Customer Reviews

Mazel

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My first impression of Rebecca Goldstein's novel Mazel was that this was a Jewish book written for my generation. I'm 29 and growing up Jewish I was saturated with stories and films of the Holocaust throughout my childhood to the point of becoming jaded. Never had I heard anything about Europe from my elders that was positive. Everyone knew of the so-called "Golden Days" of the Jews in Europe, when scholarship and the arts flourished in Jewish communities, and even in the ghettos the culture could not be stemmed. Yet all the images I had in my mind until I read Mazel were black-and-white, the colors of Hitler's proud films of his concentration camp successes. Mazel describes life in the pre-war shtetel of Poland not through the misty eyes of an elderly person remembering a lost way of life, but through the eyes of a girl, Sasha, living the life and finding it rather oppressive. Sasha's family moves to Warsaw where she finds a thriving culture of young "enlightened" Jews, part of the Bohemian intelligentsia. She becomes an actress in the Yiddish theater and finds love and herself in a Poland whose fate is as yet unimaginable. The story then moves to present-day New Jersey where Sasha, now an old woman, is at the wedding of her granddaughter, a professor at Princeton, who has adopted the old ways and has become an Orthodox Jew, much to her grandmother's dismay. Most of the book is about Sasha's life in Europe before the war. Mazel is unique because it casts a fresh perspective on the final days of European Jewry. Much of the story is told from the point of view of young optimistic characters who strive to enjoy life. It doesn't dwell on the knowledge that the readers must inevitably share: that most of the characters are fated to die just when they were beginning to live. Mazel is about how three generations of Jewish women deal with their Jewishness. The book doesn't judge the women, rather, it allows the reader a glimpse into the perspective of all three generations: the older generation who abandoned the old ways, the middle generation who never understood them, and the younger generation who are trying, in ever-increasing numbers, to learn about their heritage and what it means to be Jewish in a society that doesn't, really, care one way or the other.

By chance, I found Mazel on the shelf of the tiny library of the small outer suburb of Melbourne, Australia, where I live. How it got there I have no idea. I found the first chapter or two almost impenetrable, which may perhaps be explained by the fact that - as I later learned - it's a sequel to an earlier novel. But the wit, charm and incisiveness of the style lured me on, and once I had sorted out the characters and got used to shuttling through time, I realized I had made a rare discovery. Everything felt so true. An obvious example: the way Sasha's egotism and theatricality had cowed and almost silenced her daughter and granddaughter, yet how they had quietly found their own forms of resistence and assertion. But many a novel and even soap opera can give you that. Far more remarkable was the way Goldstein brought to life the lost world and lost people of prewar Jewish Poland, and embodied in her characters the whole spectrum of ways people can and do respond to the sometimes impossibly difficult dilemmas and limitations into which they are born. You can see how each temperament and each generation arrives at what it thinks to be the best resolution, only to find itself outmoded. Most remarkable of all, I felt I understood considerably more about myself, the world, history, life, etc. when I had finished than when I had begun, and only a masterpiece can do that. Mazel is an extraordinary achievement, and what a pity that it should be out of print.

This is the 4th book I have read of Rebecca Goldstein's, and this was my 2nd favorite (after the superb Mind-Body Problem). I liked the "generational" aspect where we follow Sasha (Sorel) from early childhood in a Schluftchev shtetl to present day USA where she has a grown daughter (Chloe) and a granddaughter just about to get married (Phoebe). I must admit I enjoyed the early childhood and early adult descriptions of Sasha the best - here there is a rich sense of storytelling, and the human characterizations are gripping and vivid. Sasha evetually rejects and leaves behind the old-fashioned Jewish ways of the shtetl and becomes a great stage actress and part of the Jewish intellectual life ("The Enlightenment") in prewar Warsaw.

