Every grieving Philip Roth reader who is Jewish understands that, as David Remnick of The New Yorker pointed out about the author who died Tuesday, “His sin was simple: he’d had the audacity to write about a Jewish kid as being flawed… He had violated the tribal code on Jewish self-exposure.”

Roth’s “Defender of the Faith,” from his 1959 collection Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories, is the tale of a Jewish kid who is not only flawed but self-serving, manipulative, and frankly repulsive. Stuck in Missouri for basic training during the Second World War, Private Sheldon Grossbart is a grotesque reflection of everything gentiles think about Jews. He connives to prey on the Jewish guilt and self-doubt of his sergeant, fellow New York Jew Nathan Marx, to achieve two goals: avoiding service in the expected invasion of Japan, and getting time off to eat a really delicious and totally treif “Chinese goddam egg roll.”

Roth himself discovered in his early confrontations with American Jews that many of them preferred to keep the egg roll consumption out of public view. Some of his coreligionists believed that inconsistencies and conflicts within the American Jewish community were better discussed only among Jews, if at all.

As Grossbart explains to a non-Jewish captain frustrated with his odd requests for religious accommodations, “Some things are more important to some Jews than other things to other Jews.” Roth explodes every sacred stereotype about Jewish life, leaving ugly little fragments. Respect for parents? Grossbart forges a letter from his mother complaining about the non-kosher food he is forced to eat. The letter ends up on the desk of a “goddam congressman,” forcing the ambivalent Jew Nathan Marx to explain to his superiors that “Jewish parents, sir—they’re apt to be more protective than you expect. I mean, Jews have a very close family life.”

Grossbart’s scheme to get Marx to sign off on a leave from base during basic training involves a persistent claim that he needs to eat kosher food, and to attend his aunt’s Seder, although Passover has been over for a month. When Marx shows disdain for the soldier’s implausible fidelity to Jewish law, Grossbart compares him to the passive Jews who had only recently allowed themselves to be slaughtered: “That’s what happened in Germany…They didn’t stick together. They let themselves get pushed around.”

Before the term Holocaust had even come into use, Roth has one Jewish character accuse another of complicity in this horror. In an even more outrageous violation of Jewish solidarity, it is the vaguely anti-Semitic Captain Barrett who rather sensibly points out to Grossbart the hypocrisy of his religious scruples, stating that Marx had been killing Nazis in Europe when he, Grossbart, was still in high school. Yet Marx was perfectly willing to eat non-kosher food as part of his army service.

Marx, the tough, secular Jewish combat veteran finally gives in to Grossbart’s incessant whining and gives him and several of his friends the pass they crave. After all, for all his cynicism, Marx still remembers his own grandmother’s loving attention and its lesson that “mercy overrides justice.” One more cherished belief dissolves, as Grossbart returns, not with the promised gefilte fish and horseradish, but with that egg roll in a greasy paper bag.

Marx has his revenge, pulling strings to reverse Grossbart’s successful campaign to be sent to Monmouth, New Jersey, rather than the Pacific. So one Jewish soldier goes out of his way to have another sent to his probable death. Of course, Marx does not know what Philip Roth did: the atomic bomb would shortly end the War in the Pacific, so his anguish over having pushed a fellow Jew into the line of fire was wasted, as anguish often is. Yes, “some things are more important to some Jews than other things to other Jews.”

Fortunately for us, telling the complicated and sometimes ugly truth was supremely important to Philip Roth.

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Are you a girl who is interested in building friendships with other girls who are not Muslims? Would you like to learn new skills, but not with Jews? Are you against reproductive, gay, and transgender rights? Have your parents examined their consciences, and determined that purchasing Girl Scout cookies negates the values of the Gospel? Then the American Heritage Girls (sic!) are the group for you! In joining, you can personally participate, with the help of well-meaning and irrevocably prejudiced adult mentors, in turning back the clock on human rights, and in undermining an over one hundred year old organization historically committed to empowering girls and women.

The media has covered the recent decision by the archdiocese of Kansas City to definitively cut ties with the Girl Scouts. While the Catholic Church has long been a major sponsor of scouting troops, their hierarchy has more recently stated their aggressive opposition to the Girl Scouts U.S.A.

