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This Year in Jerusalem
"In 1944, I was aware of three youth groups committed to the compelling idea of an independent Jewish state: Hashomer Hatza'ir (The Young Guard), Young Judaea, and Habonim (The Builders).
Hashomer Hatza'ir was resolutely Marxist. According to intriguing reports I had heard, it was the custom, on their kibbutzim already established in Palestine, for boys and girls under the age of eighteen to shower together. Hashomer Hatza'ir members in Montreal included a boy I shall call Shloime Schneiderman, a high-school classmate of mine. In 1944, when we were still in eighth grade, Schloime enjoyed a brief celebrity after his photo appeared on the front page of the Montreal Herald. Following a two-cent rise in the price of chocolate bars, he had been a leader in a demonstration, holding high a placard that read: down with the 7cents chocolate bar. Hashomer Hatza'ir members wore uniforms at their meetings: blue shirts and neckerchiefs. "They had real court martials," wrote Marion Magid in a memoir about her days in Habonim in the Bronx in the early fifties, "group analysis, the girls were not allowed to wear lipstick." Whereas, in my experience, the sweetly scented girls who belonged to Young Judaea favored pearls and cashmere twinsets. They lived on leafy streets in the suburb of Outremont, in detached cottages that had heated towel racks, basement playrooms, and a plaque hanging on the wall behind the wet bar testifying to the number of trees their parents had paid to have planted in Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel.
I joined Habonim -- the youth group of a Zionist political party, rooted in socialist doctrine -- shortly after my bar mitzvah, during my first year at Baron Byng High School. I had been recruited by a Room 41 classmate whom I shall call Jerry Greenfeld..."
Hashomer Hatza'ir was resolutely Marxist. According to intriguing reports I had heard, it was the custom, on their kibbutzim already established in Palestine, for boys and girls under the age of eighteen to shower together. Hashomer Hatza'ir members in Montreal included a boy I shall call Shloime Schneiderman, a high-school classmate of mine. In 1944, when we were still in eighth grade, Schloime enjoyed a brief celebrity after his photo appeared on the front page of the Montreal Herald. Following a two-cent rise in the price of chocolate bars, he had been a leader in a demonstration, holding high a placard that read: down with the 7cents chocolate bar. Hashomer Hatza'ir members wore uniforms at their meetings: blue shirts and neckerchiefs. "They had real court martials," wrote Marion Magid in a memoir about her days in Habonim in the Bronx in the early fifties, "group analysis, the girls were not allowed to wear lipstick." Whereas, in my experience, the sweetly scented girls who belonged to Young Judaea favored pearls and cashmere twinsets. They lived on leafy streets in the suburb of Outremont, in detached cottages that had heated towel racks, basement playrooms, and a plaque hanging on the wall behind the wet bar testifying to the number of trees their parents had paid to have planted in Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel.
I joined Habonim -- the youth group of a Zionist political party, rooted in socialist doctrine -- shortly after my bar mitzvah, during my first year at Baron Byng High School. I had been recruited by a Room 41 classmate whom I shall call Jerry Greenfeld..."
296 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1994
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About the author
Mordecai Richler
87 books370 followersWorking-class Jewish background based novels, which include
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
(1959) and
Saint Urbain's Horseman
(1971), of Canadian writer Mordecai Richler.
People best know Barney's Version (1997) among works of this author, screenwriter, and essayist; people shortlisted his novel Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) for the Man Booker Prize in 1990. He was also well known for the Jacob Two-two stories of children.
A scrap yard dealer reared this son on street in the mile end area of Montréal. He learned Yiddish and English and graduated from Baron Byng High School. Richler enrolled in Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) to study English but dropped before completing his degree.
Years later, Leah Rosenberg, mother of Richler, published an autobiography, The Errand Runner: Memoirs of a Rabbi's Daughter (1981), which discusses birth and upbringing of Mordecai and the sometime difficult relationship.
Richler, intent on following in the footsteps of many of a previous "lost generation" of literary exiles of the 1920s from the United States, moved to Paris at age of 19 years in 1950.
Richler returned to Montréal in 1952, worked briefly at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and then moved to London in 1954. He, living in London meanwhile, published seven of his ten novels as well as considerable journalism.