The story in the present is also good, but I thought Sasha's antics were described with too much cliche and suffered a bit from the "feminine-writer syndrome". In addition, the daughter and granddaughter stay very one-dimensional. Mazel means LUCK in Yiddish, and this book very successfully plays with its meaning throughout someone's life. Finally, Phoebe's decision about going back to traditional Jewish ways is one of the best contrasts in the story...perfectly unimaginable and understandable at the same time!

Mazel has illuminated much about Jewish History for me. But more than just being a fictional historical account of a line of Jewish Women, it is fiction at its finest. Goldstein's writing is quick, intelligent and at times funny. The way she works in definitions of the yiddish words she used is artful and educational, as well as entertaining. The narrative of Sasha's life is intermixed with folk tales and comments from the author. I HIGHLY recommend this book. I want more!

This is an intelligently written story of three generations of Jewish women. The major part is given to the Polish born grandmother the flamboyant actress Sasha but the key element in the work is the relationships between the generations. The grandmother abandoned Jewish religious life, the daughter is an introverted classical scholar, and the granddaughter also a professor returns to Jewish religious life.
As Murray Baumgarten parts out in an extended review of the book the narrative - view- point often shifts, and the focus is not so much on one person as on relationships.
The book is interesting and has a 'smartness' about it. The central idea that it is Mazel ( Luck) and not Saychel (Wisdom) that is the main factor in life is elaborated through comparison with Hume's famous analysis showing our ordinary conception of 'causation' in life cannot be proven. i.e. there is not the connection of events which is simple, direct causation but rather their conjoining. Goldstein seems to suggest that this means that Life goes more randomly than lovers of planning and order would like to suggest. My own thought is that this is a bit simplistic, and that a lot depends in life on the 'saychel' we have in dealing with our own 'mazel' and that 'mazel ' too may come of 'saychel'.

Yes, "Mazel" is too much fun, and too many friends of mine have asked if I have seen it, for it to also to have so much weighty significance.

(I refer here not to the author's occasional didactic between "mazel, luck" and "sekhel, logic that adds charm and the occasional diversion, and even, its own dimension of depth.)

This is a book about three generations of Jewish women, the first of whom fled the shtetl (so much for Anatevka) for Warsaw, where she becomes a theatre star. So, already icons are crashing as a modern American writer presents pre-Holocaust Warsaw as a good place, as a center of culture, as an exciting place. The next generation is the single mother, followed by the granddaughter, a mathematician, who ends up in a new Jewish shtetl in New Jersey.

The freedom with which these themes are woven not just into good storytelling, but good storytelling that ignores lines and limits that have defined Jewish writing since the Holocaust is intensely refreshing. True, it wouldn't have worked if the story wasn't so good, but would even such a good story have been so good if the author were not treading beyond former limits?

I wish I knew more about the author and her other books.

Mazel validates being different can make for a very exciting life! It validates my strong connection to being a Jew(ish woman) even though I am not committed religiously. It is a celebration of spirit and risk. I loved it even more the second time.

Even though the characters in the book are very different from my own family, "Mazel" affirmed many of my personal feelings about being Jewish. It brought to mind many of the stories told to me about Eastern Europe by my parents and older relatives, while at the same time opening up my mind to new aspects of Jewish life. And it made me want to find out more about my own family history.

The way the three generations of women view the world and Judaism is fascinating, and totally believable. I have given this book as a present many times, and have reread it more than once.

I wish I could read more about this fascinating collection of women!

After struggling through the first few chapters, I find that this book has appeal only to those readers who are strong-willed grandmothers, or those who always wanted to be so. Totally unrealistic, this book is a strong willed grandmother fantasy come true, but utterly irritating for those of us of the younger generations. Let me explain. This grandmother wears leather pants and is a snob in every way towards her very own granddaughter. The grandmother thinks that Manhattan is the center of the world, and that she is the only person that matters because she was once an actress. She cares more about herself than her own child and grandchild. Her granddaughter and her daughter are unrealistically wishy-washy, passive characters, and they accept their (grand)mother's never-ending bossiness without a second thought, without ever angering an iota. And it isn't as if the story were dealing with this problem, as a theme; it's just the 'backdrop'.