In 2016 the St. Louis archdiocese took the more tentative step of discouraging Catholics from participation in Girl Scouting, even suggesting that they refrain from buying the delicious cookies which support secular humanist values. An FAQ section on the St. Louis archdiocese website explains concisely the root of the problem: Girl Scouts U.S.A. is affiliated with WAGGGS, the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, an internationalist group with border-transcending powers to advance its agenda, including gay and transgender rights, sex education, and access to birth control.

Lest you misunderstand the mission of this global conspiracy, the St. Louis website explains it to you: “Once again, we see ‘reproductive’ as code language; these groups are really advocating for access to abortion and birth control.” The male hierarchy of the Catholic Church has explained to its members that the scary code word “reproductive” must be handled in quotes.

If you were not scared off Girl Scouting by this point, the website “reproduces” (sorry!) the above Instagram image (originally a gif) which GSUSA posted after the Supreme Court upheld marriage equality: the phrase “Love Wins” in multicolored letters above a sea of dancing cookies.

Yet the most disturbing attribute of Girl Scouting to some of the Church hierarchy is not sex without the possibility of reproduction, but rather encouraging girls to emulate strong role models. Both the St. Louis and Kansas City archdioceses single out two women as particularly antithetical to Catholic values: Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. These Jewish feminist leaders embody everything which the Church views as destructive: female social and economic independence, reproductive rights, and international advocacy on behalf of women’s and human rights.

So what’s a Catholic Girl Scout to do?  To be clear, any religious group has a perfect right to develop its own youth program, strictly dedicated to advancing specific beliefs and principles. Yet Catholic participation in GSUSA had always been predicated on the special character of Girl Scouting as a movement which is flexible in accommodating each girl’s faith tradition, as well as in providing opportunities for girls of different religions to celebrate what they share in common. The Girl Scouts have even designed religious recognitions, pins which girls may earn for dedication to their own traditions: Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, many different Protestant denominations, and Roman Catholic.

However, this encouragement of religious diversity no longer seems to meet the needs of the Catholic Church, which has suggested as an alternative organization the dishonestly named American Heritage Girls. Unlike GSUSA, an inclusive organization which has, since 1993, allowed Girl Scouts to substitute an alternative name, phrase, or idea for service to God in their official pledge, the AHG, around since 1995, is explicitly Christian. Its “Statement of Faith” demands belief in a triune God (the three in one version not shared by Jews, Muslims, and other faiths), and also asks girls to pledge to “reserve sexual activity to the sanctity of marriage,” defined as, you guessed it, “between a man and a woman.” (It is significant that a program allegedly appalled by the sinister values of a secular society asks young girls to explicitly address sexuality in a way which is completely outside of the scope of traditional Girl Scouting.)

There are many disturbing aspects of this alternative to Girl Scouts U.S.A. Founded in 1912 by Juliette Gordon Low, Girl Scouting was created as an affirmation of the ability of girls and women to participate in all spheres along with men: technology, outdoor activities, scholarship, culture, arts. Perhaps the most outrageous component of the American Heritage Girls is their appropriation of role models for their “Level Awards.” This attempt to co-opt American icons as part of an indoctrination program in anti-American values includes the Sacagewea, Lewis and Clark (they’re not even girls!), and, perhaps most reprehensibly, Harriet Tubman awards. In an alternative version of “American heritage,” the courageous Native American guide confronting U.S. expansionism, and the soldier of abolitionism and the Underground Railroad, are models of idealized “purity” and adherence to retrograde values which limit the choices of women. (Sacagewea was born into a Native American faith tradition; it is unclear whether her “marriage” as an adolescent to Toussaint Charbonneau promoted her belief in a triune God.)

If you are wavering between GSUSA and the AHG, perhaps it is time to buy some cookies, and enjoy them while reading or re-reading the Girl Scout Law:

Girl Scout Law

I will do my best to be
    honest and fair,
    friendly and helpful,
    considerate and caring, 
    courageous and strong, and
    responsible for what I say and do, 
and to 
    respect myself and others, 
    respect authority,
    use resources wisely,
    make the world a better place, and 
    be a sister to every Girl Scout.

