"Empty Chairs" --A short story for Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. This year's theme is the millions of CHILDREN murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. These children did not just perish due to hunger or natural disasters, but as a result of cruel and deliberate acts of killing!

EMPTY CHAIRS
I was ten years old when my mother was the class mother on a one-day trip to Jerusalem and Dora got her first period.

My mom didn’t tell me. Dora did, a couple of days later, assuming that my mom had. In the separate building that housed the school lavatory, Dora also wanted to show me her new special belt that held the pad, which she was supposed to wash every day. The whole thing was just too gross. I fled.

Throughout the next two years, weird and mysterious things were happening around Dora. Not awesome, but rather repulsive, like the curious importance she gave the gigantic mounds that filled the front of her dress, and her seeking the boys’ attention, which I so dreaded.

The boys' after-school hangout had shifted from the schoolyard to the front of Dora's apartment building, where the branches of an aged, massive sycamore allowed them to climb up closer to Dora’s perch on the third floor. On my daily trek with Sarah, Bella and Debbie to the private library off Allenby Street, where, for a monthly fee, we took out three books each day, we would spot Dora at her window. Her pretty face with warm brown eyes was framed by light brown curls, and she smiled easily even without a good reason. If the boys weren't around, Dora walked with us to the library although she rarely even read the one book a week from the school library while the four of us would often finish a book on our walk back home.

For a long time, Dora wasn't even the subject of discussion among us four. Whatever was taking place around her dwelled in the periphery of my consciousness, but had I been interested, I wouldn’t have known what questions to ask. My three friends had begun to bud, and Debbie's mother badgered her not to stoop and to let her buy her a bra. We had perused the drawings in the midwifing book my grandmother had brought from Russia in 1920 and had been horrified to discover what we really had “down there.” Yet none of it had anything to do with the way Dora pushed out her large breasts or with the boys, all a head shorter than she, acting crazy, punching and hitting one another just to show off, but looking like idiots.

In fifth grade, on the nurse's day off, I tore a ligament in my ankle. I sat in class, whimpering until the teacher could no longer ignore it and sent Dora with me to the Red Star of David emergency room. I couldn’t hobble the four blocks, so Dora carried me on her back. After the doctor bandaged my leg and ordered home rest, she carried me uphill on Mazeh Street all the way home. Her sweat was tangy and full-bodied, like an adult’s.

A couple of weeks later, when she invited me to come to her home to play, I couldn’t refuse. It would have been rotten of me.

Dora's mother had blue numbers tattooed on her forearm. She was a handsome woman, older than everyone else's mom, her hair coiffed, her yellow dress tailored, and she smelled clean in the heat of summer. She was so different from my Israeli-born mom who, like me, wore her dark hair in a waist-long braid, walked around in blue shorts and Biblical sandals, and who favored industrial soap for our bedtime shower.

Dora’s mother said something in German to Dora, and Dora led me to their dining room. Their furniture--heavy, dark, and smelling of lemon and wax--was the kind salvaged from Europe. The inlaid-wood table was so shiny that I could see my reflection in it. Dora's mother gave us cloth napkins trimmed in lace and served us tea in a silver set and home-baked butter cookies that were the best I had ever tasted.

After her mother had left the room, Dora pointed to the corpulent buffet, made of the same shiny, grainy wood as the dining table. Above it hung a framed beveled mirror. On top of the buffet were two framed photographs, one of a woman with a boy and a girl, and one of a man with a younger set of a boy and a girl. Although the boys in both pictures wore knee-long dark pants held up with suspenders and their hair was plastered to their foreheads as if still wet, they weren't the same boy. The older girl was blonde. The younger one was just a toddler, with a huge bow on top of her brown hair. Her pretty eyes looking into the camera reminded me of Dora's.

“My parents' families before the war,” Dora whispered.

My stomach lurched as it caught the implication. I had seen photographs of Jews being rounded up, of cattle cars, of barbed wire, of gas chambers. Bella's dad from Poland and Debbie's mom from Rumania had lived through the Holocaust. But the photos they had in their homes were of young people and grown ups, not of little kids.

Dora went on. “Then my parents met and made me. To make up for the kids they’d lost.”

I busied myself with the tea. I thought it wasn’t polite to keep staring at the dead children.

