commit 9c48e8c3510954130aca5932cc9b08815d779115
parent 45680fd7a47bf61667639e380f6461a0a2240fd4
Author: FIGBERT <figbert@figbert.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2024 18:28:29 -0800
Add One Hundred Saturdays review
Diffstat:
1 file changed, 72 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/reading/one-hundred-saturdays.md b/content/reading/one-hundred-saturdays.md
@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
++++
+title = "What I've Learned from Stella Levi (So Far)"
+date = 2024-12-16T18:28:00-08:00
+[extra]
+book = "One Hundred Saturdays"
+author = "Michael Frank"
+finished = 2024-12-15
+rating = "★★★★★"
++++
+
+This is the most vibrant, imagery-inducing work that I may have ever
+come upon. The first half of the book is dedicated to breathing life
+into the long-since vanished world of Rhodes' Juderia. I have always
+been prone to feelings of nostalgia for times that I never
+experienced.[^1] This book exploits that tendency to the greatest
+degree, accentuated by stylized and interesting art interleaved within
+the text. Since I first cracked open its cover, I have been thinking
+ceaselessly about the structural features of the Juderia that induced
+specific behaviors and tendencies, which of those I admire and which of
+those I think are counter-productive, and how one would go about
+recreating an idealized version of this sort of enclave. Certainly an
+unexpectedly great book for people interested in the ways that urban
+environments impact their residents. Or people who like cities that
+sound like Acre or Jaffa.
+
+Of course, it is also serious work about an issue of much import: that
+of the total, intentional destruction of life in the Juderia and all
+that that implicates. I used the word "vanished" above to describe what
+happened to the world we witness in the first half of the book, but this
+is wrong: it was annihilated. This makes the middle of *One Hundred
+Saturdays* a rather heavier read than its beginning. It is also what
+makes the book worthwhile—life is not a walk in the park, and there is
+beauty in its challenges. This work would be incomplete as an analysis
+of life in the Juderia without a discussion of its end. The two are
+inseparable.
+
+*One Hundred Saturdays* is not even actually about historical events, so
+much as it is about Stella Levi herself. It is through her life—which so
+remarkably intersects time and again with the greatest focal points of
+change—that we learn about the shifting world. Stella is a woman of
+unfathomable resilience. This book is a treatise to her, a shocking and
+kind gesture from a close friend. The greatest gift one could divine
+from these pages would be a fraction of her insight.
+
+The book was also valuable to me in that it forced me to confront my own
+biases. I am in many ways very anti-diaspora.[^2] *One Hundred
+Saturdays* managed to challenge my anti-diasporic stance. Were I to
+apply to it the same standards as I do elsewhere, I should have been far
+more dismissive of life in the Juderia, Judeo-Spanish, and the culture
+expressed in the book. Instead, I found myself enamored. This is
+probably attributable to a combination of my unfamiliarity with
+Sephardic history between the Inquisition and 1948, personal connections
+and feelings of shame toward the Ashkenazi diasporic experience, and the
+charisma that emanated from every page of this book. I think the
+adjustment that I should take away is not a total reversal of my
+stance—the fate of the Rhodeslis must ensure that—but a softening.
+
+I would finally like to extend a huge thank you to my wonderful mom, who
+recommended me this book.
+
+---
+
+[^1]: Or, for that matter, never existed, as is the case with my
+feelings toward a whole host of Disney movies.
+
+[^2]: This of course clashes with the fact that I live in America, but:
+I recognize that what is correct for the individual on a case-by-case
+basis may differ from the needs of the whole/many, am not above the
+hypocrisy of adjudicating myself as a special case, and also think that
+the American acceptance of Jews does make it something of a special
+case. It is worse than Israel, but it is better than everywhere else
+where we are totally unwanted.