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We are in the middle of the holiday of Chanukah, festival of freedom and rededication, of the courage to speak truth to power and to embody the Jewish value of preserving light against the darkness of oppression.  We are also approaching the presidency of Donald Trump, an apparent titanic failure of America’s identity as a haven to the reviled, persecuted, or disadvantaged of the world.  If you are interested in reading to a young person this holiday season, you may enjoy along with her a relatively recent picture book by Richard and Tanya Simon, illustrated by Mark Siegel, Oskar and the Eight Blessings.  If you don’t have a young person to read to, but you are intrigued by a work which introduces Eleanor Roosevelt, Superman, and Count Basie to the holiday commemorating the rededication of the Temple, here is the book for you.

The story, with minimal text and muted colors, is set in 1938, on Christmas Eve, the seventh day of Chanukah.  Oskar is a Jewish refugee child, sent by his parents to New York City to find the haven of his Aunt Esther’s apartment. His journey requires that he navigate a strange maze of metropolitan night, during which he meets, not the frightening ghosts of Christmas past, but the real life figures who will become ghosts of a comforting future.  Count Basie whistles a jazz duet with him outside of Carnegie Hall, Eleanor Roosevelt kindly winks at him, and a benevolent news vendor, himself a visual representation of the Depression era “forgotten man,” gives Oskar a free copy of Action Comics Number 1, along with the empowering (and of course Jewish) spirit of Superman.

The illustrations feature New York scenes that promote nostalgia for a past that may not have existed for every immigrant; few Jews fleeing the Holocaust were allowed entry, due to the punitive immigration quotas, the suspension of which Eleanor’s husband Franklin refused to make a priority.  Yet the scenes are real, from Carnegie Hall to Herald Square, to Aunt Esther’s apartment on West 103rd Street, where, in a momentary confusion of memory, she calls Oskar by his father’s name. Oskar’s father is back in Europe, having experienced the terror of Kristallnacht and selflessly sent his son on to safety without him.  The book includes a map, and an afterward explaining the story’s origin in both history and fantasy.

The threat of darkness and inhumanity are unfortunately now very real in our country, even as the historical circumstances are different and possible responses may be different, as well.  Superman will not be sufficient, nor will remembering Eleanor Roosevelt’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights or Count Basie’s universal expression of musical brilliance.  Oskar and the Eight Blessings sets the call for freedom and justice in the particular setting of a New York City nighttime and reminds us of fleeting priorities which we can still reclaim as Americans, and pass on to our children. To quote the Christmas tree seller who lifts Oskar off the sidewalk as he falls, “Back on your feet, son.”

Image via Macmillan

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Serena Dykman is a granddaughter of survivors. She has directed, and appears in, Nana: A Transgenerational Documentary on Tolerance. This groundbreaking film tells the story of her grandmother, Auschwitz survivor Maryla Michalowski-Dyamant, and the journey of her mother, Alice, and herself to come to terms with their past. If you believe that you have seen every statement of resilience and every vision of horror eloquently related, you will find a renewed and different connection to the legacy of the Shoah after you see this film.

Jewcy: How did you conceive of this project, of presenting the experience of your grandmother, who had died when you were eleven years old, to a new generation?

Dykman:  It happened quickly.  I always knew that my grandmother was a survivor. I was completely aware, but I did not understand what that meant.  I am from Paris and Brussels.  I went to Brussels the day of the attack at the Jewish Museum; the next time I traveled to Europe was after the attacks on Charlie Hébdo and the kosher supermarket.  I had been traveling with the memoir my grandmother had written, but I had not opened the book.  When I came back to New York, I realized what she had stood for.  Saddened that she was not here to tell her story, I realized that her message of tolerance and hope needed to be heard by a new generation.

In my last semester at NYU I took a documentary film class.  Three weeks after the course I was filming on location at Auschwitz.  If I had thought carefully, I would not have had the courage to go through with it. I retraced my grandmother’s memories, reading aloud while physically retracing her steps.  Back in NY, many people who had heard about the project sent me archival footage, over 100 hours, including interviews with my grandmother. Then the film started taking a different shape.  I discovered my grandmother more in the editing room than I had in her memoir.

Jewcy:  Some explorations of the lives of survivors, their children, and grandchildren, report the continuation of unspoken trauma, even dysfunction, in these families.  Your film is centered in the strong bond between mother and daughter.  How did your relationship with your mother inform your vision in this film?

