As some of you might know I've been on a reading tear lately. Biographies, politics, gut busting and poignant short stories by David Sedaris, these books are all over the house.
Shortly after my dear friend Jim Jennewein came out to comfort me for a week after my wife's passing, sleeping on a leaky air mattress in my ice cold living room, he returned to NYC and called me with a book suggestion. Next to my friend and fellow blogger George Tannenbaum, Jim, a professor at Fordham, is the second most well-read person I know.
Jim said with a giggle, you should pick up People Love Dead Jews.
Five points there for bold titling. However, given my mournful (but improving) state of mind, I was hesitant to rehash the pograms, persecutions and genocide of the not too long ago past. And its persistent manifestations in the 2022.
I'm only halfway through the book, but one chapter is haunting me, not only for its personal connections, but also because of the larger historical story it tells -- a story that has been repeated for 4000 years.
My ancestors came from Belarus, which is just north of Ukraine. At the turn of the 18th century, many fellow members of my tribe desperately sought to leave Russia and the coming Soviet Union. In addition to regular pillaging by Cossacks and their drunken brethren, officials in Moscow sought to dejudaize Russian culture.
Not unlike the Catholic Church did centuries earlier. And certainly not dissimilar to what the Nazis attempted just 50 years later.
So the Russians in their legendary benevolent manner decided they would conscript the Jewish men and ship them out to Siberia. Where they would die from the cold and the lack of any hot soup. Some, including my people, made it out and landed on Ellis Island. Others were forcibly exiled, including a small community that was sent to the outer reaches of Manchuria, to a city called Harbin.
This is where it gets interesting.
Because this very small community of doctors, lawyers, tailors, construction workers, artists and a few schlemiels, turned this frost bitten outlier Chinese city into a bustling, successful, growing city that resembled the metropolitan cities of Europe. And the Chinese hosts couldn't be happier. They were perfectly happy to allow and indeed encourage these odd Russian shtetl people from the north to flourish in the their country.
Mostly because they knew through taxes and the growing demand for goods and services would also benefit the native Chinese population in the surrounding areas. It was gentrification before that word even entered Websters.
Sadly, as you might have predicted, the Harbin story ends sadly.
A generation after the OG Jews moved in, so did Japanese soldiers, Chinese opportunists and the old Russian tormentors. All eager to fleece the city, rob the inhabitants and destroy what once was.
If I recall the story correctly there is but one Member of the Tribe still there. Our intrepid author of this book visited Harbin and could feel the absence of the past. Mostly through monuments and plaques, written in broken English, which are both a telling reflection of our status as perpetual outsiders. But also damn funny.
Item: A Bronzed baby shoe made by a talented cobbler.
Plaque: "This was made by a Jew."
Item: Replica of a fish outside the first restaurant in Harbin
Plaque: "Many Jews fish enjoy"
Item: Statue of Avram Mostovsky, founder of the Harbin National Bank
Plaque: " Jew inventor of pen chain, stop pen thieves. Smart Jew."
OK, I might have taken a literary license, but the larger point remains. If nomadic Jewish culture can pick up and settle into a place free from persecution and thrive there, unlike any others. And to the benefit of many others, why all the hatred, persecution and murder? It's like these Jew-haters were intent to cut off their undersized noses to spite their face.
Maybe the answer is in the second half of the book?
Good stuff, Rich.
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