​When I was a child, I wanted a Christmas tree. Back then, there were Jewish families that had what was essentially a Christmas tree, but they labeled it a Hanukkah bush. I tried lobbying for a Hanukkah bush, but my parents weren't buying. I heard the same thing every year.
 
"We're Jewish, and we don't have Christmas trees."
 
Which was a pretty funny stance to take, given that we celebrated Christmas - in a manner of speaking - until I was about eight years old. By Christmas, though, I don't mean the religious holiday. 
 
Christmas is actually several holidays jammed together on the same date - but for convenience's sake, labeled as Christmas. For Christian believers, Christmas is a solemn religious celebration of the birth of their Lord. But there are many who celebrate the day who are not believers - they are celebrating the holiday that I would label - the Celebration of Give-a-Lot-of-Gifts-and-Light-Up- the-Tree. Of course, for many, the two holidays are combined. Santa can move between the camps - designated as St. Nickolas for the religious - or just Santa Claus for those more secularly inclined.
 
For my people, the Jewish people who refuse to celebrate either the solemn religious holiday or the secular Celebration, there is the annual Feast of Chinese Food and a Movie - when - as tradition holds - we romp through empty city streets, enjoying the lack of traffic and the silence.
 
As a side note: I've never been religious, at least not in any traditional sense.
 
When I was a child, we half celebrated Give-a-Lot-of-Gifts-and-Light-Up-the-Tree -- without the light-up-a-tree part  -- because we were Jewish. However, my parents had felt that they had missed out as kids, and they didn't want us to feel left out. Frankly, the holiday consumes almost two months of the year - and it's pretty damn alluring. The lights. The story of magic. So we hung up stockings. We woke up to gifts on Christmas morning brought by Santa Claus. We watched television specials about Christmas, when said television shows featured Santa Claus but not when they featured a lady on a donkey, which I thought had nothing to do with the holiday.  But no tree.
 
At age eight, my sister spilled the beans about Santa, and we stopped the Celebration of Give-a-Lot-of-Gifts - probably because my parents knew about the lady on the donkey and didn't want us to celebrate That holiday. I didn't start celebrating the Jewish annual Feast of Chinese Food and a Movie until I moved to New York. (The Chinese food in New York was much better than the Chinese food in my hometown of Cincinnati.)
 
Fast forward a few years: I met the man who is now my husband. He was handsome, funny, smart, kind - and I could enjoy his Christmas tree because he wasn't Jewish. I like to think the last part isn't the reason I fell in love with him - although that first Celebration of Give-a-Lot-of-Gifts-and-Light-up-the Tree when we decorated his Christmas tree together was pretty enchanting.
 
As a second side note -- my husband has the same level of religiosity as I do -- which is to say, not much.
 
So through our marriage, now towards the end of its third decade, we celebrated everything especially, when our children were younger. Jewish holidays and the not so Jewish holidays - especially the Celebration of Give-a-Lot-of-Gifts-and-Light-up-the Tree. We really did it up. We went to the same Christmas tree market every year where we drank hot cider, fed pet goats, and fought over what would be the perfect tree. We'd decorate the tree to the music of the same album. We baked sugar cookies and watched The Santa Claus. And on Christmas morning, Santa brought copious gifts. (Christmas afternoon, we'd head to the movies - thus honoring both heritages.)
 
So now that my children are grown and thanks to Covid, not spending the holiday with us, I'm doing some re-evaluation. I'm feeling a little more ambivalent about the whole Christmas tree thing. I have gotten more in touch with my Jewish heritage over the last few years, even though I remain agnostic - and that combined with the rise in anti-Semitism has me a little less enthusiastic about the Celebration of Give-a-Lot-of-Gifts-and-Light-up-the Tree. This ambivalence was especially fueled with the rise in people feeling the need to insist that everyone, regardless of belief, say Merry Christmas. Two years ago, I was shopping at Costco in December and the guy checking my cart to see whether I was shoplifting wished me a Merry Christmas. I wished him a Happy Hanukkah back. His response: "Oh. You're one of those."
 
Yes, I am proudly one of those. Just not a religious one.
 
We already celebrated Hanukkah by lighting the menorah. As a Jew, I should be celebrating the Feast of Chinese Food and a Movie on December 25. But, there is still a pandemic, and I'm not comfortable in restaurants or movie theaters. And despite everything, the decorated trees are pretty, the lights alluring, and I am still married to the same wonderful guy who is still not Jewish.
 
So despite my ambivalence, this year we will celebrate a modified Give-a-Lot-of-Gifts-and-Light-up-the-Tree. We won't be able to be with our kids, but we might give each other a gift or two. The tree is maybe a foot high and made of pink pipe cleaners. But we will be celebrating whatever it is - together.
 
Happy whatever you celebrate.

(A short story to celebrate Hanukkah. I was going to write a blog, but this was more fun.)
 
Alex didn't like to cook. Not only did she not like cooking, she was terrible at it. But in the spirit of the season, she volunteered to have the family party on the eighth night of Hanukkah at her Georgetown townhouse. Which meant latkes.
 
"We don't keep kosher." Her fiancee Kolya would of course try to find a reason to get out of hosting the party. He would attend family gatherings to please her, but he didn't enjoy them. 
 
"Dealt with. Besides the only one who's that strict is my brother, and he's not coming. We'll eat latkes, light candles. It'll be fun." 
 
"I've never made latkes." He did almost all the cooking. He liked it and was good at it, never once commenting that Alex as a capable and smart attorney should be able to follow a recipe. 
 
"I know. Your Jewish education is woefully lacking. But it's okay. I'll make them. You can relax and enjoy my family."
 
"Just shoot me." 
 
"Don't tempt me."

But she wasn't really tempted or even annoyed. She loved him for who he was - even if she sometimes would have liked him to be a little less introverted.  But she understood why he felt uncomfortable. He'd had a difficult childhood and was still struggling with physical and psychological injuries from imprisonment and torture after the intelligence agency for which he worked had betrayed him. He was unable or unwilling to talk about either, and he felt he had little in common with her gregarious and comfortable family.
 