Worrying "about being so long away from the roots of my discontent", Richler returned to Montréal in 1972. He wrote repeatedly about the Jewish community of Montréal and especially portraying his former neighborhood in multiple novels.
In England in 1954, Richler married Catherine Boudreau, a French-Canadian divorcée nine years his senior. On the eve of their wedding, he met Florence Wood Mann, a young married woman, who smited him.
Some years later, Richler and Mann divorced and married each other. He adopted Daniel Mann, her son. The couple had five children together: Daniel, Jacob, Noah, Martha and Emma. These events inspired his novel Barney's Version.
Richler died of cancer.
People best know Barney's Version (1997) among works of this author, screenwriter, and essayist; people shortlisted his novel Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) for the Man Booker Prize in 1990. He was also well known for the Jacob Two-two stories of children.
A scrap yard dealer reared this son on street in the mile end area of Montréal. He learned Yiddish and English and graduated from Baron Byng High School. Richler enrolled in Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) to study English but dropped before completing his degree.
Years later, Leah Rosenberg, mother of Richler, published an autobiography, The Errand Runner: Memoirs of a Rabbi's Daughter (1981), which discusses birth and upbringing of Mordecai and the sometime difficult relationship.
Richler, intent on following in the footsteps of many of a previous "lost generation" of literary exiles of the 1920s from the United States, moved to Paris at age of 19 years in 1950.
Richler returned to Montréal in 1952, worked briefly at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and then moved to London in 1954. He, living in London meanwhile, published seven of his ten novels as well as considerable journalism.
Worrying "about being so long away from the roots of my discontent", Richler returned to Montréal in 1972. He wrote repeatedly about the Jewish community of Montréal and especially portraying his former neighborhood in multiple novels.
In England in 1954, Richler married Catherine Boudreau, a French-Canadian divorcée nine years his senior. On the eve of their wedding, he met Florence Wood Mann, a young married woman, who smited him.
Some years later, Richler and Mann divorced and married each other. He adopted Daniel Mann, her son. The couple had five children together: Daniel, Jacob, Noah, Martha and Emma. These events inspired his novel Barney's Version.
Richler died of cancer.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 13, 2013
A personal, sometimes funny memoir about growing up Jewish and his journey away from Zionism. He shares the excitement of the early Canadian Zionist Youth Movement in Montreal, and the dream he and his friends had of emigrating to Israel to live in the new homeland. Now visiting the country as a grown man, he searches out his boyhood pals, and sees what has happened to those who settled there. He describes the opportunities and dangers of peace with the Palestinians and provides an honest examination of the complexities in the idea of Israel as the legitimate homeland for both Palestinians and Jews.
May 14, 2020
A first person account of the author's visits to Jerusalem. First, in 1962 and then later in the early 90's. Some of this has, no doubt, become dated, but I suspect that much of the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews is timeless. As a self described non-participant, I will not even attempt to offer a critique of the ongoing cultural and religious battle. All I will say is that it gave me a lot to think about and that it is a worthwhile, thoughtful read by one of Canada's leading writers - now deceased.
A blurb on the back cover describes the book as follows...... "The best collection of funny rounders and perverse delinquents since Guys and Dolls hit the Great White Way.....". Whatever this book is, it is not that. For the most part, the tone is deadly serious (as it should be).
A blurb on the back cover describes the book as follows...... "The best collection of funny rounders and perverse delinquents since Guys and Dolls hit the Great White Way.....". Whatever this book is, it is not that. For the most part, the tone is deadly serious (as it should be).
July 31, 2024
Doesn’t interest me , dated
September 5, 2023
I am never disappointed by Richler's books. He is never dull, and at times he is brilliant. The brilliance shines through here and there in this meandering memoir, which chronicles (not in a chronological sequence however, I hasten to add) his childhood and youth growing up Jewish in Montreal, his membership in an organization whose members pledged to relocate to Israel when adults, his ongoing relationship with those who did and did not fulfill said pledge, and his two visits to Israel in 1962 and again some thirty years later. He provides an interesting take on the various fissures that divide Israeli Jews from non-Israeli Jews, Jews of both sets from Palestinians, plus various fissures that divide these groups within themselves. In the end he comes across as deeply conflicted and ambivalent about the Zionist project, admiring of the tenacity and inventiveness of the Israelis, but also deeply disturbed by the dismissal of the legitimate grievances of the Palestinians and the seeming intractability of the various demands to have sovereignty over Jerusalem especially. In the end he advocates a two-state solution, but the book leaves one far from optimistic about the parties involved ever agreeing upon boundaries and ground rules for such a solution.
