Essays and viewpoints

PURELY COMMENTARY

essay

Why I Wrote a Jewish Book about Kidney Donation

Growing up, like lots of idealistic young people, I always wanted to be the kind of person who would change the world drastically and for the better — perhaps as a life-saving scientist, a soul-inspiring musician or a transformative political leader. The problem was I wasn’t quite cut out for those fields and even those who do make it big in the public sphere don’t always have a profound or positive impact.

So instead, I found myself on the path of pursuing wisdom and justice in the religious realm, where I learned from the Talmud that saving a life is like saving the entire world. Fair enough, but saving even one life isn’t exactly easy either. Becoming a surgeon, for example, is extremely difficult, as is being a first responder.

Then, when I was in my mid-30s living in Scottsdale, Arizona, teaching Jewish values each day, it dawned on me that I had an accessible opportunity to save a life through “altruistic kidney donation,” meaning giving a kidney to a stranger. While the benefits of such an action are, just as the Talmud teaches, boundless, I was overwhelmed with existential questions. What is my obligation to protect my own life? What if, God forbid, my wife was to lose her husband, and my kids were to lose their father? What if my remaining kidney were to fail later on?

At that time, I didn’t have access to the literature I wanted in order to be informed. I felt morally paralyzed by the enormity of the quandary. So I pledged that if I were to pursue this path of donation, I would afterward create a resource that could be helpful to others — to people considering donating their kidneys and for those wanting to be supportive of their loved ones who wish to donate.

That’s why I wrote The 5-Ounce Gift: A Medical, Philosophical & Spiritual Jewish Guide to Kidney Donation (Ben Yehuda Press, 2022). For this book, I gathered Torah wisdom from Jewish teachers, medical guidance from surgeons, knowledge from the world of philosophy and practical experience from others who have donated.

We face an enormous problem in our communities: About 90,000 people in the U.S., per the National Institutes of Health, are on the kidney transplant waiting list, and only about 20,000 transplants per year can be completed. Our hearts break for those suffering from end-stage kidney disease, also for their family and friends struggling along with them.

This is yet another example of the potential for science and Judaism to work together for the improvement of the world. By tying the moral responsibility imbued by our tradition to the life-saving power made possible by medical advancement, we can bring each field toward its full purpose.

My goal in writing this book was not to persuade people to become kidney donors. My objective is to have an honest and open exploration of the questions involved for those interested. I hope to help readers grapple with our obligations to one another and our duty to protect ourselves.

Ultimately, I decided to go through with my kidney donation. I had my kidney removed in New York in June 2015 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. And my kidney was given to a very young Israeli named Yossi, who had lost his mother at a young age. I didn’t choose him as my recipient; I was

Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

willing to donate to anyone. But I felt deeply drawn toward him and accepted him as the first option presented to me.

“As far as I’m concerned, every person who donates a kidney is a superhero,” Yossi wrote shortly after his successful surgery in an essay now included in this book.

I never did become Albert Einstein or Yo-Yo Ma or the president — or one of the many nurses who do life-saving work every day. But to Yossi, it was as if I had saved the world. I want to figure out how we can work to save more worlds together.

The “5-Ounce Gift” is available for pre-order through Ben Yehuda Press. Proceeds will go to Valley Beit Midrash to further Jewish educational programs. Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz is the president and dean of Valley Beit Midrash. He was recently the Glazer Institute Scholar at Temple Beth El.

essay

Legacy: The Yellow Violin

Flemington, New Jersey, was stop number one on my three-week August concert tour some years back. Half of the buildings in this Delaware River town are on the Register of Historic Places. Masterfully restored 19th-century Victorians resplendent with sumptuous flower boxes line each side of the main boulevard. This is not just another exit on the turnpike— its claim to fame is the immense Greek Revival courthouse built in 1828, the site of the Lindbergh “Trial of the Century.” I was staying in a quaint bed-and-breakfast just a block away. All these niceties have little to do with what made this event so special. Here’s the story:

In 1925, Chaskel Frand and his wife and kids left Dubiecko, Poland, for the “Golden Medina,” armed with his sole source of income, a violin. He had to bid farewell to his extended family of musicians, the Frand Klezmorim. Packed in his violin case was the handwritten music they performed for weddings and for visiting dignitaries. Tragically, after the war, Chaskel was anguished to discover that all his relatives had perished at the hands of the Nazis.

