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WORK TITLE: The Fortunate Ones
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://ellenumansky.com/
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
(Not the professor at Fairfield University.) * http://ellenumansky.com/about/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2017020196
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2017020196
HEADING: Umansky, Ellen
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010 __ |a no2017020196
035 __ |a (OCoLC)oca10709097
040 __ |a UP |b eng |e rda |c UP |d DLC
053 _0 |a PS3621.M328
100 1_ |a Umansky, Ellen
370 __ |a Los Angeles (Calif.) |e Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) |2 naf
372 __ |a Journalism |a Popular literature |2 lcsh
373 __ |a Columbia University |2 naf
374 __ |a Authors |a Journalists |a Periodical editors |2 lcsh
375 __ |a female
377 __ |a eng
667 __ |a Do not confuse with Ellen M. Umansky, professor of Judaic studies at Fairfield College.
670 __ |a Umansky, Ellen. The fortunate ones, 2017: |b title page (Ellen Umansky) dust jacket (published fiction and nonfiction for New York Times, Salon, Playboy, and in short story collections; worked in editorial departments of The Forward, Tablet, and The New Yorker; grew up in Los Angeles; lives in Brooklyn)
670 __ |a penparentis.org, via WWW, 15 February 2017 |b (Ellen Umansky’s articles, essays, and fiction have appeared in numerous publications, such as The New York Times, Salon, Playboy, as well as the short-story anthologies Lost Tribe and Sleepaway; has worked in editorial departments of The New Yorker, late New York Sun, and is now a senior editor at Tablet; holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia)
670 __ |a Tablet magazine, via WWW, 15 February 2017 |b (Ellen Umansky. Ellen Umansky is a senior editor at Tablet magazine; list of articles)
670 __ |a Kirkus Reviews, via WW, 15 February 2017 |b (The fortunate ones, by Ellen Umansky; Umansky’s richly textured and peopled novel tells an emotionally and historically complicated story with so much skill and confidence it’s hard to believe it’s her first)
PERSONAL
Married; children: two daughters.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Former editorial department staff for Forward, Tablet, and the New Yorker.
WRITINGS
Contributor to anthologies, including Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge and Sleepaway: Writings on Summer Camp. Contributor to periodicals and Websites, including the New York Times, Salon, Playboy.
SIDELIGHTS
Ellen Umansky’s debut novel, The Fortunate Ones, follows the twined narratives of Rose and Lizzie. Rose and her brother are sent from Vienna to England on a Kindertransport in 1939, and they never see their parents again. Over the years, Rose remains haunted by a painting her parents owned, “The Bellhop” by Chaim Soutine. The painting was lost in the holocaust, and unbeknownst to Rose, it winds up being purchased by a wealthy Los Angeles surgeon named Joseph Goldstein. The painting hangs in the family mansion, and Joseph’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Lizzie, holds a wild party while the rest of the family is out of town. The painting is stolen during the party, and Lizzie is also haunted by the loss. Then Rose and Lizzie coincidentally meet, and they bond over their strange shared connection. As Umansky noted in an interview with Deborah Kalb on the Deborah Kalb Blog, “I knew from the beginning I wanted to write a story of a painting that was stolen twice–the first time, by the Nazis, and the second, in present day–but the particular characters took longer to figure out. Lizzie came first–surprisingly to me in retrospect, because she was actually harder for me to pinpoint and write than Rose.”