He retreated to the piano in the living room where he improvised on Gershwin tunes for an hour. At least, he could play piano if he didn't want to socialize. But that wasn't the point of the holiday, was it?
 
On the day of the party, her great aunts, her great uncles, her first cousins, second cousins, and her cousins once removed arrived bearing gifts and kosher wine. She watched Kolya greet guests, and knowing that he was making the effort gave her a warm glow.
 
Then she retreated to the kitchen for the all-important job of making latkes. She grated onions and potatoes in the food processor, dumped all into a bowl, made patties, and then began the process of frying the mixture. But instead of remaining as patties, the potatoes and onions spread out in a gooey mess. With a spatula, she tried to form the traditional shape. Within minutes, smoke filled the room.
 
Kolya rushed into the kitchen, followed by her 86-year-old Aunt Shelly. He grabbed the frying pan off the stove. 
 
"Heat's too high." He dumped the burned mess into the garbage. 
 
"And too much moisture, Alex dear." Aunt Shelly gave a tentative swipe of the spoon to the mix. "What did you use as a binder?"
 
"Binder?" Alex asked. "There's potatoes and onions. That's it."
 
"Oh, for goodness sakes, Alex. Go have a glass of wine. Kolya and I will do it. Kolya, is there a cheese cloth around?"
 
He located one, and then he grated more onions and potatoes. Aunt Shelly squeezed the liquid while he, at Aunt Shelly's directions, measured out potato starch, matzo meal, salt, and pepper and finally mixed in two eggs.

"I'll make the patties," Aunt Shelly told Kolya. "You fry."
 
Alex watched them and then retreated to the living room where one of her great uncles complained loudly about a recent Supreme Court decision. Kolya and Aunt Shelly emerged half an hour later, Kolya carrying the platter of latkes, which he set on the table next to the sour cream and the apple sauce. 
 
After the latkes but before sunset, the great-aunts, great uncles, first cousins, second cousins, and cousins once removed gathered around the Hanukkah menorah. Alex lit eight candles for the last night. As she placed the shamus candle in the center of the menorah, she noticed Aunt Shelly hanging onto Kolya's arm, while they talked quietly. He glanced over at Alex and smiled.
 
After everyone left and the house was clean, she curled up next to him on the couch. "How did you get on with Aunt Shelly?"
 
"I enjoyed making the latkes with her. And then she told me about her father - who immigrated from Kiev." He was silent for a moment, stroking her hair. "My grandmother was from Kiev."
 
"It wasn't such a bad evening after all, was it?"
 
"Not bad at all. Even though I know you burned the latkes on purpose."
 
"Moi?" Her feigned innocence didn't fool him. But it didn't matter that he knew. He'd enjoyed himself, and at least for the evening, he'd felt a part of her family. That was good enough.
 
For more on Alex and Kolya, check out Trojan Horse and Nerve Attack - where they are main characters.
 
How to Make Latkes
 
There are many recipes on the internet, and they are going to be more precise than my instructions. But - if you like experimenting:
 
Grate a lot of potatoes and slightly fewer onions.
Press to get the liquid out. 
In a bowl, mix the potatoes and onions with enough matzo meal or flour that there is no moisture, add one egg, unless you have a lot of potatoes and onions then add a second egg, salt, pepper, and potato starch. Make the mixture into patties.
Using a frying pan (cast iron works best) heat oil and then dump in patties.
Cook until crispy on the bottom, then flip. 
Cook until the second side is also crispy.
Serve immediately with apple sauce, sour cream, or jelly.

Every kid loves it. Every adult hates it. Well, not every. Skiers at least like it on the mountains. I don't ski, but I love snow - at least through December. But then, I've always suspected that I suck at adulting. That's what my kids say anyway. My adult kids.

Here in Vermont, we usually see the first snow sometime in October. It's late this year, now only a week from Thanksgiving, and we're finally seeing the first accumulating snow. In New Jersey, where we lived until about seven years ago, we'd usually see the first snowflakes a week or so before Thanksgiving. I could be back in New Jersey on this schedule. Not much difference.  Except for the mountains. The untouched woods.  The vast silences - and by the way, we only have those vast silences because it's November. The tourists, no longer lured by colorful leaves or the warmth of summer, have fled to spots where shopping malls and milder weather offer a plethora of activities.

I always feel a little torn about the tourists. I personally prefer they not be here, and yet I know that the state economy and the livelihood of many of my neighbors depends on visitors. So I try to be welcoming when I'm tailgated by people with out-of-state tags, or when I watch them bully their servers in locals restaurant or clog my favorite trails. They are necessary to Vermont. Still, in November I no longer have to be torn. The annual departure of visitors is not my fault or my responsibility.  With their absence, peace has again descended.

We may flee too. My husband, who is in fact better at adulting than I am and who grew up in Florida, likes snow for skiing but otherwise detests it. We made an agreement when we moved to Vermont. We would spend most of the year here but for the months of January and February, we'd pack up our things and head for someplace warmer - with palm trees. Last year, we stayed put for the reasons that everyone stayed put - and also that we had a 17 year old cat who had kidney diesase would not do well traveling. Our Lizzie died in May, we have our vaccines, and this year, we're discussing going.  But we haven't made a decision. I'm hoping for at least one or two big snows - where I can put on my boots and wade through drifts to gaze at the white topped trees in the woods that surround my house.

Writers tend to base characters on people they know. The protagonist of my thrillers, Kolya Petrov, a Russian Jewish immigrant to the United States and intelligence operative, has quite a few of my husband's characteristics. But he has my love of snow and is not crazy about heat.  I'll take him with me on my walks through the silent woods of winter. Maybe it'll help me figure out the plot to my next book.

Let it snow.

Eighty-three years ago, the persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazis moved into a new phase with the destruction of Jewish businesses, homes, and synagogues, the murder of almost a hundred Jewish people, and the mass arrest of thirty thousand Jewish men who were went to concentration camps. It was the end of the first phase of the Holocaust, moving from legal restrictions to violence. 
 
Beginning soon after the Nazis took power, Jews had been legally barred from schools, from most professions, from marrying non-Jews, from employing non-Jews, even from park benches and playgrounds - and had been libeled as vermin and parasites for so long that when the Nazis launched the violence against its Jewish population, the majority of Germans either participated or ignored it.
 
But what happened in Germany on November 9, 1938, is only part of the story. 
 
What happened in the rest of the world as the news of the violence spread?
 
There were expressions of outrage by various faith leaders around the world. There were demonstrations of support. The leaders of France and England expressed sympathy for the victims but were restrained in their condemnation. After four days, FDR did strongly condemn the Nazi attacks on the Jewish population and withdrew the American ambassador to Germany.
 
On November 23, 1938, the Los Angeles Examiner published a headline proclaiming, "Nazis warn World Jews will be Wiped out unless Evacuated by Democracies."
 
There were of course the other voices - who blamed the Jewish victims for the violence, Father Charles Coughlin, who voiced anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi views the most prominent among them.  
 
And beyond that?
 
In 1935, there were 523,000 Jewish people living in Germany, and another 200,000 Jewish people came under Nazi rule when Austria was annexed in early 1938. After Kristallnacht, they were desperate to leave, although by then, Germany would allow Jewish refugees to take only eight percent of whatever they owned with them. 
 
They would have left anyway, but there were few places for them to go.
 
The United States in 1938, limited the immigrants from Germany and Austria to 27,370 people, regardless of whether they simply wanted a better economic life or they were fleeing persecution, and the quota did not change, even as the violence grew. After Kristallnacht, 127,000 Jewish people applied for the 27,000 spots. By June 1939, 300,000 people applied for visas. Beyond the limited spots for immigrants, Nazi confiscation of Jewish property made it more difficult - because the United States had financial requirements for anyone seeking to immigrate.
 
A bill proposed in a Congressional committee to take 20,000 German Jewish children into the United States was strongly opposed and never even made it to the floor, with public comments like "20,000 charming children will all too soon grow into ugly adults." (From the wife of the US commissioner of immigration.)  As a side note, after 1940, when Britain was being bombed, the Congress voted to accept thousands of mostly non-Jewish British children.
 
The UK did not lift immigration restrictions on German or Austrian Jewish adults in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, but the government did agree to accept Jewish children under the age of 17 in a program known as Kindertransport. Some ten thousand children were accepted between 1938 and 1940. The vast majority never saw their parents again, who were trapped and murdered. 
 
There were a few other places that Jewish people could flee in the aftermath of Kristallnacht: Bolivia accepted 30,000 people. Shanghai took 17,000. Beginning with Hitler's rule, some 60,000 German Jewish people immigrated to Palestine until 1939 when in response to the 1936-39 Arab revolt, Jewish immigration was limited. Jewish people also immigrated from Germany to other countries in Europe (where most were eventually killed).

Would the Germans have embarked on mass murder if Kristallnacht had provoked a stronger world reaction - something more than the few tsks of disapproval that actually occurred? Possibly. But possibly not. What is certain - is that if in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, countries around the world, like the United States and Great Britain, had opened their doors to accept more Jewish refugees, many lives would have been saved.
 
What happened AFTER Kristallnacht?
 
Kristallnacht was prelude to the horrors that were to come. There has been so much written about what happened - there is so much testimony from survivors and eyewitnesses - that I cannot possibly do it justice here. Still, a brief summary: 
 
 Mass killings of the Jewish population of Europe began after the start of the war. By 1941, Germany began deporting Jewish people from Germany itself - to ghettos in Poland and then to killing centers. In early days, the Germans hoped starvation and disease would kill the majority - but then because Jews were not dying in sufficient numbers, the Nazis built the gas chambers. In the conquered Soviet territories, 1.3 million Jewish men, women, and children were shot and dumped in mass graves. The estimates are that between 160,000 and 180,000 German-Jews were murdered. In Poland, out of 3.3 million Jewish people, somewhere between 2.7 and 3 million were killed. A total of six million dead from all of the countries that the Germans occupied. Two out of three Jews who had lived in Europe were killed.
 
Why Remember?
 
With the passage of eighty years since the start of the war, (and eighty-three years since Kristallnacht) Holocaust survivors have almost disappeared, as have the World War II veterans who liberated the concentration camps. With those disappearances, disturbing trends are being seen.
 
Holocaust denial: a survey in 2020 found that sixty three percent of adults under forty did not know that six million Jews were murdered - over half believed that two million Jews were killed. One in ten had never heard the term Holocaust. While ninety percent believed the Holocaust happened, seven percent weren't sure, and only three percent did not, a disturbing eleven percent believed that the Jews caused the Holocaust.
 
Increasing incidents of anti-Semitism: There are increasing attacks on Jewish people in the United States, along with anti-Semitic rhetoric across social platforms, with statements like "Hitler was right." In 2019, the FBI found that although Jews are only around 2.4 percent of the population, they are the victims of approximately 60 percent of religious hate crimes. 2021 has been a banner year for anti-Semitism. To name a few incidents just from October: A synagogue was set on fire in Austin Texas; a Torah was vandalized at George Washington University in Maryland; in Texas, members of the "Goyim Defense league" put up banners reading - Honk if you know the Holocaust is Fake and Vax the Jews;  in Bucks County, PA, school board officials received threats: "Death to the Jew."
 
Trivialization of the Holocaust: It has become more and more common for people who don't like something that the government wants them to do - to compare their experience to that of the Jewish people under the Nazis. Before anyone makes a comparison of anything short of genocide to the events of the Holocaust, a visit to the Holocaust memorial in Washington D.C. might be in order. Maybe spend a few hours sitting in a replica of one of the boxcars that transported millions of people to their deaths in the gas chambers.
 
Remember that the violence began with Kristallnacht.  

​We have a history, Dracula and me.  When I was thirteen, I read half of Bram Stoker's Dracula for the first time. I was petrified. I'm not completely sure just what terrified me at that time- but there was something beyond the fact that I was a highly sensitive young person who scared easily and tended to avoid horror stories. Something about a beloved person dying and then transforming into a monster that would destroy everyone she loved frightened me to the point that I couldn't sleep.
 
Now I wasn't completely stupid, even at thirteen. My rational mind did know it was fiction and that vampires didn't really exist. At least I knew that in the light of day. But when the sun set and we all went to bed, my irrational mind took over. I still remember lying awake, hearing branches brush against the windowpanes, and worrying whether it was Dracula trying to get into my house. In the morning after a sleepless night, I asked my parents if I could have a crucifix -- since in the book that was the one thing that would keep Dracula at bay.
 
I'm Jewish. Proudly Jewish. My parents -- even more so.
 
My parents, with the knowledge that vampires aren't real but with the additional knowledge that they had a scared and slightly crazy young teen who had stayed up all night, came up with a compromise. My father bought me a mezuzah necklace - a small silver cylinder that contains the holiest prayer in Judaism, the Shema.  If I wore it, it would keep off vampires, my father told me. I wasn't so sure. I wasn't convinced that vampires would recognize or fear Jewish prayers. I wore it anyway, and it did calm me down. (I still wear the mezuzah not to ward off vampires but in memory of my father.) 
 
I also returned Dracula to the library without finishing it. 
 
It was years before I took up Dracula again and finished it. By then, I was in college and more in control of my mind -- or as in control as anyone in college might be. I never forgot how powerfully the book had affected me at the age of thirteen, but by that point I could analyze books with a bit more skill. I noted with amusement the association of evil and sexuality, how the descriptions of women who were not vampires emphasized their purity, and those of vampires, their sexuality. I was also fascinated by the origins of the Dracula myth -- how Stoker had incorporated real history into the creation of his vampire, that of a Romanian ruler from the Middle Ages, known alternatively as Vlad Tepes or Vlad the Impaler, who had particularly sadistic methods of execution.
 
(As a side note, when I created my villain for Trojan Horse, the first of my thriller novels, I reached back into that early terror. I couldn't resist. My villain Mihai Cuza, an anti-Semitic descendant of Vlad the Impaler, has nothing of the supernatural about him, but he likes to imitate his ancestor when killing people and he's particularly sadistic towards my Russian-Jewish protagonist.)
 
But interestingly, an article I recently read about Dracula has changed my perspective on that thirteen-year-old experience. Rob Silverman-Ascher recently wrote "The Antisemitic History Of Vampires" in the publication Alma. I had never made the association between anti-Semitic stereotypes and Dracula, but once he laid it out, I was convinced.
 
First, Dracula's physical description emphasized a hooked nose and bushy hair, both of which occur in caricatures of Jewish people. He hoards wealth. His house, while large was “that neglected that yer might ‘ave smelled ole Jerusalem in it.” - Chapter 17, page 7.  The choice of Jerusalem -- interesting.
 
According to the article, Dracula was written in the time period when Jewish immigrants, fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe for London, were being described as a "parasitical race with no ideals beyond precious metals" in the British periodical, The Spectator.  Silverman-Ascher also notes that Dracula is Eastern European, with an accent, and he is the ultimate parasite, just as Jews have been described as parasites. Dracula exists off the blood of the living, invoking images of the blood libel --  Jews killing Christian babies to make matzah -- that has been the rationale for massacres of Jews for centuries. Then there's the even creepier stuff - the sexual degeneracy terms used to describe Dracula's preying on young innocent Christian women - that parallels how Jews were portrayed as preying on beautiful German women in Nazi propaganda.
 
And finally, the coup de grace, Dracula cannot bear the sight of a cross or the touch of Christian objects. Yup, Jewish caricature.
 
Maybe what should have frightened my thirteen-year-old self was not the thought of Dracula breaking into my house but the thought that anti-Semitic tropes were used to create him and that those kind of tropes were used as justification for murdering people like me and my parents in the years before my birth. 
 
That doesn't mean we should ban Dracula. Just be aware that it does use troubling anti-Semitic stereotypes - as well as outdated ideas about sexuality.  And the modern versions of Dracula, as noted in Silverman-Ascher's article, have moved away from the more problematic tropes to more diverse and less frightening imagery of vampires - for example Twilight's shiny and helpful vampires who drink animal blood. I personally have a lot of fondness for Spike and Angel - the sometimes good, sometimes bad vampires from the late 1990s, early 2000s television series -Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
 
Anyway, it's Halloween. Who doesn't love a good vampire story at Halloween?

 The outrage at the use of non-Jewish actors to play Jewish characters on television and in movies has received a lot of coverage lately and has sparked good conversations about how Jews are treated differently than other minorities when it comes to casting. But just as important as discussing the choices in casting Jewish characters is discussing the types of Jewish Americans characters who appear in books, on television, and in film.
 
In an age of rising anti-Semitism, it's more critical than ever to have Jewish American action type heroes. But finding Jewish American action heroes isn't easy, and portraits of Jews, for the most part, remain depressingly familiar. As a Jewish American writer of thrillers, I found it disturbing on both a personal and a professional level.
 
Jewish action heroes in books or film generally fall into two categories - Jewish resistance heroes in World War II or Israeli tough guys - like Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon. Ever since Leon Uris penned Exodus and created Ari Ben Canaan, ( who was played in the movie by the gorgeous Paul Newman) Israelis, love them or hate them, have been portrayed as tough and smart protagonists in novels and on television. If there are Jewish secret agents or action figures in non-World War II fiction of any kind, they will be Israelis. Not American Jews. For non-Israeli Jewish heroes, look to World War II. While books and media about the Holocaust, often portray Jews as victims or as being rescued by brave non-Jews, occasionally Jews do inhabit more heroic roles. Inglourious Bastords shows a Jewish American military unit killing Nazis. Defiance depicted the acts of Jewish partisans. In novels, John Hersey's The Wall and Leon Uris' Mila 18 portray the heroism of the Jews who mounted the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. 
 
It's much rarer to see American Jews portrayed as heroic in film or television in a contemporary setting - risking their lives to stop evil.  There is the Amazon Prime television show Hunters - in which Al Pacino leads a group to fight against a Nazi threat in the United States. But these kinds of shows are rare. On television, Jewish American characters are more likely to be depicted in leading roles in comedies rather than in leading roles in suspense or thrillers: Seinfeld, the Amazing Mrs. Maisel, the Goldbergs, the Nanny, the New Girl. Unfortunately, comedies all too often get their jokes from playing up Jewish stereotypes - the loud and obnoxious Jewish mother in the Goldbergs, the Jewish American Princess, as personified by the shoe and hat conscious Midge. Beyond those explicit caricatures, Jewish American characters tend to be shown as intelligent but neurotic, maladjusted, and of course, cheap.
 
I was recently struck by the lack of fully rounded Jewish characters in television while watching the last season of a popular television detective show, placed in Los Angeles. In the city of Los Angeles, Jews make up seventeen percent of the population, the largest Jewish community outside New York and Israel. But in this show, which has depicted the Latino and the Black community and characters with depth and sympathy, I can remember no characters explicitly identified as Jewish - until the final season when a rich man arrested for a Ponzi scheme identifies himself as Jewish (and there was no reason for him to claim a Jewish identity) in a conversation with his attorney. Not only had the Jewish culture of Los Angeles been ignored in the series, the only character who is openly named as Jewish in the series is someone whose depiction as a rich, greedy, dishonest coward would have won approval from Goebbels.
 
So what about the world of literature?  
 
There is of course a wider range of Jewish American portraits in novels than on television. Literary fiction is filled with sympathetic Jewish American characters, but not necessarily action heroes. There are some mysteries with Jewish American protagonists. Faye Kellerman writes a detective series with a Jewish police detective; Henry Kemelman wrote novels with a mystery solving rabbi; Michael Chabon wrote The Yiddish Policemen's Union. 
 
But I mainly read suspense and thrillers, especially in the espionage realm. And I remain unaware of Jewish American protagonists or heroes in the thriller genre, and especially in the world of espionage. Harlan Coben comes pretty close with his Myron Bolitar series, but Myron , the Jewish character, is a sports agent, not a secret agent, who leaves much of the heavy violence to his deadly buddy, Win.
 
Why does it matter?
 
I've been thinking about this lately in part because I write an espionage thriller series with a American Jewish immigrant to the United States from Russia as the hero. (Check out Trojan Horse and Nerve Attack on my other pages.) And yes, there is some self-interest in promoting my own work. But, I'm also thinking about it because of the rise in anti-Semitism.
 
In recent years, the old stereotypes about Jews that had been driven underground have remerged, and this is not helped by media and books that show Jews as victims, or worse, as intelligent neurotics, as money hungry, bossy, loud, or, as in the case of the seventh season of the detective show mentioned above, financial criminals.
 
And while American Jews do work in the CIA and American Jews are members of the military in real life, they still face discrimination. According to a discrimination lawsuit filed by a Jewish attorney fired by the CIA, not only was he accused of dual loyalties, but he was described as being "rich" and having a "wealthy" father. Separately, Darrell Blocker, a 28-year veteran of the CIA and a Jewish Black American, in a 2020 interview described the suspicion with which his Jewish colleagues were regarded, suspicion which he ironically avoided because colleagues perceived him as a Black American rather than as a Jewish American.
 
To combat prejudice, it's necessary to break stereotypes. American Jews work in the intelligence field and the military in real life, and we should see them in those kind of roles in novels and television, not just as doctors, lawyers, bankers, comedians, writers. Fictional characters have the power to engage our sympathy and admiration. It's important to see members of non-mainstream groups, and this includes Jews, in different kinds of roles, especially, in the role of heroes, in the vital fight against prejudice. 
 
Books, movies, or television won't defeat those who will persist in their hatred. Having more Jewish American heroes won't muzzle neo-Nazis, and it will take a lot more than simply changing the roles inhabited by Jewish characters to counter the rise in anti-Semitism. But it's a start.  Fiction, television, and movies play critical roles in our society in enlarging empathy, in allowing us to understand and identify with people other than those in our own circles, and by portraying minorities in non-stereotypical roles, start to change perception. 
 
It's time for more Jewish American action heroes.
 
 

Netflix viewers have discovered Jews and Judaism through a series of television shows starting with Shtisel, about the loves and travails of the Ultra-orthodox in Jerusalem, and moving on to Unorthodox and My Unorthodox Life - about women leaving the Ultra-orthodox community for greater freedom. 
 
As a Jew, I understand that the Ultras only represent a small fraction of the Jewish community - that Jews come in various sizes, shapes, and belief systems, but that this may be confusing for  non-Jews who may see the shows on Netflix but not personally know much about the Jewish community. As a public service, I am offering the following rough guide to the Jewish people in the United States. It is not comprehensive by any means, and I will undoubtedly leave out people and groups, and offend someone or other. 
 
There is also some self-interest here - since I'm Jewish and I write a spy series with a Russian Jewish immigrant who is working as an American spy. (The two books in the series are Trojan Horse and Nerve Attack. Check out my books on my other pages.) It helps if people understand just what it means to be Jewish. 
 
Here goes:
 
First, who is Jewish? To be Jewish does not mean believing in anything in particular. It means that you are a member of the Jewish people. And that's who? Under traditional Jewish law, a person with a Jewish mother or a person who converts to Judaism is Jewish.  That means that a person with a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother would NOT be considered Jewish traditionally unless that child formally converted. If a Jewish person formally converts to another religion, they are no longer considered Jewish. (Messianic Jews are not considered Jewish by the Jewish community. Nor are members of the Black Israelite movement who tend to blend some Jewish practices with Christianity - but I'm not diving into that can of worms.) However, in some parts of the Jewish community, the exclusion of people with a Jewish father but non-Jewish mother is changing. In 1983, American reform rabbis (see below for reform) determined that a person with a Jewish father but non-Jewish mother was Jewish if that person was raised as a Jew, practices Judaism, and identifies as a Jew. (Note: The reform definition is not accepted by the Orthodox or the State of Israel. Also note: generally, the Orthodox only recognize those converted under Orthodox rules as Jews.  Further note: people selected for extermination as Jewish under the Third Reich were people who had two Jewish grandparents of any gender, regardless of whether they had converted - or their parents had converted - to Christianity. One Jewish grandparent was sufficient for being killed if a person married a Jew or was associated with the Jewish community.)
 
Ethnicity: I'm going to pass quickly over this one but suffice it to say that while the majority of Jews in this country are Ashkenazi, with a history in Western and Eastern Europe, (and who can physically look like what is generally considered "Jewish" or can be blond and blue-eyed) although the Ashkanazie are genetically closer to Middle Eastern people than to Europeans, Jews encompass a wide variety of ethnicities: Sephardic Jews - from Spanish countries, Mizrahi Jews - from Middle Eastern and North African countries, Ethiopian Jews, known as Beta Israel, Black Jews, and Asian Jews. Don't assume that someone is Jewish or not by their looks. 
 
The various religious (and not)  denominations
 
Secular Jews: There are Jews do not go to services or follow any of the religious rules, but who still identify as Jewish. (See the above definition of who is a Jew.) Secular Jews can be atheist or agnostic, they can also believe in some form of God, but they do not belong to any organized denomination or synagogue. They may be proud of the history, the accomplishments, and the cultural aspects of Judaism. They may appreciate or celebrate some Jewish holidays, like Hanukah or Passover, - or not. They may also believe in tikkun olam, which literally means to heal the world - and engage in social action.  As an aside, the protagonist in my novels is a secular Jew - who very much believes in working for a better world - i.e. tikkun olam, although he never calls it that.
 
Reform Judaism: The largest American Jewish denomination, began in Germany in the 1800s, Reform Judaism doesn't require adherence to the very extensive Jewish law known as halakha. Reform Judaism seeks to integrate Jewish practices with an evolving society and culture. Although some reform Jews do observe laws such as the laws on kosher food, adhering or not to halakha is a matter of personal choice. Reform Jews use electricity and cars on holidays and Shabbat, services have more English and are substantially shorter. It is socially and politically progressive. Women have full equality in services. Officially, reform Judaism is supportive of the LGBTQ movement, including the transgender community and those who are gender non-conforming. Social action is an important feature.
 
There are other smaller groups that are somewhere between reform and conservative- Reconstructionists, Jewish Renewal, Humanist Jewish - but I'm writing a blog, not a thesis. Sticking to the major points.
 
Conservative Judaism: Conservative Judaism seeks to retain much of the traditional practices of Judaism and is considered midway between Reform and Orthodox. Services are conducted in Hebrew and are not dissimilar in content to those of the Orthodox. Conservative Jews are expected to keep kosher and follow more of the traditional halakha. However, in Conservative synagogues, men and women sit together, women can be rabbis and have full equality in religious rituals, Conservative Jews can drive to the synagogue, and they can stream religious services.
 
Modern Orthodox:  If you watched Shtisel, you might remember when one of the main characters asked with a curled lip of disgust - "What am I, Modern Orthodox?" Modern Orthodox follow the rules of traditional halakha, the kosher laws, no use of cars or electronics on Shabbat or designated holidays, services are segregated by gender, and while women can lead prayers in all-women groups, they do not participate in minyans, read the Torah in mixed services, or act as rabbis. There is some variability on whether women cover their hair or whether they can wear pants. However, Modern Orthodox, other than obeying the religious laws, live in the 21st century. They work as doctors, lawyers, teachers, computer scientists, government employees - at all possible jobs - as long as they can do so while observing the law. They watch television and movies, read novels (and write them), participate in sports, and wear clothes that while reasonably modest, are also reasonably modern. And by "they" - I mean men AND women.  
 
Ultra-orthodox: The alternative word for the Ultra-orthodox is Haredin. We're now into Shtisel territory. These are the Jews who wear the black suits and black hats, the women who always cover their hair and never wear pants. Strict adherence to Jewish law - like the Modern Orthodox - but also rejection of much of modern society. No movies, no television, very little if any interaction between the ultras and anyone outside the community - from less observant Jews to non-Jews. In fact, some of them would regard a Jew like me as not Jewish. (With the exception of certain Hasidic sects like the Lubavitchers who try to lure less observant or secular Jews back into the observant fold.) While technology may be used, the internet is limited, and smart phones forbidden or strongly discouraged. The role of women is also strictly prescribed. Not only is seating segregated by gender in synagogues - during services, women sit in balconies or behind screens so that men can't even catch a glimpse of them. Some Ultras in Israel not only want women to have separate seating areas on busses, refuse to sit next to women on planes, but want to eliminate even the images of women in public ads or newspaper photographs. Large families are common and encouraged. However, in an interesting role reversal, it is usually the Haredin women who work outside the home so that their husbands will be free to pursue a life of studying the Torah, and many Haredin women see themselves in partnership with their husbands in creating a religious home. The ultra-orthodox are also split into two groups - the Hasidic, who are the spiritual descendants of a religious reform movement in the 18th century that sought to inject joy into observance and who engage in ecstatic prayer, and the Yeshivish, who reject the Hasidic movement and put more emphasis on intellectual study. Television shows like Shtisel have made them more sympathetic, even to me - who as a Jew somewhere between secular and reform, isn't all that thrilled about their practices, especially with regards to women.  
 
And with that - I'm ending my rough guide. This is meant to be a starting place - for those who have little knowledge of Jews or Judaism, not the total sum and knowledge. I probably left out some small groups. I'm sure I left out details or made some mistakes. Feel free to point them out, and I will feel free to ignore you. What I hope I conveyed was the complexity of the community and the wide range of practices engaged in by people who identity as Jewish.  For more information, check out My Jewish Learning online or the many, many books that have been written about Jews and Judaism from different perspectives.
 
 

I've been thinking about age lately, not just because I, like everyone else, am aging, but because I'm thinking time and my series. When you start writing a series that you hope will run for years, you need to think about the age of the characters - and how quickly they will age. Especially if you're writing a thriller series where the characters wind up putting themselves in danger - at what age do you start and at what rate do they grow older?

It seems like a silly question - but I've seen authors who didn't realize they would be writing a series for twenty years regret choices they'd made about age. If you start a character in her late forties - which is still, in my book, reasonably young  - and you age the character in real time, i.e., you put out a book a year, twenty years later, your character is approaching seventy - which is a little old to be trading punches or climbing walls.

Daniel Silva, who writes the Gabriel Allon character in his espionage thriller, tied his character to a real historical event - the justice exacted by Israel on the killers of Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972. His character is now in his late sixties. It's still a good series, but Gabriel is getting a little long in the tooth to be personally wrestling with terrorists. Not that it stops him - but at some point, it will become questionable. 

On the other hand, Miss Marple, in Agatha Christie's books, started out as a little old lady and never seemed to change. Of course,  her activities were knitting, figuring out clues,  and being adorable, activities that can be done as easily at an older age as at a younger age.

Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky, both writing women detectives who were more likely to get shot or shoot back than Miss Marple, had different approaches. Sara Paretsky initially aged VI Warshawsky in real time. Books are published a year apart, and V.I. aged that year in between. However, in 2010, Paretsky changed V.I.'s birth year from 1950 to 1957. Kinsey Millhone in Sue Grafton's book did not age in real time. The events in Sue Grafton's books, although also published a year apart, took place almost immediately after the events of the previous book.  But that made for a little caginess about in what year her book were taking place.

So what have I decided? I don't know if I'll be writing the Kolya Petrov series for twenty years - but maybe. I really like him, Alex, and the supporting cast. So I'd like to leave my options open. This means that I'd like him to do some aging, but not so much that I can't send him off on dangerous missions.

I've made two decisions. I started Kolya and Alex at approximately age 34 or so, which is damn young, and gives me a little flexibility.  And 34, while young, is still old enough that both of them have had sufficient time to gain a reasonable level of experience and accomplishment in their professions of secret agent and attorney, respectively. But I'm also making the decision that the time in the books will not exactly correspond to real time. The events of Nerve Attack are close to real time - they happen eight months after the events in Trojan Horse, and the book will be published almost a year after Trojan Horse. The events of the book I'm working on now are four months after Nerve Attack, and the book will be published in the summer of 2022 (assuming I finish it).  So in two years, Kolya and Alex will have aged one year. Which means that if both I and the series last twenty years, Kolya'll be somewhere in his forties, still young enough to be that active character that I'm writing, but not so old that I would feel guilty at forcing him to hang off the side of a cliff.  After all, the series is in something of an alternative world - the President and all the politicians are fictional (although Bernie Sanders exists in this world) and there is no Covid - so why not bend time a little?

So what do you think? If you're a writer of a series - what decisions have you made about your character's age? If you're a reader - what age do you prefer for the protagonist - and do you have any thoughts about whether they should age in real time?

Last night, I woke up around midnight and then spent half an hour staring at the ceiling and asking myself why  write novels. It takes me at least a year to go from idea to book - numerous hours actually writing, then there's the obsession time, when I'm thinking about what I'm writing.  When I'm not writing, I feel guilty. Then there are times when I just stare at my computer, not sure what to write next, or the times when I decide that what I've written is total crap.

Writing swallows most of my day. It's absorbing, and on occasion, infuriating and painful.

I do have other interests. Guitar, French, photography, chess. I love to bike and cross country ski, in the appropriate seasons. I'd like to go back to riding horses someday before I'm too old to do so. Yet I spend my days with imaginary people in imaginary worlds.

When I was practicing law, I earned something between $300 and $500 an hour. My first novel, Trojan Horse, came out last October. I couldn't even begin to calculate how many hours I put into writing and editing the numerous drafts. I've had wonderful reviews. A prominent British critic listed Trojan Horse as one of the best thrillers of 2020 and yet my sales have been less than overwhelming.  I would have made more money practicing law for one hour instead of the hundreds of hours I put into this book. My financial bottom line for Trojan Horse, considering all the money I've put into marketing is probably a negative several thousand dollars.

Last night, I was thinking about the obvious truth that, setting aside the superstars like Lee Child or Michael Connelly, the people really making money at writing these days aren't authors of fiction. They are the services selling reviews, selling tips on how to be a best selling author, selling advertising, selling the opportunity to give your book away while offering the hope that  people will read it for free, like it, and then shell out money for your next book. 

Okay, I knew all this going into writing my novels. (I'm on my third Kolya Petrov novel now, the second in the series will be out in September.) I'm fortunate in that I don't need to live on my earnings as a writer. I write, like so many of us, because I feel empty when I'm not writing, because I love creating stories and characters and living in the world of my imagination. Still, nevertheless, there is ego involved here.  I would like to be more successful in selling my books, although I'm going to be damn careful about the services I use to get there.   It's easier to justify how much time I put into writing when there is a tangible reward. There is another reason why I want to be successful, though: to share my stories and my characters on a bigger scale than I do now. The  more successful authors share their stories with thousands of people, and book clubs and organization are thrilled to have them speak. I have to admit, I have an ego. I'd like to have a few more people wanting to read my books and hear me speak.

