what they believe concerning the issues that Benedict has raised.

                               

Chroma: Light Being Human

Chariots of the Gods by Erich Von Daniken (1968) alleged that aliens had visited our planet in ancient times.  Von Daniken believed that alien contributions included the Egyptian pyramids.  The novel Chroma: Light Being Human  by Denele Campbell posits that alien energy beings visited Earth long before the pyramids.  I received a digital ARC of this book from the author in return for this honest review.

                                 

 
I like the idea of beings composed of light and music.  The various colors and musical notes that represented their personal qualities were a different approach to creating alien characters.   Yet as a librarian, the strings of numbers separated by decimal points that were part of each individual's designation, reminded me of Dewey Decimal classification.  I kept on wondering if I should be shelving the Chroma. 

The need to participate in the lives of mortal finite physical life forms is understandable.   Limitation makes existence more intense.   The unending life of the Chroma lacked purpose.   So they found their sense of purpose by observation of physical species at first.   The Chroma entity nicknamed B4 seemed to become emotionally involved in the lives of individuals.  There are some very lyrical descriptions of B4's experiences and perceptions. 

 Eventually, they started feeling as if  Earth was their laboratory, and that anything was justifiable if it could be considered an improvement.  I lost sympathy for the Chroma when I realized that the needs of individuals weren't a priority for them.   Even B4 seemed to have lost sight of  the importance of particular beings in the species that were the subjects of experimentation.   This is probably a consequence of the Chroma belief that sharing consciousness as a group is paramount.  Their super-human immortality also gave them an impossibly long range perspective.   They thought on the scale of evolution.   

It seems to me that evil lies in extremes.  Forgetting community and focusing solely on your own needs is one type of evil, but focusing solely on the group whether it's a community, a country or a species also often leads to terrible consequences despite the best of intentions.

 I feel that there should be a balance between the needs of the group, and the needs of the individual.   Maintaining that balancing act is challenging, but this doesn't absolve beings whether they are human or non-human from the responsibility of attempting to achieve that balance.  Scientific experimentation also needs to be done responsibly.    That is the conclusion that I took away from my reading of this novel.   Other readers may feel differently.   I wanted the Chroma to have a wiser and more complex understanding of the consequences of their actions.  

                                     

                                 

Native Shifter: A Historical Paranormal Romance That Feels Like Alternate History

I came across Cindy Borgne, the author of Native Shifter, requesting reviews on Goodreads.  I rarely review paranormal romances.  Yet authors that are new to me who are doing unusual twists on a familiar theme can attract my interest.   I say twists in plural because this werewolf romance takes place during the American Revolution, involves a hero and heroine who are Native American, and the power of shifting is transmitted magically.  It's not a virus of some kind transmitted through a bite as in most werewolf novels.   So that's a good deal of conceptual originality packed into one book.

I received a digital ARC from the author in return for this review.  Native Shifter is tentatively scheduled for release on October 24th. 

                            

The main reason why I try to avoid reading about werewolves is because I feel that humans who are capable of shifting into wolves should behave like real wolves when they are in wolf shape as I explained when I reviewed Wolf  by Alma Alexander here.   The portrayal of werewolves as uncontrollably savage perpetuates a hateful stereotype that justifies the destruction of wolves as a species.  In the historical context of Native Shifter , Euro-American settlers perpetuated the identical prejudice about the uncontrollable savagery of Native Americans for the exact same reason.   They wanted to justify their genocidal behavior.   So there is an implicit link between Native Americans and wolves that is established in this novel.   Yet when these werewolves are violent, they are violent for human reasons due to human flaws. So they are not the werewolves that I would prefer to read about, but they do interest me--not least because Borgne also shows us a Native American werewolf who refuses to engage in violence against Euro-American settlers because it's contrary to his spiritual identity.

I appreciate that Borgne invented a Native American people called the Mahasi who are enemies of the neighboring Iroquois.  This implies that they are a Northeast Woodland people.   My favorite fantasy author Charles De Lint has also created a fictional Native people in order to avoid writing inauthentically about a particular real Native American culture.   When I ran a search for "Mahasi", I found that it referred to a type of meditation originated by a Buddhist monk named Mahasi Sayadaw.   I also noticed that Borgne is consistent with standard nomenclature for Northeastern Native groups when she calls their domed habitations wigwams.

I feel that this book is potentially alternate history because if you project the impact of the spread of Native shifters, this factor alone could have radically changed North American history.  This possibility is embryonic in Native Shifter, but as a science fiction fan I am always considering what might happen "if this goes on" which is a key phrase in the development of science fiction concepts.   When I examined Cindy Borgne's website, I noticed that she has also written science fiction romances dealing with a hero who is a psychic on Mars.   So I'd imagine that she realizes that she could produce an alternate continuity.  I'll be very interested in seeing if she follows through with this idea in the sequel.

                                   

   



                                 

The Confession of Jack Straw by Simone Zelitch--Right Above Might

 The Confession of Jack Straw is Simone Zelitch's  first novel.  I reviewed her most recent book, Judenstaat dealing with an alternate Jewish state, on this blog here.  After reading Judenstaat, I was curious about what else Zelitch had written and came across this book dealing with the English Peasant Revolt in the 14th century.   I'd never read any historical fiction dealing with this event, and I've always been interested in it. 