We moved to Dora’s corner room, which had large windows and was filled with dolls dressed in real clothes. An armoire had as many board games as a store. The pink bedspread matched the curtains. As I explored Dora’s treasures, I couldn't take my mind off her four siblings. Dead brothers and sisters she had never met. I thought it must be very sad to live in this home. I tried to imagine that my sister had been born before me and had been gassed or hurled against a wall, her scalp smashed. It made me want to cry.

Otherwise, the whole afternoon was a drag. I beat Dora easily in the board games. We practiced our flute lessons, and she was okay, but got bored. When playing with dolls, she agreed too quickly with my plots, never offering a new idea. Dora was so unlike Sarah, Bella, and Debbie with whom I could stage plays and then serialize them for weeks. It was like playing alone, so I finally just ignored her as she sat cross-legged on her bed and watched me dress and undress her dolls while I made up stories.


The boys' interest in Dora climbed up a notch when she started showing them her bra. One by one, she took them behind the lavatory. I knew about it because she told me and once even asked whether I, too, wanted to see it. I was incredulous at her stupidity. I didn't want to laugh at her because of her dead siblings and how sad it was to have to make up for their loss, but neither did I want to have anything to do with her.

In March, when she turned twelve, her mother sent pretty hand-written invitations to her Bat-Mitzvah the following Tuesday. It was to be a small dinner for Dora's “best friends.”

Tuesday was a school day, but since it was the day when, during Creation, God had said twice that the day had been “good,” it was all right to have a party. But I was mortified to be considered among Dora's best friends. Sarah, Bella, or Debbie surely weren’t her friends; they no longer allowed Dora to walk with us to the library, because the boys would follow and taunt us. Besides, there was something contaminating about associating with Dora. People might think that I, too, was the kind of girl who showed the boys my bra—or would do so when I needed one, that is. I had discovered that the females in my family all wore “falsies.” With the twin almonds I was growing, I wasn’t about to break this tradition.

I wondered who were the other girls who had been invited to Dora’s party. Probably the ones living behind Dora’s building in the next block, which was zoned for the other neighborhood school. I wished I hadn't been invited. Unlike Sarah, Bella and Debbie, who thought boys were disgusting, these other girls might think I was Dora’s friend. That I was like her.

But after the trip on her back to the emergency room, I couldn’t refuse the invitation. I thought about those butter cookies.

My mom gave me money to buy a set of handkerchiefs folded in a flat cardboard box under clear plastic. I drew a picture of Dora carrying me on her back. I rhymed birthday wishes that all her dreams would come true so she wouldn’t be blue. I starched and ironed my mint-colored organza dress with the black velvet bow. Along with my patent leather Mary-Jane shoes and white socks, no one would think I wore a bra or had dirty pads. No one would think that I took boys behind the lavatory to show them anything.

Dora was dressed in a red Tyrolean dress, the section below her chest crisscrossed with a thin cord. The cloth of a white blouse underneath was gathered over her cleavage and was embarrassingly stretched wide over her ample breasts. Below the full, embroidered skirt, the one-inch heels did nothing to make Dora look taller than wider.

I felt like a fraud as I handed her the present and nodded politely to her mother. I wanted to find the opportunity to explain that this was a mistake because I wasn’t Dora's “best friend,” or even “a friend.” But then I glimpsed the dining room and felt as if I had stepped into a fairy tale.

The table was open to its full length and covered with a white tablecloth. It was set with silver candelabras and silver finger bowls and silver napkin holders and multiples of silver forks, knives and spoons. There was a bouquet of red roses in the center. The first course was already waiting in each of the plates, half a grapefruit sectioned and topped with a cherry. On a teacart, crystal glasses of lemonade with mint leaves were ready. Another flower arrangement sat on the buffet, where silver serving platters awaited the food. The smells coming from the kitchen were foreign and delicious and made saliva gather in my mouth.

The pictures of the dead children remained in their spots, untouched, old-world with their foreign clothes and hair, the sepia-color pinning them to those bad times less than twenty years earlier, when the Nazis exterminated Jews like cockroaches.

Dora's father, a big man with a broad face and neat wisps of white hair and kind brown eyes like Dora's, was meticulous in his movements as he placed the needle of a gramophone on the record. Classical notes poured into the room, the kind that old people went to listen at concerts, the kind I heard on neighbors’ late-night radio.