In 1955, Chaskel decided to move to Israel so the imminent arrival of the Messiah wouldn’t require that his bones roll all the way from New York (yes, the rolling of the bones is a part of Jewish tradition). At the airport, he learned he was only allowed one carry-on item. His daughter convinced him to choose his tallis and tefillin over the violin — he could buy another instrument in Israel. He reluctantly handed it to her, and she stashed it in her basement for the next several years. At one point, a cousin came to visit from California. He had just started playing the violin and requested his grandfather’s instrument. Eventually, the violin floated from house to house and much of the Frand sheet music portfolio wound up framed and hung in the homes of various relatives.

Fast forward to 1996. My dear friend Sharon Brooks, Chaskel’s granddaughter, had a 5-year-old daughter who wanted to learn violin. Sharon tracked down Chaskel’s instrument and had it sent to New Jersey. It was

Sam Glaser

in such a state of disrepair she had to splurge to have it restored. When word got out that the violin was back in use, relatives sent Sharon the Frand music so the priceless pieces could be played once again on the family heirloom.

In 2009, Sharon made a trip to Dubiecko to explore her roots. Even though Jews made up over half the town’s population before the war, now there was no sign of their presence. The Jewish cemetery was in shambles and the mass grave unmarked. Nazis had used ancient Jewish headstones to pave a road. In a moment of inspiration, Sharon realized how to make “lemonade out of lemons:” The recovered music of the Frand Klezmorim would be the very vehicle to restore the cemetery and honor the memories of her ancestors.

MAKING LEMONADE

Upon her return, Sharon called to ask my opinion regarding what to do with this portfolio. She sent me copies, and I worked my way through the arrangements, soon recognizing the uniqueness of this treasure trove. I recommended she have them professionally transcribed so they could be performed by a modern ensemble, and we discussed the logistics of throwing a debut concert as a fundraiser. Before long, she hired klezmer flutist Adrianne Greenbaum to create usable charts out of the Frand ensemble’s hieroglyphics and we put a concert date on the books.

After much preparation, the big weekend arrived. The entire community came out for every aspect of the special Shabbaton. We found capable klezmer musicians to fill out the band for the Saturday night concert, and I hired one of my favorite studio drummers from New York. After a set of my songs, we presented the melodious and quite complex klezmer from the Frand catalogue. This Eastern European folk music is not intended to be listened to in a passive manner; Adrianne enthusiastically led the audience in various dances, and we jammed late into the night while everyone sang along.

Thousands of dollars were raised to restore the Dubiecko Jewish cemetery. New music was launched in the klezmer world. The JCC of Flemington enjoyed a Shabbaton they would not

continued on page 8

PURELY COMMENTARY

essay

Misrepresenting Maus

What a story greeting readers of the New York Times on Jan. 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Jenny Gross’s report on a sad spectacle transpiring at a school board meeting in McCinn County, Tennessee. Proving that foolishness loves company, the board’s 10 members had voted unanimously to remove Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale from the district’s eighth-grade curriculum. Their reasons for this action ranged from the specious — PG-13 cartoon nudity and some mild swear words — to the grotesquely obtuse: Spiegelman’s daring to depict the deaths of a handful of the millions murdered during the Holocaust. “It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids,” said one board member at the meeting: “Why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff?”

Of course, the internet blew up in response, as evidenced by the emails, newsfeeds and Facebook posts filling my screens. Statements from the Anti-Defamation League and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum were issued, and comments were solicited from Spiegelman. The usually loquacious Pulitzer Prize-winner was almost at a loss for words, underscoring the staggering nature of the entire affair.

Because I research, write and teach about the Holocaust, I was as outraged as any of my colleagues in the field; but the English professor in me was also dismayed by the language used to label Spiegelman’s ground-breaking text. The Times piece is titled “School board in Tennessee Bans Teaching of Holocaust Novel Maus.” Prompted by this report and continuing across the virtual media landscape, Spiegelman’s haunting and original memoir has been persistently mislabeled as a fiction, a novel. And the editors of the “newspaper of record” did not bother to review their own record with this issue. They have been taken to task before.

Robert Franciosi

Grand Valley State University

NOT A WORK OF FICTION

In December 1991, when the second volume of Maus reached the lofty heights of the best seller list, Times editors placed it among best-selling fiction, occasioning a memorable letter from the author.

“The borderland between fiction and nonfiction has been fertile territory for some of the most potent contemporary writing,” Spiegelman admitted; but he soon explicated his objection: “It’s just that I shudder to think how David Duke — if he could read — would respond to seeing a carefully researched work based closely on my father’s memories of life in Hitler’s Europe and in the death camps classified as fiction.”

