Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 29 January 2003 — Page 23

Book Reviews

January 29. 2003 NAT 15

Gatherings from two worlds

By R. ISRAEL ZOBERMAN A Double Thread (Groiuing Up English and Jewish in London). By John Gross. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002. 190 pages. $23.50. Oxford educated author John Gross, London's Sunday Telegraph theater critic, takes us on a tour-de-force down nostalgic memory lane, opening enchanting windows into both his English and Jewish roots. He proves in the process that one can faithfully, but with inevitable compromises, live in two distinct worlds and be enriched by their mutual encounter. Gross masterfully reaches into a unique past of his immigrant East European family,

By MORTON I. TEICHER Benjamin V. Cohen. By William Lasser. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. 384 pages. $35. Biography is a literary form that has evolved from simply telling the life story of a particular individual to placing that life story in the context of the social and political institutions that affected the subject's personality and character. William Lasser has succeeded in presenting the life of Benjamin V. Cohen against the backdrop of the New Deal, Zionism, World War II, and the United Nations in each of which he played a role. As important as Cohen was in influencing and shaping public policy, he was essentially a private man who is little known today. Lasser has placed us in his debt by reviving Cohen's reputation. He has also provided an interesting view of American political history from World War I, when Cohen first came to Washington, until 1983, when he died there just before reaching his 89th birthday. During the early days of the New Deal, Cohen was one of Felix Frankfurter's "boys," the "happy hot dogs" who were strategically placed in the first administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Most of them, including Cohen, had been Frankfurter’s students at Harvard Law School. Thomas G. Corcoran was also a member of this group,

steeped in Yiddish culture and traditional Judaism. They first settled in London's East End of the 1920s in search of a safer and better life while maintaining their religio-ethnic identity, proudly transmitting it to their son, John, along with an abiding attachment to the English legacy. The dominant drive was to eventually depart from East End to the suburbs which, excelling in the clothing industry, the major business, made possible. Life was not without poverty for some and physical reminders of the World War II German bombing. "But there was also abundant energy and a constant appetite for amusement and entertainment." Gross claims

and he quickly formed what became a life-long friendship with Cohen. Their work on New Deal legislation led Sam Rayburn, the powerful Speaker of the House of Representatives, to say that Corcoran and Cohen "taken together, made the brightest man I ever saw." Recommended by Frankfurter, Cohen served for a year as law clerk to Judge Julian W. Mack, who was a leader in the American Jewish community. As president of the Zionist Organization of America, Mack attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to push for the creation of a Jewish state. He took Cohen with him, and this brought Cohen into contact with Justice Louis Brandeis, the leading American Zionist of his time. Cohen spent two years in Paris and London working on the development of the British mandate in Palestine. He continued to be active in Zionist affairs for the rest of his life, and he had a behind-the-scenes role in the important decision made by Harry Truman to recognize the State of Israel. In addition to serving as "a leading intellectual of the New Deal" and as a key member of Roosevelt's "brain trust," Cohen figured out how to overcome the legal obstacles that blocked sending destroyers to Great Britain. His ingenuity freed these ships so that they could help

that the degree of crime there is now being inflated and rather emphasizes the intimate nature of a close-knit community. Sporting events were most popular, recalling the famous boxing promoter. Jack Solomons, and the Jewish boxer A1 Phillips. The humor-sprinkled reminiscences of admirable recall and probable research of a well-designed tapestry of names, events, books, and movies attest to the author's cultural genius. There were misled immigrants who arrived in London thinking that they reached New York, their preferred destination. They sought to acculturate and even assimilate to the

to sustain Great Britain during the darkest days of World War II. He was also involved in writing the Lend-Lease Act of 1941, a creative way of aiding Great Britain before the United States entered the war. As the war drew to a close, Cohen worked on the United Nations Charter, and during the Truman presidency he was a delegate, an alternate, and a senior advisor to the American UN delegation. Lasser carefully records Cohen's many political activities, having done extensive research under the handicap of minimal written documentation. Cohen "kept no diary, saved few letters, and gave interviews with great reluctance." Perhaps this thin data base accounts for the sparse information in the book about Cohen's personal life. In any case, as a political scientist, Lasser was far more interested in depicting Cohen's contributions to American government and, in this regard, he has presented a well-constructed picture of a relatively anonymous public servant, a prototypical liberal who was a model for presidential assistants and who richly deserves more recognition. Dr. Morion I. Teicher is the founding dean of the Wurziveiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University, and Dean Emeritus, School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

new culture. One tailor, Abe, borrowed his shop's street name, Wentworth, for his last name. Particularly touching is Gross's close relationship with his father, a hard-work-ing and kind-hearted physician whom, as a child, he often accompanied to visit patients, with some staying in poor housing. He even got a piece of advice from his astute father: "If you want to be a writer, you ought to see how people live." Of course, patients would also come to their home all hours of the day and night. Dr. Gross was appreciated by his Jewish and Gentile patients alike and had good relations with his Christian colleagues. Unfortunately, there was opposition in the 1930s by the British medical associations to admit Jewish refugee physicians. In the fall of 1939, with war's outbreak, the family found temporary refuge on a farm in Shropshire, where the hosting strangers were most hospitable. The author was touched by the Holocaust, particularly through the pain of his father, whose Polish hometown of Gorokhov was savagely destroyed, lending an understandable note to the family's early support for the State of Israel. The book is a lasting monument erected to a colorful and complex past which continues to shape the present. Rabbi Zobenuan is the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Chaverim in Virginia Beach.

Ages Continued from page 77 that had already been there but that those who came from Egypt succeeded in having their Exodus tradition become the dominant redemption motif in ancient Israel and in the Hebrew Bible. Gottwald's arguments on behalf of this thesis are not persuasive. Much more persuasive are his many cogent and illuminating comments on the Hebrew Prophets — where the literary template seems to be far more appropriate in emphasizing the beauty, drama, and resonance of the prophetic voices.

Cohen shaped U.S., world policy

Kaplan

Continued from page 77 isted. There is also perpetual talk of weddings - "night after night Mama's tongue sewed white gowns for her daughters and tailored a black suit for Maurice." Like the earlier novel, the book is filled with superstitions and life crises written in detail by a talented woman. Ms. Rabinyan really knows how to weave ideas that are strange to the Western reader into an intriguing tale. Sybil Kaplan is a book reviewer, journalist, lecturer, synagogue librarian, and cooking columnist/cookbook author from Overland Park, Kansas.

Silver Continued from prev. page ber. So, for example, the Hebrew word for "one," "echad," reflects the number 13. So does "ahavah," the Hebrew word for love, which reflects the number three. Love and oneness "spell" God and, sure enough, the letters in Y-H-V-H add up to 16. There are 10 sephirot and there are Ten Commandments and there are 10 times in the creation story when the deity says, "Let there be..." Coincidence? It is hard to tell whether the author of this book and his fellow Kabbalists accept literally some of the episodes in Scripture. Do they believe, as do Christians, in original sin? That concept has it that all mankind has had to suffer the consequences of the disobedience of Adam and Eve. Did Sinai really happen? The hassidic movement was once opposed by mitnagdim (adversaries) who objected to the stress on the esoteric and the choreography of hassidism. Rationalists believe that the agenda of Judaism should stress behavior not supernaturalism. Readers of this book can make their own decisions. Skeptics might scoff and say that the mystics are really escapists or that some of their activities are more voodoo than things to do. But if the movement makes them more sensitive, more caring, more prone to do mitzvot, then let us acknowledge its worthiness.