I tugged at the black velvet bow of my dress. Dora's mother gave me a glass of lemonade and invited me to sit down on the sofa in the adjacent living room. For the occasion, the two double doors were opened to combine the two rooms into one. I obeyed, and Dora came to sit next to me. We didn’t speak. Her father said something in German, and she replied, her tone polite like to a teacher, so unlike the easy tone I used at home. I sipped my lemonade while examining a glass cabinet that contained magnificent porcelain figurines. Their faces were angelic, with tiny, pointed noses, their hands graceful, the tilts of their necks delicate. I was awed by the beautiful, flowing dresses with porcelain lace petticoats. Princes with rapture in their eyes wooed the princesses, kneeling or striking princely poses. I put down my empty glass on the coaster, rose up, and stood fixated in front of the display.

“This princess strolls out to the woods, following the enchanting sound of gurgling water,” I said, pointing at two of the figures.

“There’s no woods.’

“Pretend woods,” I said, and went on. “She's sitting by the spring and she doesn't know that the shepherd in the clearing is really a cursed prince. When the wizard who hates him will try to cast a spell on the princess, this dog will bark to alert the prince, and the prince will draw his sword and fight the wizard—”

“And the dog will pee on her shoes,” Dora added.

I was mortified. I couldn’t bear the thought of ruining that delicate stroke of muted red on the tiny feet. “No. These are satin shoes,” I said with exasperation.

What was the use? Standing quietly, filled with rapture, I went on weaving new stories in my head, the music filling the room blending them into wonderful pictures.

I forgot about Dora until she spoke behind me. “Maybe no one will come.”

I turned, and my first thought was that I was the only one stupid enough to come to her party. Then I felt anger about the way Dora had brought it all upon herself and how she now involved me. But then I saw the tears in her eyes and felt bad. I felt pity for this big girl who towered over me but who wanted to be my friend. Pity for this girl whose life both at home and at school I couldn’t comprehend. I wanted to ask about the girls who went to the other school and were supposed to be here, but I wasn’t sure if I should.

“Are Sarah, Bella, and Debbie coming?” Dora asked me.

I swallowed. “I didn't know you invited them.”

Dora kept looking down at me, her gaze pleading. I felt so small, so uncomfortable with the power she handed me. I shrugged and kept my shoulders high up in a gesture of helplessness. I wished I could just leave.

The record had ended for the third or fourth time. Dora’s father changed it once more. Her mother peeked out the window again and again. They spoke in German. She gave me another glass of lemonade. Her skin was as translucent as the figurines’, and I realized that I had never before met anyone who had escaped the Israeli sun. We waited.

Dora began to cry, a soft, silent weeping. Her father stroked her hair. Her mother's lips tightened into a line as she stepped into the kitchen and closed the door. With all that lemonade in me, I wanted to pee badly, but dared not move. Dora went on weeping.

Finally, her mother came out of the kitchen carrying a tray with steaming food. Dora's father lit the candles in the candelabra. I sat down in the dining room, Dora’s parents at both ends, Dora and me facing each other at the center. On either side, three chairs separated Dora's parents and us. Twelve girls who hadn't shown up.

The four dead children looked straight at me. Grave, foreign children. Murdered by the Nazis. I wished I had thought of grabbing Dora’s seat first. She had known to avoid looking at them.

I examined all those utensils and wondered which one to pick first. My friends and I had read a manners book for when we would be invited to dine at a palace. We practiced with whatever was left from the set my father had inherited from his mother and which my mom hated because it was stupid to polish silver when we had stainless steel. Now I forgot everything the book had said except that it was very important not to make a mistake, so I watched Dora lift the outside fork and hold it in her left hand as she ate the grapefruit. I did the same, although it was difficult to eat with my left.

My bladder could hold no more. My face hot, I excused myself and went to the bathroom, certain that it was impolite and now they were talking about me in German. I wished that at least one other girl had come. But when I returned to the table, Dora’s mother was bringing more food from the kitchen and she smiled at me kindly.

The other dishes tasted as good as they smelled. I ate everything Dora's mother put on my plate, making sure to thank her each time, to dab my mouth with the lacy cloth napkin in between bites. I wanted to be good, to make up for the absence of the twelve others, to make up for the sorrow of the four dead children.