May 18, 2023
Memories of growing up Jewish in Montreal in the 1940s, and visiting Israel in 1992 to visit old friends who had emigrated to Israel as they had resolved to do as members of Jewish youth groups, and to see how the country had developed. In this way, and in his inimitable style, Richler provides what feel to be honest and accurate views of an eternal dispute over possession of an ancient land, which continues thirty-one years on.
“Instead of drunken Cossacks wielding swords it was IDF delinquents with dum-dum bullets. Even as I luxuriated in guilt, I had to acknowledge a deeper feeling, one that I hadn't plucked out of my liberal convenience store. I was grateful that, for once in our history, we were the ones with the guns and they were the ones with the stones. But, taking it a step further, I also found myself hoping that if Jerry, Hershey, Myer, and I had been born and bred in the squalor of Dheisheh rather than the warmth of St. Urbain, we would have had the courage to be among the stone-throwers.”
“Instead of drunken Cossacks wielding swords it was IDF delinquents with dum-dum bullets. Even as I luxuriated in guilt, I had to acknowledge a deeper feeling, one that I hadn't plucked out of my liberal convenience store. I was grateful that, for once in our history, we were the ones with the guns and they were the ones with the stones. But, taking it a step further, I also found myself hoping that if Jerry, Hershey, Myer, and I had been born and bred in the squalor of Dheisheh rather than the warmth of St. Urbain, we would have had the courage to be among the stone-throwers.”
January 7, 2021
I've been meaning to read this book for years and finally got around to it. It seems dated because it is written about Richler's early life in Montreal and then his visit to Jerusalem in the early 90s. He had all intentions of going to Israel as a young man, along with several friends. A few of them go and he visits them 40 years later. Many are truly committed to the idea of Israel. We know that Mordecai doesn't regret his decision not to go. He believes in a homeland for the Palestinians. So do some of his friends who did emigrate to Israel. A classic by a famous Canadian writer.
November 6, 2017
Extremely readable, compact, pacy, zingy prose especially when spinning a story. Some wonderful turns of phrase and a real eye for character.
December 27, 2019
Interesting perspective, educational, and written in a full circle story like way. Would recommend!
Want to read
March 4, 2020May 12, 2020
Interesting history of the early years of the kibbutz life and the reasons why Canadian Jews of that era either went to Israel or chose not to go to Israel.
August 29, 2023
Witty and well balanced look into the conflict.
January 21, 2010
Right now, it's a 'bedside' book - as always, Richler entertains with his humour - I like the way he can talk about 'Things Jewish', seeing both sides of the board.
He, in fact, actually points out incidents where it was the Jewish who were being 'the terrorists'.
He, of course, is a Jew himself, who lives in Montreal.
Currently? Not sure . . . I intend to order the movie in after I'm through with it.
.................
January 20th, 2k10 - we finished this book. Really enjoyed it.
He, in fact, actually points out incidents where it was the Jewish who were being 'the terrorists'.
He, of course, is a Jew himself, who lives in Montreal.
Currently? Not sure . . . I intend to order the movie in after I'm through with it.
.................
January 20th, 2k10 - we finished this book. Really enjoyed it.
June 19, 2013
superbo mordecai richler anche in versione saggista- che parte dalla sua storia personale (dall'infanzia nel ghetto di montreal fino ai suoi viaggi in israele) per finire a raccontare, in modo chiaro e caustico, questo paese così controverso che sembra non conoscere la pace. appassiona come un romanzo,fa pensare, tanto e venir voglia di approfondire, approfondire sempre.
May 16, 2014
Meandering between past and present, and giving voice to both sides of the debate, Richler discusses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Interesting but not spell-binding.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews