Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 5 March 2003 — Page 20

NAT 12 March 5. 2003 Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Get cooking!

By SYBIL KAPLAN The Hcuinssah Jcivish Holiday Cookbook. Edited by Joan Schwartz Michel. Hugh Lauter Levin. 264 pages. $29.95. Kosher cookbooks have come a long way over the years, and I can say this with certainty because I have many of the early editions in my collection. Some say the best ones were those produced by organizations and synagogues because they were the tried and true recipes of the members. Now Hugh Lauter Levin, a publisher noted for its art books and other big, bold, and beautiful coffee table books, has published this collection of

recipes of members of 91-year-old Hadassah, the largest and oldest Women's Zionist Organization in America. Six fascinating introductions to sections are written by noted cookbook authors. Rabbi Robert Sternberg (author of Yiddish Cuisine and The Sephardic Kitchen) writes about Shabbat. Claudia Roden (author of A Book of Middle Eastern Food, The Book of lewish Food, and four others) presents the fall holidays - Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot. Steven Raichlen (author of Healthy Jewish Cooking as well as several other cookbooks) introduces Hanukkah. Edda

Servie Machlin (author of two volumes of The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews) covers Passover. Susan R. Friedland (author of Shabbat Shalom and The Passover Table) introduces Purim and Shavuot. Joan Nathan (author of Jewish Cooking in America, The Foods of Israel Today, and a number of other cookbooks) writes about Simchas (which should have been written with its correct Hebrew plural, Simchot). In addition, there are essays scattered throughout the book, wonderful tips, and more than 250 recipes submitted by Hadassah women across the Continued on next page

Jewish Theater Yef another play on Jewish/Arab bonding

By IRENE BACKALENICK How much we all long for Jews and Arabs to find a modus vivendb. So much so that contemporary playwrights can't seem to leave the subject alone. The

Arab/Jewish connection — or disconnection, if you will — spelled out on a personal level — has become a much-favored topic. Two characters (one from each group) are thrown together. Initially hostile to each other, they ultimately become soul mates. Fantasy, perhaps, but understandable fantasy. The writers' longings for peace and reconciliation in the Middle East are feelings we all share. Thus it is no surprise that a new play "Sixteen Wounded" takes on the subject once again, albeit with certain twists in the predictable plot. Eliam Kraiem's drama has just opened at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn., with the estimable Martin Landau in the lead. The show runs until mid-March. This is a fine, handsomely

mounted production under Matt August's able direction, with a number of excellent performances. The actors, in fact, are better than the material they are given. The story of "Sixteen Wounded" deals with Mahmoud, a young Palestinian who has blown up a crowded Israeli bus. Now hiding out in Amsterdam, he is befriended by the elderly baker Hans (a Jewish Holocaust survivor) who hires him — and in fact takes him on as a surrogate son. It is Mahmoud's struggle between past and present that provides the play's conflict. The play opens to a strong hand, as characters meet and bond, but peters out in the second half, repetitively going over the issues. In fact, the play seems to close several times, like a series of burps, before playwright Kraiem chooses to finally call a halt. More importantly, the play is not even-handed in its treatment of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. One suspects that the playwright (who as a Jew does not want to appear biased toward the Israelis) bends over backward to be fair to the Palestinians. Mahmoud comes off most sympathetically (particularly as portrayed by the excellent Omar Metwally). One is made to understand how the facts of his life have shaped his emotions and actions, almost — but not quite — justifying his ter-

rorism. The Israelis, on the other hand, have no such sympathetic representation. Nor do the Jews in general. Even the Holocaust gets the most glancing of references, though Hans himself is an Auschwitz survivor. Landau, however, creates a believable and admirable human being. With no attempts to over-sen timentalize or overdramatize the old baker, his low-key approach to the role is just right. It is deeds, not a display of words or emotions, that spells out Hans's character — and Landau gets it just right. Added to the mix are the engaging performances of Metwally and Mia Barron (who provides the love interest). The chemistry between these two gives a much-needed jolt of vitality to the show. And the stage set, too, enriches the production. Designer Nathan Heverin has created a wonderful bakery (with mounds of bread in the window), which comfortably allows the action to unfold. In short, "Sixteen Wounded," in a commendable production at Long Wharf, is a play that tackles a vital issue and spells it out in human terms. But the play calls for basic changes — or expansion, if you will. Those very human voices deserve to be heard, but they should encompass the human voices on both sides of the Jewish/Arab conflict.

Book explores the making of a terrorist

By ARNOLD AGES Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist. By Alston Chase. W.W. Norton. 432 pages. $26.95. This is a unique book. It is biographical-philo-sophical meditation on America's most elusive terrorist, Ted Kaczynski, and it is written by a former professor of philosophy with degrees from Oxford, Yale, and Princeton. Those credentials are important in understanding the depth of the analytical study which Alston Chase has executed in his attempt to tell the story of Harvard-educated Ted Kaczynski, the Berkeley math professor turned terrorist whose ingenious bombs killed and maimed a variety of unlucky victims for 16 years before his brother, David Kaczynski, identified him for the authorities in 1994. Because a judge refused to permit the Unabomber to defend himself in court and because he, Kaczynski, refused to allow a diminished mental state defense to be offered on his behalf, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to several life terms without the possibility of parole. According to Chase, that guilty plea deprived the court and the public from hearing the mountain of evidence against Kaczynski which the FBI and other agencies had accumulated in their pursuit of America's most brilliant terrorist. Therefore, author Chase has decided to expose what the public was denied, and the result is a thick book which contains extracts not only of the diaries which Kaczynski meticulously kept but the interviews, conversations, articles, and historical-philosophical research which Chase conducted to fill in the gaps left by the denial of public assizes. There is no doubt, had that evidence been presented in open court, that Kaczynski would have been found guilty and sentenced to die for his heinous crimes. The bulk of the inculpatory evidence was Kaczynski's transcribed thoughts (in code - the key for which was found in his Montana log cabin) about the appropriateness of the death or injury he perpetrated on those to whom he sent, via U.S. mail, bombs of various design. It is

very difficult to read the extracts in question, especially those sections in which he boasts cold-bloodedly of the pride of accomplishment. His court-appointed defenders would have cited these demonic phrases as evidence of Kaczynski's madness: others might interpret them simply as the lucid if perverse rationalizations of the terrorist mind. Kaczynski once wrote: "The concept of morality is simply one of the psychological tools by which society controls people's behavior." What is fascinating in this work of biographical reconstruction is Chase's ability to splice together two separate filaments - the detailed description of the engineering principles in Kaczynski's bomb-making exercises and the educational background and philosophical milieu which produced his anarchistterrorist mind. It is difficult to decide which part is the more horrifying. At least, the chronicling of Kaczynski's progressive mastery of the principles of explosive charges and detonation caps is fairly easy to follow. In assembling his "infernal engines," Kaczynski took consummate care to work from scratch so that the materials he used could not be traced to retail outlets. When he could not reproduce certain parts needed for his bombs, Kaczynski would visit junkyards and acquire his materiel surreptitiously. He left false clues and toyed with the police. He took on various disguises to discourage accurate identification even if someone saw him in the act of planting his bombs. Finally he traveled hundred of miles from his home to mail his elaborately wrapped boxes and their deadly contents. What transformed a precocious, mathematically gifted teenager into a serial murderer is the subject of the second theme in Chase's book. After a successful high school career in Chicago, Kaczynski entered Harvard University - at the tender age of 16. According to the author, Kaczynski's arrival at that august learning institution coincided with a "culture of despair" that was rampant on campus. Chase presents a rather lengthy dissertation on the way in which the Continued on next page