Dykman: I have always been close to my mother.  It all came together; I began to realize, to learn, “this is why she reacts this way.”   I finally understood how heavy the weight of the heritage has been for her entire life.  My grandmother was outspoken. As a child, when my mother asked her mother, “where are your parents?” the response she received was that they had been gassed by the Nazis.  The second generation had to suffer for what their parents suffered. They had the responsibility to pass on their parents’ survival story.  It was hard because they were so close. As a member of the third generation, I was close, but not so close that the process would kill me.

Jewcy: Your grandmother’s personality is strong, ironic, proud.  In footage of her interviews by those learning about the Shoah, she seems at times surprised by their naivité. In response to the question, “Why did Hitler choose to persecute the Jews?” she answers “I don’t know. Hitler didn’t confide in me.”

Dykman:  My grandmother was changed by the war, but not completely.  She had an incredible sense of humor. People who see this ask if she was like that before the war.  Her memoir reveals this characteristic in her childhood and teenage years.  After the war she met and married my grandfather, a non-Jewish Pole. She was not, she believed a “regular person.” She educated herself after the war. She studied the Bible and wanted to understand society and human intolerance.   She had been raised in a liberal setting and was not religious.  Speaking for myself, my Jewish identity is more cultural than religious.  People would sometimes ask my grandmother if she believed in God.  She would answer, “After what I just told you, do you think I believe in God?  

Jewcy: Your grandmother relates several instances of the Nazis’ sadistic use of language and of the attempt of your grandmother to subvert this torture.  In one anecdote, she describes hauling rocks as part of her slave labor in the camp.  A Nazi guard repeatedly asks her what she is carrying; every time she answers, “a rock” he threatens her, finally telling her it is not a rock, but a stone. How does your film try to recover language from this lethal assault?

Dykman:  Reading aloud is what started the whole film.  My grandmother had a distinct way of phrasing things. French was not her first language; her syntax was unusual.  Her style was to never complain.  Rather, she would act out what she was saying, but not in a theatrical way.  She speaks as if the story takes place in the present and acts out dialogue.  People who refer to the Holocaust as something that happened seventy years ago hear her speak and learn of its relevance today.

Jewcy: How did recent terrorist attacks in Europe become a framework for your film?

Dykman:  My perspective changed while making the film.  I made the film after witnessing the attacks in Paris and Brussels.  The first screening was after the subsequent airport attacks in Brussels.  What had happened to the Jewish people was also happening to others, and my grandmother’s call for tolerance needed to be timeless. Rather than add references to more specific acts of terror, I wanted to film to be timeless, and to exclude no one. I worked with an amazing editor who understood the framework of the film.

Jewcy:  As your mother states with conviction in one of your conversations about her struggle as a child of survivors, “Long live life. Long live Nana.”

Nana: A Transgenerational Documentary on Tolerance premieres on November 6 (Maryla’s Birthday), at the St. Louis International Film Festival.

Image from Nana.

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Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941, has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, 2016.  He now joins the ranks of American authors Toni Morrison, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway, also recipients of this honor. He is welcome into the fellowship of the Jewish Saul Bellow, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Patrick Modiano (on his father’s side).

On Aish.com, Ilan Preskovsky offered Dylan an unqualified “Mazal tov,” and reminded readers that Bob was “born to a fairly observant Jewish family,” and “had a decidedly Jewish upbringing.” (Preskovsky seems to forgive Dylan for the unfortunate detour into evangelical Christianity.) This encomium, like all those in the Jewish press, mentions the simple and haunting “Forever Young” as having its origin in the Biblical priestly blessing. However, perhaps it is time to begin honoring Bob Dylan with the very Jewish virtue of age.

Dylan is now a member of a different and venerable club, of old Jewish men who have become iconic figures of cultural and personal longevity. (He should live to be a hundred and twenty!)

In a recent David Remnick profile in The New Yorker of Dylan’s almost landsman Leonard Cohen, another prophetic songwriter from just slightly farther north, Dylan analyzes the brilliance of his Canadian friend.  Cohen, Dylan explains, is not principally a chronicler of depressing experiences, but an author of lyrical dialogues in the mode of Irving Berlin.  Berlin, born Israel Beilin in 1888, by the time of his death at the age of 101, had written several of the greatest anthems of popular music by holding the listener’s attention, “as if he’s holding a conversation and telling you something, but him doing all the talking, but the listener keeps listening.”  Dylan describes Cohen as engaged in the ongoing dialogue in which he himself has participated with listeners for more than fifty years, the same one featuring Berlin’s melancholy question, “What’ll I do with just a photograph/to tell my troubles to/When I’m alone/with only dreams of you/that won’t come true/What’ll I do?”

Then there is Ira Gershwin, (Israel Gershowitz, 1896-1983) whose brief partnership with his brother George ended with his sad poem to a musician who indeed, dying at the age of thirty-nine, was “forever young.” (“The Rockies may tumble/Gibraltar may crumble/they’re only made of clay/but, our love is here to stay”).

How about Yip Harburg (Isadore Hochberg, 1896-1981)?  His meditation on the elusive nature of dreams, accompanied by the minor key notes of Harold Arlen, (Hyman Arluck), reflects the sadness of the Jewish immigrant experience as well as the human inability to ever reach the symbol that rewarded Noah after the flood, “Somewhere over the rainbow/skies are blue/and the dreams that you dare to dream/Really do come true.”

There are many Dylan lyrics which allude to Jewish experiences, from Abraham’s defiant challenge to God in “Highway 61 Revisited” to the perennial quest for freedom in “Blowin’ in the Wind,” a song which captured in some part the struggles of the Civil Rights movement in which he participated.

Yet somehow, “Forever Young,” a reassuring patriarchal prayer, encloses in its brief verses the true experience of a Jewish parent, or any parent, trying to extend wisdom to a child. Because we don’t want that child, or grandchild, to stay “forever young.” We want him or her to eventually be old, stable, and secure.

We know that our child will pass through the bitterness of “Positively Fourth Street,” the chaos of “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” and the romanticism of “Boots of Spanish Leather.” Like Jacob climbing the ladder and attaining a new adult identity, we want him or her to know the truth, the light, and courage listed as essential in Dylan’s song.  

Image: Xavier Badosa via Flickr

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Those who are strangers to the world of children’s literature might be surprised at the controversy engendered by recent books which appear to misrepresent members of marginalized books, or to silence them through their infrequent appearance in books for young readers.

One example of this experience is the reception of the imaginative and artistically bold work by award winning author and illustrator Emily Jenkins and Sophie Blackall. In A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, and One Delicious Treat, they follow the preparation and consumption of a delicious dish called blackberry fool through four hundred years and a diverse group of people preparing and eating the “fine dessert.” In one scene, an African American slave and her daughter, having enthusiastically created this labor intensive culinary treat, huddle in a dark closet, eating what remains of it after their white owners have openly enjoyed it in an elaborate dining room filled with the marks of their ill-gotten wealth. Some readers were appalled, believing that the portrayal of the slaves was misleading and offensive. Others saw the illustration of mother and daughter as subverting the system of human property which, while it could oppress and degrade them, could never dehumanize them totally. The author eventually apologized for her perceived insensitivity.

Whatever you conclude about A Fine Dessert, it at least generated the controversy, and conversation, which it deserved. So why isn’t this happening to another work? This book is by a Canadian author, Michelle Barker, entitled A Year of Borrowed Men. I read a positive review of this work in The Horn Book, the distinguished journal of children’s literature widely read by librarians, authors, publishers, and teachers. The book is based on the family narrative of the author’s mother, and the “borrowed men” are French, Nazi slave labor forced to work on her childhood farm in Germany. This is not a children’s book about the Holocaust or World War II, any more than A Fine Dessert was dedicated to presenting American slavery.

Some critics of A Fine Dessert pointed to the very lack of context, of any mention of slavery, which distorted the history presented as rich and beautiful in the book. The Year of Borrowed Men is characterized by a complete vacuum of any information which might inform a child or encourage him or her to learn about the time and setting of the book. The little girl, Gerda, is informed by her mother that the workers on their farm are only “borrowed,” as their own men have been, and will be returned to their families. Of course, adults construct simple and comforting narratives for children living in threatening environments, but a book is written with hindsight and perspective. Here there is none. The farm is a happy scene of plenty, the author referring to the abundance of cows, pigs, butter, meat, and eggs available. A Christmas tree is decorated with colorful catalogue pictures and the family enjoys Tunisian salad as the smell of cloves and nutmeg, spices whose names evoke warmth and luxury, fill the farmhouse. The illustrations oddly show the workers as plump and content, becoming friends with Gerda and comforting her when, in a bizarre scene showing the author’s total obviousness to historical context, the dolls’ arms are accidentally burned on a stove. The laborers and the little girl embrace, calling one another “amis” and “freunde.” The book’s jacket flap proclaims that “the little girl proved that it isn’t so far from feinde (enemies) to freunde (friends).