Praising the author’s efforts in the Times of Israel Online, a critic found that Lizzie and Rose “recognize they have little control over outcomes; they can only do the best they can within their respective contextual realities. This, indeed, is the definition of fortunate in the title. We are indeed fortunate if we can come to terms with consequences even when they are painful and unclear. ” The critic went on to comment: “It is a truism that we cannot control results. This piece of wisdom is at the core of The Fortunate Ones, a Holocaust novel in one sense, but a book with practical life lessons as well.” Sana Krasikov, writing in the New York Times Online, largely commended the book although she noted that it is not without flaws: “On occasion, the novel falls into its own aesthetic traps. The dialogue sometimes feels too cinematically coy, and there is a veneer of politeness to the prose even in moments of conflict. But the ideas at its core are deceptively deep. The Fortunate Ones is a subtle, emotionally layered novel about the ways art and other objects of beauty can make tangible the invisible, undocumented moments in our lives, the portion of experience that exists without an audience but must be preserved if we are to remain whole.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2017, Sarah Johnson, Sarah, review of The Fortunate Ones.
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2016, review of The Fortunate Ones.
Library Journal, December 1, 2016, Bette-Lee Fox, review of The Fortunate Ones.
Publishers Weekly, December 19, 2016, review of The Fortunate Ones.
ONLINE
Deborah Kalb Blog, http://deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com/ (October 24, 2017), Deborah Kalb, author interview.
Ellen Umanksy Website, http://ellenumansky.com (October 24, 2017).
Jewish Journal, http://jewishjournal.com/ (April 5, 2017), review of The Fortunate Ones.
New York Times Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (March 3, 2017), Sana Krasikov, review of The Fortunate Ones.
Times of Israel Online, http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/ (May 10, 2017), review of The Fortunate Ones.
Ellen Umansky
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Author photo, Sam Zalutsky
Ellen Umansky has published fiction and nonfiction in a variety of venues, including the New York Times, Salon, Playboy, and the short-story anthologies Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge and Sleepaway: Writings on Summer Camp. She has worked in the editorial departments of several publications, including the Forward, Tablet, and The New Yorker. She grew up in Los Angeles, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.
Website design by Will Amato
Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb
Check back often for new Q&As, and for daily historical factoids about books. On Facebook at www.facebook.com/deborahkalbbooks. Follow me on Twitter @deborahkalb.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Q&A with Ellen Umansky
Ellen Umansky is the author of the new novel The Fortunate Ones. She has worked for a variety of publications, including The Forward, Tablet, and The New Yorker, and she lives in Brooklyn.
Q: Why did you decide to center your novel around a painting by the artist Chaim Soutine, and what do you think the book says about the importance of art?
A: Years ago, a friend asked me to go to an exhibit of Soutine’s paintings at the Jewish Museum with him. I had never heard of Soutine before, and truthfully, I was much more interested in the brunch that my friend promised me afterward.
But I went and I was floored. Soutine is rightly famous for his landscapes and his still lifes but I found his portraits mesmerizing. There was something about the way he captured the humanity of his subjects--people who were often overlooked, like cooks, waiters, or in my novel, a bellhop--that was deeply moving to me.
The exhibit delved into his biography too: he was born dirt-poor, the 10th of 11 children in a tiny Jewish Lithuanian village, and somehow made his way to Paris, where he worked as an artist. When the Nazis took over, he fled to the countryside, and he died during the war.
He was by many accounts difficult and awkward, a perennial outsider, like many of the people he painted. That awkwardness and longing is readily apparent in his art, and I was drawn to it. I found myself looking and wondering, what it would be like to look at one of his paintings for years on end? What could it mean to someone?
As to the second half of your question: I come to art as a novice, but I’m really interested in the fact that we can look at the same painting or photograph, hear the same song, and come to such different conclusions about it.
It may be obvious but it’s still worth reflecting, I think: Art is subjective in the best sense of the word. And the endless associations that we might bring to it (even putting aside the motives of the person who created it): where we were when we bought it, why we wanted it, who were were then, the circumstances that made up our lives.
I thought a lot about the great Elizabeth Bishop poem "One Art" when I was writing the book, her first line in particular: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.” (Actually, “The Art of Losing” was the original title of my novel.)
For both of my main characters, the Soutine painting spoke of loss, but also, crucially, of a time when they were deeply loved; it reminds them of their mothers.
Q: Your narrative alternates between the lives of your two main characters, Lizzie and Rose. Did you know from the beginning that you would structure the novel that way?
A: Not at all! This novel was many years in the making and the structure--actually, the entire book itself--changed so much over time.
I knew from the beginning I wanted to write a story of a painting that was stolen twice--the first time, by the Nazis, and the second, in present day--but the particular characters took longer to figure out. Lizzie came first--surprisingly to me in retrospect, because she was actually harder for me to pinpoint and write than Rose.
In an earlier incarnation of the book, I followed the painting every time it switched owners: From its creation by Soutine, to Rose’s mother to an American soldier who stole it while supposedly guarding it, to Lizzie’s parents to Lizzie herself.
It was seriously fun to research and write from all those different characters’ views, but it didn’t cohere as a whole. Once I alighted on Rose, her story was one that I kept going back to.
Q: How did you research the historical parts of the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: I read and I read--probably too much reading; at some point, research becomes a great way to put off the actual writing.
I read histories about the Kindertransport, Nazi-pilfered art, a lot about the post-war years in England (a time and place I knew little about), novels set during the various time periods I wanted to cover, and just about any memoir I could get my hands on.
I spent time in the archives at the Center for Jewish History, reading unpublished memoirs and the papers of people who had fled Austria and Germany before the war. All these sources were invaluable to me; they gave me a much-needed sense, whether through specific detail or by capturing their emotions at the time--of what it was like to be in a place that no longer existed.
In terms of surprises, I would say two things stand out: First, I did not appreciate just how hard life was in England after the war. Rations continued, fuel and food and jobs were scarce. These were people who had lived through the trauma of the Blitz--they had won the war, finally--and yet for years afterward, daily life was still very difficult.
And second, the deeper I looked into the Kindertransport, the more amazed I was by it: There was the basic, astonishing fact that the efforts, which were cobbled together quickly, actually worked--nearly 10,000 children came to England from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia before the war--but also, most poignantly and harrowingly to me, that those parents were brave enough to put their children on those trains.
It’s relatively easy, from our vantage point decades later, to say, of course I would have put my child on a rescue train. I would have done anything to make sure my child survived.
But the truth is, in 1938 in Vienna, you didn’t know what awaited you-- certainly not in terms of the horrors of Hitler but neither of what your child might face if you tried to send her alone to England.
There was no guarantee that those trains would make it past the Nazi borders, let alone across the water. And even if they made it to England, who knew who your child would live with, who would take care of her?
I have two daughters, and the thought of putting them on a train like that--well, imagining it gave me a narrow window into just how unspeakable their anguish must have been.
Q: How was this title chosen for the book, and what does it signify for you?
A: A friend of mine, the wise and creative Jen Albano, suggested it, and I loved it from the start. Neither of my characters feels especially fortunate--they both grapple with significant loss, and Rose in particular suffers from survivor’s guilt--and yet, in the scheme of things, they were lucky. They survived. By the end of the novel, they, and I hope the reader, are left with a sense of hope.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: At the moment, I am mainly helping this novel make its way into the world. I hope to get back to fiction soon. I have a few stories that I’d like to work on and an idea for another historical novel that I’m eager to explore, but it’s too early to talk about.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Posted by Deborah Kalb at 5:16 AM
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Deborah Kalb
Author, THE PRESIDENT AND ME: GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE MAGIC HAT, new children's book (Schiffer, 2016). Co-author, with Marvin Kalb, of HAUNTING LEGACY: VIETNAM AND THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY FROM FORD TO OBAMA (Brookings Institution Press, 2011).
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Umansky, Ellen: THE FORTUNATE ONES
Kirkus Reviews.