Despite all the justifiable outrage aimed at the McCinn County school board and the amazing blowback it provoked — in a

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The Byron and Dorothy Gerson Centennial Innovation Fund Honors the Legacy of Two Community Champions

Dorothy “Dottie” (z”l) and Byron “Bud” (z”l) Gerson are remembered as two of Jewish Detroit’s greatest leaders and benefactors. Their passion and generosity for our community was matched only by their commitment to family, and to each other. Awarded the Jewish Federation’s 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award, Dottie and Bud supported a wide variety of organizations and agencies, including Federation, JVS, the Jewish Community Center, Hadassah, Congregation Shaarey Zedek and Temple Beth El and many others. They also were great champions of art and culture, supporting a wide range of institutions such as the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Jewish Ensemble Theatre. Married for 66 years, Bud died in 2012 and Dottie in 2021. Today, their legacy lives on in both the causes and organizations they supported as well as in the many lives they touched with their generosity and compassion.

In honor of this extraordinary couple, the William Davidson Foundation has established the Byron and Dorothy Gerson Centennial Innovation Fund. This unique fund will provide ongoing resources to fuel new and innovative programs at the Jewish Federation and other community organizations. “The Gerson Innovation Fund will allow us to explore, develop and test new ideas to advance our community-building efforts,” says Steven Ingber, CEO of the Jewish Federation. “The entrepreneurial spirit of this Fund, together with its focus on strengthening our Jewish community, are a wonderful tribute to the life and impact of Dottie and Bud. In fact, I can think of no better way to honor the memory of these two individuals who dedicated so much of their lives to building a vibrant home for Jewish Detroiters.”

PURELY COMMENTARY

LEGACY: THE YELLOW VIOLIN continued from page 5

soon forget. I felt blessed to have a role in this incredible saga.

After the event, Sharon Brooks wrote to me: “Sam, you asked me a question I never thought about before. What if my grandfather was able to bring the violin to Israel? Would this music have this new life, this revival of spirit? Perhaps what seemed like such an injustice back then was a part of the master plan. Maybe the time wasn’t right. This violin, this music was, like Moses I suppose, never intended to enter the land of Israel.”

WHAT-IFS

This question for Sharon led me to consider one about a member of my own family. According to family legend, my grandfather Sam was a rabble-rouser in his youth. As a teenager in Glod, Romania, he accrued gambling debts and had to skip town. He wandered the Carpathian Mountains, wound up at the Black Sea and befriended a nice Jewish girl. He convinced her family to allow him to join them on the voyage to Hamburg to catch a New York-bound ship. So, in 1921, my grandpa managed to slip into the United States without paperwork. During one of my New York tours, I took my son Max to Ellis Island and scoured the records for our relative’s names. Officially, Sam Glaser never made it.

My “what if” question: What if Grandpa Sam wasn’t a gambler? Would he have made it to the Golden Medina to sell neckties on a pushcart on Orchard Street, eventually ramping up to a large manufacturing operation? Or would he have been extricated from Glod and carted to Auschwitz with the rest of his family?

I never understood why my relatives were passive when the Nazis came for them. One year, after an Israel tour, I traveled by train, plane and automobile to access Grandpa Sam’s one-horse town and find out for myself. As I stood there on the porch of the two-bedroom home where my grandpa had lived with his 10 brothers and sisters, a local elder in peasant garb spotted me from a block away. He walked right up to me and said “Glahzer!”

Yes, all of us Glasers have a certain look. And this man, who used to play with my beloved aunts and uncles, was curious who survived the war. It’s a shockingly short list. I realized the war was my rural ancestors’ introduction to the 20th century. Could they have fought back with pitchforks? Thank God, Grandpa Sam played cards.

Every note played on the Frand violin is miraculous. Its presence in the world is a simple statement of rebuke to the nations that yearn for our destruction. The Nazis are gone. Never again will we wear the yellow star of shame. Let the melodies of the Frand Klezmorim ring up to the heavens; I’m sure these joyful cadences have the angels dancing.

Sam Glaser is a performer, composer, producer and author in Los Angeles. He has released 25 albums of his compositions, travels the world in concert, produces music for various media in his Glaser Musicworks recording studio and his book The Joy of Judaism is an Amazon bestseller.

letters

Remembering Judge Cohn

Judge Avern Cohn was my mentor/Rebbe for decades, instructing me in some of the most important values in life: (1) about preserving and improving our great democracy; (2) about our good fortune in being brought up in the great multi-cultural City of Detroit; (3) about our obligations to follow the Jewish ethical teachings of our rabbis and forefathers. As a judicial colleague of Avern for the last 27 years, I was reminded, almost daily in person, or through his “read this and call me” missives, of the judge’s role to vigorously pursue equal justice for all. I will miss him. Fortunately, his presence will continue in my courtroom, where his portrait resides.