The book identifies one act of supposed heroism. Gerda’s mother briefly allows the slave laborers to eat at her table, and she is admonished by police to return them to their quarters. Small acts of bravery are important, yet the book’s scenario, completely separated from the reality of Europeans starving, driven from their homes, enslaved, and slaughtered, offers no opportunity of either education or true identification with the characters.

When the Russians invade/liberate Germany, their presence is not a deliverance, although the bland prisoners are finally allowed a moment of autonomy, as they shout “Libération!” On the contrary, the narrator, Gerda, negates this final moment of freedom by reporting that the Russians opened all their barns: “Even the animals were free. Our herd of cows ran away, which meant no more milk or butter for us.” If there was any ambiguity about the book’s attitude towards the prosperity gained by a farm feeding the German army, it vanishes here. Nowhere in A Fine Dessert is “freedom” described as a negative force.

I am Jewish. I apparently have sensitivities to this material that other readers may not. Here is a sample of responses to The Year of Borrowed Men. On Goodreads, one reader reports, “I love this book because it shows the German side of suffering that took place.” Another reader suggests that it is a “sweet war story to help learn about friendship and respect.” The professional reviewer at School Library Journal sees the book as a necessary purchase “…where nuanced portrayals of family during World War II are needed,” adding the warning to “keep the tissues close by.” Canadian Children’s Book News praises the illustrations, which “convey a pastoral environment imbued with the bleakness of war,” although no bleakness is suggested until the Russians arrive.

Part of what is disturbing about the reception of the book is the unexplored idea of the mother’s brief attempt to seat the slave laborers at the kitchen table as a great act of bravery and resistance, a sufficient antidote to the evil which is not even alluded to in the rest of the story. The author writes that her mother’s farm was in “Beelkow,” presumably “Bielkow,” a town formerly in Germany but transferred to Poland after the war. Given the vague setting of the book, it is hard to determine how close this Pomeranian village was to the main Jewish community of Stettin/Szczecin, which was almost totally annihilated. Without negating the losses of her own family, Ms. Barker needs to at least acknowledge the horrific events which frame the unmediated narrative of her mother’s childhood in Nazi Germany. Has the Holocaust, in today’s environment of critical analysis of cultural and historical representations, assumed a unique status of isolation or illegitimacy?

Surely a children’s book which is set in this inferno merits at least the level of critical attention focused on A Fine Dessert.

Images via Amazon

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You can watch the trailer here, and then, read on!

Jewcy: You have worked on many different projects, some including the theme of cultural identity. How did you decide to focus on Curious George? Was he a part of your childhood?

Ema:  I grew up in Japan and I had no concept that Curious George was popular throughout the world, not only in my own culture. Looking for a story to pursue for my first documentary, I realized that I had not been familiar with his background.  As children, we don’t often think about the origins of our favorite books and authors.  When I first heard a 1966 interview with the Reys on WGBH, I was captivated by their global accent and the way they seemed to finish one another’s sentences.  I grew up juggling different cultures and the Reys were the embodiment of people who went beyond one place to create a universal message.

Jewcy:  How did the marriage of Hans and Margret become a factor in their work and in your interest in their careers?

Ema: Margret was a fascinating person.  Hans was the genius, the artist, the source of many of their ideas, but Margret wrote the words and got things done.  They had met during their childhood in Hamburg; Hans had dated Margret’s older sister. They met again as adults in Rio de Janeiro, where Hans was working as a bookkeeper.  Margaret knew that he was wasting his artistic talents. She encouraged him to start an advertising agency and later to become involved in writing and illustrating.  Had Margret not shown up, he would have been content working on the beaches of Rio. She motivated him and handled the business.  Many people found her blunt, impatient, rude. Her strengths were not as common for women in the 1940s.  Sometimes I get “causey” about Margret.  I also feel that my working relationship with Jacob Kafka, the film’s animator, shares some aspect of the relationship between Margret and Hans.

Jewcy: I am struck by how unusual your approach and vision are in developing this film, which combines documentary footage, interviews, and original animation.  Why did you decide to combine animation with some of the more traditional elements of documentary films?