(Nov. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Umansky, Ellen THE FORTUNATE ONES Morrow/HarperCollins (Adult Fiction) $26.99 2, 14 ISBN: 978-0-06-
238248-1
A missing painting connects the lives of Rose, a woman who escaped the Holocaust as a young girl, and Lizzie, a 37-
year-old lawyer whose father just died.After Rose's parents put her and her brother on the Kindertransport from Vienna
to England in 1939, she never saw them again. Also gone was The Bellhop, a painting by the expressionist Chaim
Soutine. Over the years that followed, both Rose and The Bellhop separately found their ways to Los Angeles. The
painting was purchased from a New York gallery by a wealthy eye surgeon named Joseph Goldstein, displayed in his
steel-and-glass mansion overhanging a ravine in Los Angeles. When his daughter Lizzie, then 17, threw a wild house
party when he was out of town, the painting, as well as a Picasso sketch, was stolen. Rose's husband read of the theft
in the paper; she contacted Joseph. But Lizzie and Rose do not meet until Joseph's memorial service. By then, Lizzie's
life has been as shaped by the missing Bellhop as Rose's has--for both, the painting's departure from their lives
coincided with a brutal loss of innocence. Lizzie is powerfully drawn to Rose, trying to build their coincidental
connection into a real friendship over coffee dates and movies, and you can see why. Despite all her losses--on top of
the Holocaust, her adored husband has recently died--Rose is an elegant, smart, utterly direct woman who loves the
films of Roger Corman, tolerates no fools, and has strong opinions on everything. Her boyfriend is a Bruce
Springsteen maniac. It is his offhand question about the insured value of the stolen artwork that drives Lizzie back into
the investigation. A few of the plot developments at the end of the book are a little awkward, but when's the last time
you read a novel that didn't have that problem? Umansky's richly textured and peopled novel tells an emotionally and
historically complicated story with so much skill and confidence it's hard to believe it's her first.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Umansky, Ellen: THE FORTUNATE ONES." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2016. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469865893&it=r&asid=755c1fe5f5cabe1cec723fcae80b2c25.
Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A469865893
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Umansky, Ellen. The Fortunate Ones
Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal.
141.20 (Dec. 1, 2016): p92.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Umansky, Ellen. The Fortunate Ones. Morrow. Feb. 2017. 336p. ISBN 9780062382481. $26.99; ebk. ISBN
9780062382504. F
Though 11-year-old Rose Zimmer hated leaving her parents, she and her older brother were transported from Austria
to England in 1939 for their safety. For years, Rose was obsessed with a painting loved by her mother that was lost
when her parents were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Decades later, in 2005, New York--based lawyer
Elizabeth Goldstein is back in Los Angeles to attend her father's funeral. As a child, Lizzie had been fascinated by an
odd painting in her father's house and still blames herself for its theft during a party she threw as a teen when her dad
was out of town. So at the funeral, when she meets an older woman named Rose Downes who claims to be a friend of
her father, she's stunned when Rose says her family had owned the painting back in Vienna. The scene is set for some
major disclosures, but while alternating chapters relating Rose's transformation from girl to young woman to wife are
appealing, the adult Lizzie's actions seem callow and less than sympathetic. VERDICT The journey the painting takes
ends up being fairly pedestrian, and the denouement lacks the requisite drama. Umansky's debut holds promise, but the
execution is ultimately uninspired. An optional purchase. [See Prepub Alert, 8/26/16.]--Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal
Fox, Bette-Lee
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Fox, Bette-Lee. "Umansky, Ellen. The Fortunate Ones." Library Journal, 1 Dec. 2016, p. 92. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA472371194&it=r&asid=26af253ef66a6d101034014f5b32e8df.
Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A472371194
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The Fortunate Ones
Sarah Johnson
Booklist.
113.9-10 (Jan. 1, 2017): p34.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* The Fortunate Ones. By Ellen Umansky. Feb. 2017.336p. Morrow, $26.99 (9780062382481).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The Kindertransport, the recovery of Nazi-looted art, family ties, and adjustments to great loss--taken individually,
these are recurrent themes in literary fiction. In Umansky's first novel, they're brought together in an original and
tremendously moving way in the portrayal of two women who feel like walking ghosts after their parents' deaths. Rose
Zimmer is a former child refugee from Vienna who moved to Britain in the 1940s; Lizzie Goldstein is a lawyer who
returns home to contemporary Los Angeles for her father's funeral. She and Rose, now an astute, prickly
septuagenarian, develop an unusual friendship. Their families had once owned the same Chaim Soutine expressionist
painting, and both had it stolen amid traumatic circumstances. The missing artwork holds great meaning for them, and
they ponder its whereabouts. But this multilayered novel isn't a mystery, although it satisfies in that respect. Instead,
it's a gradual revelation of character, and of significant events from the women's personal histories. Their journeys are
engrossing to follow. Rose's story is brought forward in time from 1936, illustrating her inner strength, while Lizzie
navigates relationships with her sister, her Jewishness, and a surprising new lover. The clarity of detail in Umansky's
writing brings all her scenes to life. She sensitively addresses the complicated issue of survivor's guilt and leaves
readers with a sense of hope.--Sarah Johnson
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Johnson, Sarah. "The Fortunate Ones." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2017, p. 34. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479077942&it=r&asid=7911035cffd560f417c530c492998581.
Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479077942
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The Fortunate Ones
Publishers Weekly.
263.52 (Dec. 19, 2016): p94.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Fortunate Ones
Ellen Umansky. Morrow, $26.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-238248-1
When New York lawyer Lizzie Goldstein's father dies in a car accident, she arrives in Los Angeles to go through his
house--the house where, 20 years earlier, she hosted a party as a teenager and a priceless painting by Chaim Soutine,
The Bellhop, was stolen. Lizzie has been carrying the guilt around for decades, and at the funeral she meets the
original owner of the painting: Rose Downes. In 1939, Rose and her brother had been two of many Jewish children on
the kindertransports during World War II who were evacuated from Vienna to England, leaving behind their parents,
their home, and in Rose's case, Soutine's bellhop. The story unfolds in alternating chapters of Lizzie's slow recovery
from grief in L. A. and Rose's coming-of-age as a refugee in London. The two stories meet in 2008 when the women,
both settled in L.A., become friends, united by the missing painting. For both women, the painting comes to represent
what might have been and the complex past. Umansky's vivid telling of the scenes in Vienna and life in wartime
London are lovingly juxtaposed against the modern angst of Southern California. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Fortunate Ones." Publishers Weekly, 19 Dec. 2016, p. 94. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA475324263&it=r&asid=f0f68391ab40c2d7abdc531e9695ec6c.
Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A475324263
http://ellenumansky.com/about/
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Ellen Umansky. Photo by Sam Zalutsky
Ellen Umansky weds story of Nazi looted art with modern L.A.
BY REBECCA SPENCE | PUBLISHED APR 5, 2017 | BOOKS
There’s a stark, modern house that hangs off a cliff in Mandeville Canyon. Growing up, novelist and Los Angeles native Ellen Umansky drove by it nearly every day on her way to school. “I knew that’s where they would live,” she said, referring to the Goldsteins, the fictional Jewish family at the center of her debut novel, “The Fortunate Ones.”
Set in Vienna, London and Los Angeles, “The Fortunate Ones” tells the story of Lizzie Goldstein, a privileged Jewish lawyer who went to high school at “Avenues” (read: Crossroads), and Rose Zimmer, a Holocaust refugee who escapes Vienna via the Kindertransport to London and eventually settles in L.A.
What binds these two women’s fates is a Chaim Soutine painting — first stolen by the Nazis from Rose’s childhood home, and later taken from Lizzie’s father’s posh house in Mandeville Canyon. The painting disappeared when Lizzie threw a party while her doctor father was out of town, and its unsolved theft has haunted her since high school.
