Book Review: The rollicking adventure of a young mystery-solving musician

By Rubin Friedman

The Clarinetist

By Herschel Katz

Self-published

284 pages

The Clarinetist is the first book by Herschel Katz, a former Montrealer who has lived in Jerusalem since 1984 where he is now retired after working as an urban planner for 29 years. His biographical notes also indicate he worked as a part time book reviewer several years ago and as a result of this experience, decided to try his hand at writing a story himself.

The novel he has written is a good first effort and seems to reflect some of his own interests. He is an amateur clarinetist and seems to have developed an interest in various aspects of the Holocaust. Against this background, Katz focuses on Danny Kahn, a 17-year-old Jewish teen from Montreal who is launched into an adventure in the winter of 1967, with all of these various elements playing a role.

Danny Kahn is the narrator of The Clarinetist and Katz does an excellent job of using the teen’s perspective. We are plunged into the story at a key moment when Danny his love interest. We soon discover that his father had died a number of years ago; that he lives with his mother and older brother; that he demonstrates mature judgment and behaviour and is often complimented for it; and finally, that he is a musician – a clarinetist – who has been given the chance to audition for a place in an international youth wind band to play in Israel over the summer, under the auspices of a Rubin Academy in Jerusalem.

Katz makes excellent use of Danny as the narrator, who does not give away what he already knows since the whole tale is told in the past tense.

As the tale unfolds we discover more and more about the teen narrator, his love of CSI, his fascination with detective stories and his keen ability to observe details in the appearance and behaviour of others. His mastery of music and his keen interest in the past, as well as his attention to detail are just what is required for him to figure out the mysteries he is presented with and to survive the threats to his life he meets along the way.

Except for two later chapters that do not further the main plots, the story gallops at a fast pace in the other 25, with new mysteries and dangers at almost every step. His girlfriend’s father is a lawyer for the mob who implies there was something not on the up and up about the way his father did business. He is given a tip that “the Mossad” will be present at his audition and their judgment will be part of the selection process. He is later given a mysterious key to deliver to a particular individual in Israel, by an attractive older woman. Just before he leaves he is asked by his aunt to be on the lookout for his first cousin, Charlotte.

He is accosted on the airplane by a beautiful stewardess and is given a note from someone claiming to know his father. He will soon discover that not everyone is who they claimed to be.

The 17-year-old teen has a kind of mutual attraction with a number young women, including the stewardess, who bestow kisses and hugs upon him, a few offering more, in addition to giving him clues to solving all the mysteries he is presented with. And although he resists their attractions, almost every one of them indicate that his girlfriend “is very lucky” and promises their availability for a relationship if the one with his girlfriend does not work out.

Some of them actively help him carry out everything he needs to do in order to solve the mysteries as well as save his first cousin, Charlotte, and his love interest, Naomi, from danger.

There are a number of coincidences in the novel which give Danny exactly what he needs at exactly the right time and of course some of these have already been set up by Danny having the very specific talents and interests he has previously demonstrated, including familiarity with Hebrew biblical texts.

In end, Katz has created a rollicking adventure of a stellar young man, irresistible to young women and mature beyond his years, who through mystery and danger, finally solves the mystery of his deceased father’s role in history and the issue central to his own adventure.

Contact Herschel Katz at katz1401@gmail.com for more information or to order a copy of The Clarinetist.

Book Review: A Canadian prime minister’s ‘peace’ mission to Nazi Germany

By Rubin Friedman

Four Days in Hitler’s Germany:

Mackenzie King’s Mission to Avert a

Second World War

By Robert Teigrob

University of Toronto Press

292 pages

Robert Teigrob, a professor of history at Ryerson University, has written Four Days in Hitler’s Germany: Mackenzie King’s Mission to Avert a Second World War, a book that gives a complete picture of Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King’s short visit to Nazi Germany in 1937, citing details from his diary, his own and others’ notes. For a general reader of this book with an interest in history, there is much food for thought, especially for those interested in understanding how attitudes toward Jews can influence the decisions of otherwise well- meaning and well-intentioned individuals in pursuit of “peace.” To rather sacrifice this small people, along with others, for “the greater good.”

The pursuit of peace is an essential aspect of how King saw his mission. He knew that if Germany and Britain went to war, there would be little possibility for English Canada to refuse a call for assistance, but that French Canada would be indifferent or antagonistic. This domestic issue was part of his pragmatic motivation to keep the war drums silent.

The mystic aspect of his motivation was his relation to the spirit world through his mother, through seances and through his ongoing dreams and visions, including his obsession with interpreting everything he saw or experienced as a clue reinforcing his sense of mission. He felt he had been “chosen” to help Hitler finally understand that he had “friends” who could help him achieve his “reasonable” goals, such as small adjustments to German territory, without conflict.

He seemed unaware of the content of Mein Kampf and the clear objectives Hitler had set. Earlier in the Nazi government’s rule, King had objected strongly to the oppression of “minorities,” but during his visit, it was a subject that never arose. In every meeting with high Nazi officials, he never once raised the annoying issue, likely so as not to interfere with conciliation in pursuit of his “divine” mission. In addition, he was overawed by Germany’s “economic progress” and the discipline and enthusiasm in youth programs and others, examples of which were stage-managed for outside visitors.