The last record Dora's father had changed ended. This time he didn't get up. The record went on turning, obedient in its soft, rhythmic hum, but the needle whimpered. The scratching gave me goose bumps. No one moved to do anything about it. I hugged myself and rubbed the skin of my arms. The twelve empty chairs and the untouched place settings gaped at me. Suddenly, Dora's father dropped his face in his hands. Dora’s mother said something, but he only shook his head. There was some strange trembling to his shoulders. Dora's mother bit her lips, her face contorted. I lowered my gaze into my fingers, not knowing where else to look. Then there was this odd sound in the room, like a choked moan, and I looked up to see Dora’s mother rush back into the kitchen.

I shifted in my seat. The four dead children in the photographs were silent. I wondered how old the oldest had been when they killed him. I was sorry that Dora was not the kind of child who could make up for the loss. She was a woman in a Tyrolean girl’s dress. At least her parents didn’t know what she did with the boys.

Dora’s father still didn’t move. His scalp between wisps of white hair shone. A guttural croak tore out of him. My first introduction to unbearable grief bore down on me. I wanted to cry with them, but I had no right since the Nazis hadn’t killed anyone in my family.

Dora just looked down, her fingers twisting and knotting the napkin in her lap.

For a split second I wanted to offer myself to them as their child. It was a stupid idea. I slid off my chair. My throat was constricted. “Thank you very much. The food was delicious,” I managed to say, even though I was leaving before dessert, before the birthday cake, possibly losing out on those butter cookies.

Neither one answered. I didn’t knock on the kitchen door to say good-bye to Dora’s mother before I left, although it was impolite not to thank the hostess.

Dora’s family—the dead and the living—walked with me all the way home.

###

EMPTY CHAIRS was published in Midstream, April 2002 and in Lynx Eye, September 2002, and was selected for THE BEST JEWISH WRITING 2002, John Wiley & Son, (published in Fall 2003 and received a special mention in the Jerusalem Post, 2004)

For more short stories, essays and articles by novelist Talia Carner, please check http://www.taliacarner.com/writingsamples.html

Update 20015: Following the interest in this story, I wrote the novel HOTEL MOSCOW, (HarperCollins 2015,) featuring a protagonist who is a Second-Generation daughter of Holocaust survivors, but who tries to get away from this legacy. Only when she travels to Russia shortly after the fall of communism and faces anti-Semitism does she come to grips with it.  http://www.taliacarner.com/

The Short Story vs. A Novel

Recently, a reader asked me about “the short stories that had led to writing each of your novels.” The question presumed a set path in developing fiction, a road starting with an embryo short piece that, incubated and nurtured, develops into a book-length work. It reminded me that when someone had asked Ernest Hemingway, “How do you write a novel?” He answered, “You first clean the refrigerator.”

I was not “cleaning a refrigerator” when, on Nov. 3, 1993 at 2:48 PM, I started typing away. My fingers did not take a rest for 9 months until I had a 640-page draft.

Penning that first novel was not the result of long years of contemplation, collecting material and clearing space in the attic for a desk on which to pour out my authorly ambitions--nor of having the seed of a short story. I had never even kept a journal in which I aired my grievances against neighbors or my pet peeves against humanity…. There was no short story that needed harvesting.

Instead, that first novel--painted on a large canvas of world stage, populated with a host of characters and pretzeled with subplots--burst out of me with all its multi-layered literary nuances, psychological exploration, and social message. Only after that maiden draft was completed did I begin to hone my fiction-writing skills through writing workshops, how-to books, feedback from new writing buddies, and being mentored by successful authors.

Throughout that process I met professional writers--journalists and poets--who had been dreaming for years to “one day write a book-length work.” The more I heard those comments the more I grasped the enormity of the task I had accomplished. But I also realized that my mind was simply wired to think in terms of 120,000 word stories. If anything, my most monumental task for each novel has been to rein the story from becoming too long. With each novel I must tame the material down to a publishable size. (In the many revisions of my recent novel, JERUSALEM MAIDEN, at one time I cut 90 pages and 25 more another time—not in large chunks, but rather through brutal trimming of subplots, scenes or events.)

It was only at writing workshops, by way of exercises, that I was introduced to the short-story form and to the personal essay structure. The 800- to 3,000-words pieces I write in between novels are delightful fillers, like sorbet that clears the palette between heavy dishes. However, none so far has had the seed to grow into a full-length novel.

On the other hand, trying to find short stories hidden inside my book-length tales is equally difficult. The two forms are of different species. No matter how much you feed a Chihuahua, it will never grow into a Great Dane.