Umansky, 47, found inspiration for the book in a real-life story from her West L.A. childhood. Her brother’s ophthalmologist was a wealthy fine art collector, and one day, both a Picasso and a Monet painting were stolen from his home. Seven years later, the works turned up in a storage locker at the Cleveland airport; the doctor, it turned out, had coordinated the heist.
Umansky was fascinated by the tale, and what stood out in her mind was the fact that the doctor had failed to destroy the evidence. “I was really compelled by the idea that if you’re going to go ahead and do something like this, you would destroy the paintings ” said Umansky, who now lives in New York City. “That’s what ensnared him.”
Meanwhile, looted Holocaust art was a hot-button issue in the late 1990s when Umansky was features editor at the Forward newspaper, where I was a cub reporter and, briefly, her colleague. Fresh out of Columbia University’s MFA program in creative writing, Umansky took note of the many tales filtering to the surface, as family members stepped forward to claim their lost treasures from private collections and museums around the country.
Several years later, when Umansky set out to write a novel, the story of the crooked ophthalmologist’s insurance fraud, and tales of families whose prized works had been pilfered by the Nazis, intertwined in her imagination.
onesThe book that became “The Fortunate Ones” took 15 years to write and went through multiple drafts (and agents), before it was finally published in February by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins. But from the beginning, Umansky said she sought to portray Los Angeles as something more than just a backdrop. “I don’t live there anymore, but L.A. is still this incredibly vibrant, important, exasperating city, which has a real history,” she said. “And I wanted that to come to the fore.”
Rich with descriptions of greater Los Angeles, from Venice Beach, where Lizzie’s beau lives along the canals, to Grand Central Market, which Umansky visited as a kid, “The Fortunate Ones” reads like a paean to L.A. “My love for Los Angeles, and the fact that I miss it, rises to the surface in my portrayal,” Umansky said.
In recent years, as her mother was battling cancer, Umansky traveled back-and-forth from Park Slope, Brooklyn, to Brentwood, where her mother still lived in Mandeville Canyon. It was a period of intense writing, Umansky said, and precious time spent with her late mother. “It felt less fraught than poignant,” she said. “The time I spent there mattered.”
In fact, writing about L.A. while living in Brooklyn with her two daughters, now 8 and 11, and her psychiatrist husband, gave Umansky some comfort. “It was fun for me to conjure up, while I was sitting in New York, what the canyon was like, or what that fire that I wrote about was like,” she said, referring to an actual fire that swept through Mandeville Canyon and is recounted in “The Fortunate Ones.”
Other parts of the novel are set in wartime Vienna and postwar London, where Rose lands after her parents put her on a Kindertransport train. Umansky said she was nervous about writing the historical chapters, so she did a lot of research to make sure she had the details right.
At a certain point, she knew she’d be writing about L.A. in the 1950s and ’60s — when a Chaim Soutine retrospective was held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art — and initially, that scared her, too. “I thought it would be hard,” Umansky said, “but it wasn’t. It was still my L.A., and I could still imagine that.”
Children’s books offer new ways to enjoy the holiday
BY LISA SILVERMAN | PUBLISHED MAR 29, 2017 | PASSOVER
New Passover books for children include a variety of themes that previously have not been explored. There’s a picture book about a Jewish Argentine gaucho, a visit to Moses in a 3-D time machine, and an examination of what it would be like to hold a seder when a grandparent is ill.
Consider these as Passover gifts for some of the youngest participants at your seder this year:
“The Passover Cowboy” by Barbara Diamond Goldin. Illustrated by Gina Capaldi. Apples & Honey Press, 2017.
This Passover-themed story takes place in the early years of the 20th century in Argentina, where (we learn from the author’s note) 25,000 Russian Jews settled with the help of German-Jewish philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch. Young Jacob is learning how to ride horses like his new friend Benito, and even though Jacob has been in the country for less than a year, he is doing his best to become a typical Argentine gaucho. His mother even offers him a special Passover gift of bombachas — loose, wide pants for riding horses. When Benito arrives as a guest at the family’s seder, he brings Jacob another coveted gift — a lasso to signify that Jacob has been accepted in his new country. The watercolor illustrations are heavily researched and depict the period and the holiday celebration beautifully.
