Jerusalem Report contributor Halevy's engrossing account of his tenure among the late Rabbi Meir Kahane's radical right-wing demimonde and his eventual reemergence into respectability. On the surface, this is similar to many experiences of growing up in the 1960s: A young idealist seeks out ever more extreme ways to attract attention to his causes. But Halevy was no Weatherman or Black Panther. He was a member of the Jewish Defense League, subversive defenders of the Jewish people against anti-Semitism. Halevy's story highlights an unusual convergence of historical moments: post-Holocaust America meets the counterculture. He describes with fascinating insight his childhood in Brooklyn's Borough Park, an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, as the son of a Holocaust survivor who had lived in a hole in the woods as the rest of his town was sent to the death camps. Halevy's father trained his son to be a survivor as well- -by not conforming, not becoming comfortable among the goyim (non-Jews), by supporting Israel. The young Halevy internalized these lessons. He joined a militant Zionist youth group while still in grade school and began working to free Soviet Jewry when he was 12. He was soon drawn to Kahane's JDL, which was making headlines with its violent guerrilla tactics. A somewhat reluctant follower of the charismatic but insane Kahane, Halevy never participated in terrorist acts; his moment of glory was masterminding a plan to get himself and other Americans arrested in Russia, to bring media attention to the plight of Soviet Jews. When the cause was adopted by the Jewish establishment, Halevy finally liberated himself from both the JDL and his Manichean worldview, getting beyond the Holocaust and on with his life. A profound look at the child of a Holocaust survivor burdened with the knowledge that his very existence is a miracle and the need to prove that the miracle wasn't squandered on him.
Pub Date: Nov. 6, 1995
ISBN: 0-316-49860-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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