                                     

Though Jack Straw is mentioned in the historical record along with a brief confession, we know nothing else about this English rebel.  So his life story as told in this novel is the invention of the author.    Zelitch's choice to make her protagonist an easily influenced follower type is one of the reasons why I became steadily less impressed with this novel as I went on. 

I thought that the most sympathetic character was John Ball, a pivotal figure in the Peasants' Revolt.  The article that I've linked is a thorough and enlightening profile by leftist historian John Simkin.  Ball's radical preaching inspired many who might otherwise have been inclined to merely grumble about the terrible injustices that were taking place during this period.   I learned from this novel that John Ball was actually the author of the famous quote "When Adam delved and Eve span who was then the gentleman?"  Zelitch portrays John Ball as a mentor and father figure to the central character.   I was bothered by his having been dishonored and degraded later in the novel by people who owed him a great deal.

My own readings in history have shown me that every well intentioned  revolution or revolt has been corrupted or co-opted for far less high-minded purposes.   It neither surprised nor disappointed me that the same thing happened to the Peasants' Revolt, but reading about it was a depressing experience.

I did like Jack Straw's role as a storyteller.  A couple of the stories he told were enjoyable, and I considered them high points in The Confession of Jack Straw.

                                     

                

Real Food/Fake Food--Foodie Concerns vs. Health Concerns

When I decided to read Real Food/Fake Food  by Larry Olmsted after seeing it on my Goodreads feed, my main concern with fake food was whether my health was being endangered by it.  I learned that Larry Olmsted is what was once called a gourmet, but would now be referred to as a foodie.  His main concern is authenticity.  He wants food that is associated with a specific geographic location to have been made at that location in the traditional way.  He explains at great length why this is important.  He is not unconcerned with health, so there is some overlap.  Yet I found this book only selectively valuable.

                                   

Olmsted points out that local environment is a significant component of a food's unique nature.  So you can't produce the same food in a hothouse or a laboratory.  It also occurred to me that imported food is also not the same as the original because chemicals are often used to preserve it in transport.  This means that your best bet if you want real food is to be a locavore, and eat only what is grown in your area.   It is possible to create dishes from international cuisines using local ingredients, though substitutions may be necessary because some ingredients might not be produced locally.  This is where Olmsted's concern with authenticity comes in.  It won't taste the same as the original, but people who have never tasted the original won't know the difference.  Traveling to the traditional source of  foreign foods as Olmsted has done is a luxury that I can't afford.  So I feel that  food authenticity isn't really relevant to my life.

For example, when I eat parmesan cheese, I want it to actually be cheese.  I had heard that some producers use sawdust in their parmesan before I read this book.   Humans can't digest sawdust, so it doesn't have nutritional value for us. I also want parmesan to be cheese from cows who have not been fed antibiotics because antibiotics in food can have a serious impact on my health.  I really don't care whether it's Parmigiano-Reggiano made in Parma, Italy.  I'm sure it's wonderful, but it's highly unlikely that I will ever get to experience it at the source.

If you eat fish, the chapter on fish fraud is quite an eye opener.  I was unhappy to learn that less than half of the salmon labeled as wild caught is in fact wild.  He also says that wild tuna is usually farmed tilapia.  Farmed fish contains antibiotics which is in their feed.  Olmsted discusses the various seals which certify that fish is wild that can be trusted.  He recommends consulting the Marine Stewardship Council website.

If you eat beef, you might look for "grass fed" on the label.  Olmsted informs us that this only means that the cow ate grass at some point in its life.   If you want it to have always been fed grass, the label must say "100% grass fed".  I hadn't realized that the legal requirements for this label were that precise.  

It was interesting to read about the history of various wines.  I was fascinated to find out about the longevity of Madeira from Portugal.  It can last longer than a century due to a special heating process that prevents it from turning to vinegar.  Olmsted also tells us that the American Founding Fathers toasted the Declaration of Independence with Madeira in 1776.  I did wonder how he knew this.

I was shocked that tea is faked.  You don't know what you're getting in a tea bag.  It might be anything.  I am less concerned about Darjeeling tea being from India with its seal of authenticity that Olmsted describes. I am more worried about whether my tea contains toxic ingredients. I am hoping that the label organic on tea really means something since I drink a great deal of tea.

Did you know that conventional tomatoes and bananas are gassed to ripen them faster?  I discovered this information from this book. The substance used is ethylene which is naturally occurring in apples. Organic certification prevents the use of ethylene on produce.  I actually prefer the taste and nutritional quality of bananas that still have some green on them.  Ripe bananas are too sweet for me which means that they contain more sugar.  The sugar is completely natural, but still isn't very beneficial for human health.  So I'd advise that if you want less sugar, look for bananas with some green.

Even though not every chapter in this book dealt with types of food or beverages that I ever consume, I do consider Olmsted an engaging writer.  I thought that all the content in this book was interesting.  The chapters I found most significant were extremely useful and sounded an alarm about the state of our food supply.  Let the buyer beware.   Let the buyer also read the relevant chapter in Real Food, Fake Food.