“Passover Scavenger Hunt” by Shanna Silva. Illustrated by Miki Sakamoto. Kar-Ben Publishing, 2017.
book-passover-scav-huntGreat Uncle Harry is terrible at hiding the afikomen. All the kids anticipate his usual hiding places, and so the search isn’t very fun. But young Rachel hatches a clever plan and offers him the option to let her hide the matzo this year. She then creates a family scavenger hunt containing a variety of rhyming clues. With each solved riddle, the other children get a part of a puzzle that, when pieced together, contains the biggest clue about where the afikomen is hidden. Information regarding the symbols on the seder plate is included within the clues, and even Uncle Harry is in on the merriment by the end. A fun game that could become a future family tradition.
“How It’s Made: Matzah” by Allison Ofanansky. Photographs by Eliyahu Alpern. Apples & Honey, 2017.
book-matzahLast year, we learned from this same author-photographer team how a Torah is made. Now, kids get to meet the people who make matzo (heralded as “the ultimate fast food”), either by hand or by machine, but always within 18 minutes. One of the matzah-makers states, “Making matzah teaches us to work together. It is not possible to make matzah alone.” These books are special because of their innovative graphic design, various Passover do-it-yourself projects and depictions of diversity throughout more than 100 engaging photos. Plus, there is a recipe for homemade matzo and, of course, a recommendation to “Watch the clock!”
“The Family (and Frog!) Haggadah” by Rabbi Ron Isaacs and Karen Rostoker-Gruber. Illustrations by Jackie Urbanovic. Behrman House, 2017.
book-frog-haggadahIf your haggadah is too dull for the kids at your seder table, consider this charming new offering that features the talkative Frog commenting on the traditional text. Large, engaging photos — often paired with interesting family discussion-starters — ensure that this year will be more fun for everyone. Frog is depicted as hopping from page to page as he spreads his froggie puns and wisecracks. Examples include finding a “piece of toadst” while searching for chametz, and penciling in (with green crayon, of course) a suggestion to include a “Frog’s cup” along with Elijah’s. But the strengths of this family-friendly haggadah are in the flow of its storytelling, its compelling content and design, and the inclusion of Hebrew transliterations. The content is mostly English, but main passages such as blessings, the Four Questions, the Ten Plagues and parts of songs are included in Hebrew.
“Meeting Moses” by Robert Chasin. Illustrated by Matt Roussel. Meeting Bible Heroes Publishing, 2017.
book-meeting-mosesThe Exodus story meets H.G. Wells in this tale of Max and his professor dad, who has invented a time-traveling machine. The standout 3-D illustrations will highly engage children. They remind the reader of a mix of Claymation and a video game, and seem to be partially painted and partially computer-generated. The story follows Max, who has inadvertently taken the time machine to ancient Egypt. By the Nile River, he meets young Moses and young Ramses with Pharaoh’s daughter and is taken to meet Pharaoh. Max is imprisoned, but then freed by Moses. The two travel through time together to Mount Sinai so Max can show Moses what his future will be. Exciting illustrations depict the burning bush, how the stone tablets could have been written, the golden calf, and Moses breaking the tablets. Max eventually gets back home to the present day by tricking Pharaoh and using the convenient “rewind” button to delete the experience from the memories of those he left behind. (It should be noted that the author used the term “Old Testament” to refer to the Hebrew Bible.) The book is available inexpensively in e-book format from the author’s website as well as in a hardcover version.