Ema: I asked myself how I could best convey the depth of the Reys’ life and tell their story.  They were great storytellers; how would I tell their story? It was unimaginable not to use animation. To show how extraordinary their lives were, they escaped the Nazis on bicycle and called it an adventure.  I had to share the harsh realities of 1941, but also to provide a context.   The past decade has seen a new era in documentary film making, not restricted to old norms.  I used mixed media, and I hope that the Reys would approve of how I’m doing that!  The film has narrator page flips and caption titles, and simple sentences such as Margret would have written.  They created an illustrated world, a world of drawings which transcended time as well as culture.  I wanted to draw from that world and to take it a step further.

Jewcy:  In the archives at the University of Southern Mississippi, where you did research for your film, there is a 1942 greeting card drawn by Hans, in which he is painting a scene of the Statue of Liberty, including the phrase, “Let Freedom Ring.”  Is there a political or social message intrinsic to the Reys’ story?

Ema:  Since I started the project two years ago, the conversation about immigrants, as well as the negativity towards immigrants and refugees, has become much more topical.  I obviously didn’t plan on this.  The Reys’ story is one of people crossing borders, of coming to America, which they saw as the dream of a place where anything is possible.  I moved here from Japan when I was nineteen and I happened to live on the same block as the Reys. I wasn’t a refugee, but I saw America as a place of opportunity, where I could express myself to the fullest. The Reys are a shining example of the possibilities of what people can become given the right opportunity, when they are allowed the benefit of freedom from labelling. They were so proud to become Americans.   Subconsciously, I did identify with them.

Jewcy: Is Curious George Jewish?

Ema:  As a non-Jewish person, I look to others to provide that interpretation.  The Reys were survivors and I see so much of them in George. They showed resilience and were always grateful for the kindness of strangers.  I don’t want to speak for their Jewishness, but I know that it has great meaning for the Jewish community.

Jewcy: What would you like Jewcy readers to know about the cumulative experience of telling the Reys’ story?

Ema:  The process has been grueling, an adventure in itself, and has turned into a very public campaign.  I have not only learned so much about the Reys, but meeting the Curious George superfans has been incredible.  It hasn’t only been about raising the money, but about building a sense of community.  If I ever had a doubt that this story was worth telling, it has been obliterated by their tremendous support.

Monkey Business is about to conclude its Kickstarter campaign! You can help it reach its final goal here.

Images courtesy of Monkey Business.

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Today is both #ThrowbackThursday, as well as Bastille Day. So to celebrate, what’s Jewish, French, and a part of your childhood? Well, remember Madeline, the little Parisian girl of Ludwig Bemelmans’ unforgettable picture book?  Her idyllic life, visiting the zoo  and the Place de la Concorde, is only occasionally punctuated by the sadness of witnessing a wounded First World War veteran negotiate the non-accessible Paris streets. Suddenly, she is stricken with acute appendicitis. Her benevolent and practical maternal figure, Miss Clavel, wisely contacts…a Jewish doctor!

“And soon after Dr. Cohn/came, he rushed out to the phone/and he dialed: DANton-ten-six-/‘Nurse, he said, ‘it’s an appendix!’”

But not only is he a skilled diagnostician, he communicates kindness and strength:

“Madeline was in his arm/In a blanket safe and warm.”

Now, in spite of the way you may remember the story, Madeline is not an orphan, as evidenced by the beautiful dollhouse her papa sends her in the hospital, making her the object of her classmates’ envy.

In his 1954 acceptance speech for the Caldecott Award for children’s book illustration, Bemelmans explicitly revealed the origin of Dr. Cohn’s unmistakable profile. Hospitalized for a bicycle accident, the doctor who cared for him reminded him of Léon Blum, the first Jewish, and first Socialist, prime minister of France.  Bemelmans recalls meeting Blum, and warmly refers to him as “the great patriot and humanitarian Léon Blum,” revealing to readers that he is indeed the compassionate doctor who saves Madeline. (This hospital stay also provided Bemelmans with the famous memory that “… a crack on the ceiling had the habit/of sometimes looking like a rabbit”).

On Bastille Day, let’s say merci to Dr. Cohn, Léon Blum, and leaders who care for  society’s most vulnerable, including children.

Emily Schneider is a writer and educator with a special interest in children’s literature. She lives and works in NYC.

Images by Ludwig Bemelmans

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