— Paul D. Borman United States District Judge

Yiddish Limerick

February

In February, mir hobn 28 teg oder 29 Eib ir hot gekumen on 28, do bist zain fine, Ober eib in 29 you came in here dayn geburstog Will sometimes disappear But yung oder alt the same ir vet zayn.

Mir hobn: we have Teg: Days Oder: or Eib ir hot gekumen: if you came do bist zain fine: you will be OK Ober: but Dayn geburstog: your birthday Yung oder alt: young or old Ir vet zayn: you will be.

By Rachel Kapen

MISREPRESENTING MAUS

continued from page 6

matter of days three different volumes of Maus zoomed up Amazon’s top 10 list — no one has seemed troubled by the ease with which media reports consistently misrepresent Maus as a novel.

I doubt the initial report in the Times, or of those who took their cues from it, intended to imply that Spiegelman’s text is a work of fiction. So why did they? Why do our professional writers — journalists and the commentariat — not understand or seem to care about important distinctions in our language?

Perhaps the problem is rooted in the squishy phrase “graphic novel,” sometimes distinguishing only between comic books stapled or perfect bound. Throughout his career, Spiegelman has always preferred the term “comix” to describe his medium. When he was once deemed the father of the graphic novel, he replied, “Yeah …. and I’ve been asking for a paternity test ever since.”

There are glimmers of evidence that the publishing field is giving more careful thought to naming innovative genres and practices. Last semester my students read The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, a title which resists the too-easy elision between fact and fiction that “novel” can evoke. And Nora Krug’s stunning work Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home has been labeled both a graphic and an illustrated memoir. Indeed, one review in the New York Times, the paper that still struggles with Maus, called Krug’s work a “visual memoir.”

My frustration about the decades-long mislabeling of Maus parallels my losing battles with students. Many, even English majors, denote all paperback books as novels. Just last year, some in a class titled “Studies in Nonfiction: Holocaust Memoirs” referred to Primo Levi’s “novel” Survival in Auschwitz. Others, in an American literature survey, used the same designation for Tillie Olsen’s collection of stories Tell Me a Riddle; and several honors students in an American culture course wrote about Allen Ginsberg’s scandalous novel, Howl and other Poems.

MAKING DISTINCTIONS

The distinctions between a novel (or graphic novel) and a work of nonfiction should concern not only English professors. The five-pound Critical Edition of Anne Frank’s diary can provide a more comprehensive illustration of the cultural stakes involved. Prepared by the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation, this 719-page volume assembles the complex textual history of the famous diary, including its three versions — Anne’s original pages, her transformational rewrites and the final published text. The editors also provide an account of how the pages, recovered in August 1944, were compiled and edited into the book that has sold many millions of copies.

Since Holocaust deniers have consistently exploited the complex textual evolution in order to challenge the diary’s authenticity, the editors also felt it necessary to include a long summary of a 270-page report on the diary issued by the State Forensic Science Laboratory of the Ministry of Justice. The investigators undertook an extensive analysis of Anne Frank’s handwriting and examined the diary’s very materials — not just the paper and ink of the pages on which it was composed, but the fibers comprising the small diary’s boards; indeed, the very glue, holding them together.

Despite all the Critical Edition’s scholarly wonders, including its revelation of how the teen-aged diarist evolved as a perceptive literary artist, I have to agree with Cynthia Ozick who called it “a sorrowful volume.” The 270 pages of forensic analysis cast a pall over the book, today a depressing testament that those assassins of memory remain with us, nearly four decades after the publications of both the first volume of Maus and the Critical Edition.

Deniers and distorters are still at work, and not just in the darkest recesses of the internet; authoritarian governments in Eastern Europe work openly to minimize, even erase, their historical complicity in the Nazi genocide. Deeming Maus a novel, graphic or otherwise, can eventuate into real consequences.

In fact, the group responsible for disbursing recompense funds to Holocaust survivors, the Claims Conference, issued a report in 2018 indicating that more than half of all millennials cannot name a concentration camp and that 41% believe substantially fewer than 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. One of its most disturbing findings indicates that “11 percent of U.S. Millennial and Gen Z respondents believe Jews caused the Holocaust.”

Maus has always had a noteworthy capacity as an introduction for younger readers to the Holocaust and its consequences — only one reason why the McCinn County school board’s decision is so wrong-headed. But Spiegelman’s inventive text also challenges tooeasy taxonomies, as the Pulitzer Prize committee acknowledged in its special citation, reading simply “For Maus.” Is it a comic book? A graphic memoir? Or the testimony of a Holocaust survivor and his son? All of these and more, I would say. Just don’t call it a novel.

Robert Franciosi is a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Grand Valley State University.