“A Different Kind of Passover” by Linda Leopold-Strauss. Illustrated by Jeremy Tugeau. Kar-Ben Publishing, 2017.
book-different-passA young girl practices the Four Questions in Hebrew and travels, as usual, to her grandparents’ house for the seder with her extended family. She loves the repetition of the yearly rituals, but this year her “heart hurts” because Grandpa was in the hospital recently and cannot leave his bed to lead the seder. She cleverly solves the problem of how Grandpa still can be included with the rest of the family and learns that when things change, they also can remain the same in many ways. The well-written and poignant tale provides us with a young person’s view of the meaning of joyful Passover family traditions.
© Copyright 2017 Tribe Media Corp
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The Fortunate Ones by Ellen Umansky: a “Kosher Movies” book review MAY 10, 2017, 11:09 AM
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BLOGGERHerbert J. Cohen
Herbert J. Cohen
Originally from Mt. Vernon, New York, Herbert J. Cohen served in the pulpit rabbinate in Atlanta at the beginning of … [More]
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When I served in the rabbinate in Atlanta, I knew a number of people who had been on kindertransports, trainloads of children who were sent to other countries by their parents who remained in Germany and other places under Nazi control. Intellectually, I understood the trauma of parents and children separating, not knowing if they would ever see one another again; but my emotional understanding of those events increased when I read some of the heartbreaking scenes in Ellen Umansky’s debut novel The Fortunate Ones, which describes in powerful human terms the pain of separation leading to an unknown future.
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There are two parallel stories in The Fortunate Ones. One concerns a 37-year-old New York attorney, Lizzie Goldstein, whose father has recently died in a car accident. This precipitates her traveling to Los Angeles for his funeral. In Los Angeles, she meets Rose Downes, the central figure in the second narrative in the novel. Rose is the original owner of a painting that was stolen from Lizzie’s home as a teenager during a party she hosted. Her father Joseph, a wealthy eye surgeon, had purchased the painting many years before from a New York gallery. Lizzie and Rose meet at Joseph’s memorial service.
The painting is The Bellhop, an extremely valuable art piece done by Chaim Soutine. Lizzie still feels guilty that it was during her teenage party when many strangers were in her home that the painting was stolen. Rose is interested in the painting because it brings back memories of her family’s home in Vienna before she was separated from her parents.
The novel travels back in time to 1936 in Vienna to describe the beginning of Rose’s childhood journey to England where she was sent with her brother Gerhard as members of a kindertransport. As Rose slowly comes to terms with her refugee status and the challenges of adjusting to a new country, we witness Lizzie’s contemporary story in 2008 in which Lizzie is dealing with the grief occasioned by her father’s sudden death.
Umansky describes life before the war in Vienna, life during the war in England, and life in America many years later. Slowly Rose’s residual guilt for having survived while her parents died during the Holocaust dissipates. Lizzie, on her own quest to understand the past, gradually discovers information about her father that compels her to reevaluate her relationship with him. Rose and Lizzie share stories and connect emotionally creating a bond that transcends the generations.
The insights at which they both arrive are similar. They recognize they have little control over outcomes; they can only do the best they can within their respective contextual realities. This, indeed, is the definition of fortunate in the title. We are indeed fortunate if we can come to terms with consequences even when they are painful and unclear. As the Sages in the Talmud say, the truly rich man is the one who is satisfied with what he has, not the one who always desires more and never can come to terms with the reality facing him. It is a truism that we cannot control results. This piece of wisdom is at the core of The Fortunate Ones, a Holocaust novel in one sense, but a book with practical life lessons as well.
A personal note. I usually write film reviews, but I wanted to write about The Fortunate Ones because it resonated with cinematic possibilities with its diverse time periods, varied locations, and richly imagined characters and themes. I thought of Steven Spielberg as the director, Richard Gere in the role of Joseph Goldstein, Scarlett Johansson in the role of Lizzie, and Meryl Streep in the role of Rose. Perhaps we will all be fortunate when The Fortunate Ones hits the silver screen.
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