 The ego is a terrible taskmaster, isn't it? 

This gets me to the incident yesterday which probably prompted my ceiling staring session - although in retrospect I think this could have been an episode on Shitts Creek.

I had joined a very small  - 3-4 people -  local book club and the  scheduled book for the month of March was my book, Trojan Horse. I looked forward to this session for days. I knew it would be only a few people but I thought we'd discuss the themes, the characters, how and why I made artistic choices in writing in book. Have I mentioned that I love talking about my books?

So I signed on to the Zoom for the book club hour. There were two other people on initially, a woman maybe in her eighties and a man, maybe in his fifties or sixties, who, I believe, had been a professor of something. The guy told me he couldn't read my book because of the violence in it. For him, it wasn't just that there was torture but that a woman had been murdered in the opening of my book. Because he's very tuned into the horror of violence against women, although the most explicit violence in the book is experienced by a man."Okay," I said. I understood. I do know that some people have problems with the level of violence. 

The older woman told me that she read the book.  The torture scenes bothered her, but it was a real page turner, and she couldn't put it down. And that was all she had to say about it. I talked about why I wrote explicit torture scenes in Trojan Horse - which actually had to do with the deeper theme of morality and choices: that these scenes were necessary for readers to appreciate the level of betrayal of the character and also raise the issue of characters willing to go along with an evil that they didn't personally witness.  That discussion took five minutes because it was basically a monologue. No one wanted to actually discuss it.  

So fifteen minutes into what I'd thought would be an interesting discussion of Trojan Horse, the two other participants started throwing out the names of books to read next time. The guy, who found my book too violent to read, wanted to read a book about a man volunteering to be sent to Auschwitz to try to organize a revolt. He couldn't read my book because of the violence - but he wanted to read about people in Auschwitz?

Another woman joined the group fifteen minutes into our session. She also was probably in her eighties, and she had trouble getting her mike or her camera to work. She hadn't read my book, either. Apparently, she hadn't even tried. Once we got her sorted, the guy who found my book too violent but was fine with reading about Auschwitz launched into a forty minute narrative about his family background, his family name, what other books he was reading, what he thought about the other books he was reading. He talked about his family leaving Israel - and I realized he meant the expulsion of Jews from what was then their home in around 79 A.D. (We were an all Jewish group - so his family's expulsion from the land of Israel in 79 A.D. wasn't exactly unique to him.) Our newest arrival thought he meant that his family had left Israel within the last few years, prompting a five minute session to explain that he was telling the story of his family's migration over two thousand years. Then the hour was up.

My husband later noted the irony: that a man who was so deeply woke about how women were treated that he claimed he couldn't read my novel had hijacked a meeting that was supposed to be discussing a book written by a woman - to talk about himself.

​I wound up both infuriated and amused, both because of the absurdity of the man taking it over and at my own reaction to it.  That session was supposed to be about me, damnit. About my book. Not about his family or family names. Ego really does take over sometimes, doesn't it? His - and mine.

Dibs on this scene for a comedic novel in the future.

So why do I write? Still don't exactly know, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that my first reaction to the book club session that I just described was to mark it down for later inclusion in a novel. All of which circles back to the fact that I write  because I can't imagine not writing.

My second novel, Nerve Attack, will be out in September. If you haven't yet read Trojan Horse, please check it out on Amazon. https://amzn.to/318VaGy 

I am in the realm of in-between. I just turned in my latest manuscript, Nerve Attack, which will be coming out from Encircle Publications on September 22, 2021, and I haven't yet started a new novel. I have lots of books to read for research, a number of ideas, but I haven't even started an outline. So I am in-between. I thought I'd like being here. Right now, I'm not so sure.

From my window, I can see the hillside covered in snow and the rare vision of sunlight illuminating tree branches and turning the dull white of the hill into glistening diamonds. It won't last long - more snow is expected this afternoon and then for the next three days. It's Vermont. In other years, I would be out cross country skiing. (Actually, to be honest, in other years, I wouldn't be here, I'd be in Florida. Most years we spend January and February close to Ft. Lauderdale. We still get plenty of winter when we return to Vermont since snow in April is not uncommon, but deep winter can be on the grim side.) This year, though, I'm staying close to home. Which is one of the reasons being in between is something of a pain.

Yes, I do have plenty I can do. I have way too many hobbies from playing guitar to taking photographs to learning French. Thanks to my daughter, I recently discovered on-line chess and I've been playing several games a day against the computer. There's a stack of novels I'm working on, and I love reading.   And while I am not going out to trails to cross country ski, I have a lovely big yard, where I periodically traipse through the snow  and woods that are lovely, dark, and deep.

(I also could clean my house and do laundry, but that's a whole other subject.)

But I was doing most of the above when I was still working on Nerve Attack. (Except cleaning my house.) My mornings were for writing and editing, but I would take periodic breaks to indulge in my various hobbies. Working on a book gives my day focus. Purpose. Yes, I have more time now to play, but I don't feel like it.  I feel like something's missing. I'm waiting. And even if you have plenty to do, who really likes waiting?

And, by the way, aren't we all in-between at the moment? Waiting for something to start. In many ways, we've been on pause for a year (maybe four years) - and we can see the  end, but we're not there yet.

We all have lots of things that we say we'd do if we had the time. But what happens when we do have too much time? How much do we really do? Because we don't just need things to do, even fun things to do. We need purpose and direction. And that's what I find to be problematic about being in-between. 

I initially thought I'd take a few weeks off from writing, but since I'm not enjoying it as much as I thought I would - maybe I'll start on my outline today or tomorrow.  My chess game may suffer, but that's okay. I'm lousy. 

Here's to all of us ending our national in-betweenness as well.