Other factors include King’s fear of communism. In his notes, he wrote about his perception that Hitler was somehow better than Stalin, whose penchant for purges was becoming well known, all the while ignoring the Nazi suppression of dissent including the purge of Hitler’s early “left” followers in the “Night of the Long Knives.” At that time, King had condemned Hitler’s actions in strong language. But during his meetings in 1937, he seems completely to have forgotten his earlier condemnation.

King also ignored all the racist comments about Jews and every rationale that Jews, by their nature and actions, had forced the Nazis to protect the rights of “ordinary Germans” as a form of self-defence. Otherwise, the Jews would soon dominate business, the universities and the professions, not to mention their “insidious” influence on the arts.

Teigrob records King’s own attitudes toward Jews and his efforts to prevent them from buying property around his estate at Kingsmere. This attitude of fear of Jewish control and influence was fairly widely shared among English-speaking elites in both Canada and the United States. He makes it clear that it was not only the opposition towards Jewish refugees in Quebec that influenced Canada’s restrictive policy. In the end King’s mission did not succeed – yet he strangely held on to his ideal up to the end. Nor was he quick to admit Jews after the war.

These attitudes toward Jews still persist and seem to leak over into attitudes toward Israel where Jews are seen as having unfair advantages over Palestinians and so violence against Jews in Israel is often “understood” and “justified.”

My main disagreement with Teigrob is his view that the genocide against the Jews, the Holocaust, began in one country and is not to be feared today – only sporadic acts of violence. But he ignores the reality of much of the Muslim world being taught to fear Jews and to use the same rationales for killing them as the Nazis. The fact that some of their grievances are valid only strengthens the international movement towards defining Israel and Jews as anti-human, drawing on a very ancient stereotype. It is this perception that is being spread through liberal and “progressive” circles. Perhaps the next genocide against Jews will not be driven by a single country but will it be driven by the international order to justify the liquidation of the Jewish state for “the greater good.”

Book Review: A ‘Yiddish cultural tragedy’ in Winnipeg’s North End

By Rubin Friedman

Shot Rock

By Michael Tregebov

New Star Books

220 pages

Shot Rock, Michael Tregebov’s new novel is a kind of Yiddish cultural tragedy. It deals with inevitable change as people age and find themselves passing into the memories of the next generation, a narrative sparked and energized by both anxieties for what will be and warm comic relief. And at the end, it still leaves open many of the questions posed in the story for the future to answer, a smaller perhaps more optimistic version of Tevye the Dairy Man.

Tregebov introduces us to the main character, Blackie, and some of the sources of his pleasures and anxieties in the first page. The curling season is late in starting while his wife has left him. Soon his anxieties and the reader’s are increased. Max Foxman, the wealthy president of the only Jewish curling club in the North End of Winnipeg announces the building will be sold to a grocery chain.

Like two stones dropped into water, the subsequent ripples move outward to drive much of the plot forward. Another stone drops when Tino, Blackie’s son, also moves out to live with his friends.

While the story is fiction as the author notes, “This story is a story,” it resonates with events in the real world. The Jewish community in Winnipeg went through a shift of its population from the North End to the South End where newer developments of larger houses were being built in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Thereafter, many of the city’s Jewish institutions, including synagogues and the Jewish Community Centre followed suit.

Blackie and many of his friends, at the time of this story, would have been in their late 40s or early 50s. They came from a generation of mostly small business owners or employees of other Jewish business owners. Some, through luck or ambition, had become large business owners and wealthy.

The main plot focuses on Blackie’s coterie of friends agreeing to fight the sale of the curling rink and to take on the money and influence of the “South Enders” led by Max Foxman.

The humour in the story comes from the quick dialogue exchanges, especially among Blackie, Duddy, Suddy, Chickie, Oz and their advisers, two student Trotskyists, Tino and his mentor, the wealthy non-Jewish Michael.

Duddy and Suddy interrupt a discussion with an observation that leads into another topic before it is brought back again to what was originally being talked about. They use odd Yiddishisms, not always correctly or spelt to be easily understood: “Mishlockt Yiddin”; “It’s noch nila”; “Shockling his leg.” And I have no idea what “a sol chen van” means.

The structure of the exchange becomes like an interwoven strand of DNA rather than a straight line talk driven only by logical progression. Some of these excursions are crass and sexist but are typical of what some Jewish males of that milieu and background sounded like. It was very familiar to me and even though I wince, I find it accurate and the efforts to control it, amusing.

Blackie and Oz generally represent the calmer and more rational approach to the issues and are assisted by the two young men who help keep the group focused on what can be done. The tension in this effort is built as each side in the fight over the future of the building tries to counter the other’s moves to obtain the largest number of votes.

In tandem with this is the effort of Blackie and his team to qualify for the Brier, the curling championship. Tregebov does an excellent job of describing each game building the tension. If they win the championship, it will be harder to sell the building.

These plotlines are resolved by the end of the book as is the plot concerning Blackie and his wife. Only the future of the son, Tino, is not firmly decided by the end of the novel, but there are strong hints about whether he will stay to study math and science or run off to Toronto to be a poet.

While it seems that the strong and warm bonds among the original group will withstand the shocks and strains of this exercise, only the future will tell.