You may enjoy reading samples of my short pieces at http://www.taliacarner.com/writingsamples.html

 # # #

Novelist Talia Carner’s most recent novel, JERUSALEM MAIDEN, won the Forward National Literature Award in the “historical fiction” category.

Secrets Revealed by a Writers’ Conference Junkie.

November is “National Novel Writing Month” (NaNoWriMo or NaNoMo). Many would-be writers make their first attempt. Congratulations. Yet, what’s the next step?

Recently, at a social event, a woman told me that she had “finished writing a novel” and was looking for an agent. When I probed about her book, I discovered that her “novel” was merely 30,000 words long (most novels run around 90,000-115,00 words.) I suggested that she study the business of writing and publishing—she could even start by reading articles on the Internet. “I don’t have time for that,” she replied.

Last week, after one of my speaking events, a woman cornered me in the ladies room and asked me to give her “a name of a publisher that will publish my memoir.” I suggested that she check organizations or university departments that focus on the main topic of her memoir. She stormed away as if I was holding back information. In reality, I could no more name such a specific acquisition editor, which is what she really meant, than I could give her the lottery's winning number.

There are no shortcuts in writing and publishing a book as there is no shortcut in any road to success. It is a long, arduous and lonely journey with a great reward that is more about expressing one's art than the star-dust of notoriety.

This post is for writers who are serious about learning to play the piano before asking to book a concert hall:

Earlier in my writing career I was a "writers’ conference junkie," attending as many workshops and programs as I could cram. It was my self-designed MFA in which I mastered writing skills, studied the tools of the craft, learned how to structure, revise and edit, and absorbed inside information about the publishing industry. I also met other writers and formed lasting connections with writing buddies who forever help with their constructive comments and support. I met agents who encouraged me and ultimately offered me representation.

There are over 600 writers' conferences each year across the country. Many—not all—are affiliated with English departments of universities, yet do not require that you be a student there. In fact, they draw a mature crowd that is quite different from their student body. If you've never attended a writers' conference, it's always easiest to start with one near you to get a feel, although they vary by programs and offerings as the people that organize and populate them, so you should plan to attend at least two or three... (See http://writing.shawguides.com/ for a complete listing.)

To focus on the craft of writing and to venture into new fields of writing, my favorite is IWWG's summer “Remember The Magic” (for women only) that offers the most classes and workshops simultaneously than any writing conference I've been to. The warm and supportive environment nurtures writing free of judgment.

The most prestigious conferences ones are Sewanee Writers Conference, (TN) and Breadloaf Writers Conference (Middlebury, VT) where you must submit your work to be accepted, and the competition is fierce. They focus on the writing craft, not marketing, but Breadloaf also offers democratic access to visiting agents who scout the conference for yet-undiscovered talent. Iowa Writing Workshop also offers numerous week-long writing programs that can be stitched together into a summer-long studying. Their instructors, though, may vary in strength and teaching abilities.

APW conference (this February in Chicago) is intense and is tightly related to MFA programs in contents and in atmosphere. If you are not affiliated with an MFA program, you may find yourself floating unanchored in a horde of thousands of strangers…. But there is a huge amount of lectures and panel discussions, though not hands-on instruction.

But if you are past the stage of learning and it is time for you to focus on meeting agents, Writer's Digest Conference in New York City this coming January does that. Also IWWG has "Meet the Agent" program in NYC in April and October, (open to men, too!) It is an excellent opportunity to pitch directly to agents who are looking for new authors. In addition, many conferences across the country are attended by agents who travel far to present there; some make particular conferences their "home" as they return every year. It is especially true for genre-specific conferences that focus on sci-fi, romance, fantasy, etc.

If your manuscript is ready and you want to pitch directly to publishers, the NYC Pitch Conference is the place for you. You need to apply and show that your manuscript is in a good shape to pitch to the visiting editors from main publishing houses. While only 5% of all pitched books have ended up with a publishing contract, this event is an excellent place to evaluate where you stand in the publishing journey and what you must still do to get there. I found that honing my pitch through the methodical, thoughtful process was extremely valuable in eventually landing an agent and a publishing contract.

There are many other good writers' conferences and workshop. I admit to not having traveled to either the West Coast or overseas. As you start searching for the right event, here are some suggested steps:

1) Your budget: Registration, travel and housing—as well as number of days and time of year— are obvious considerations.

2) Check how long an event has been around. The poorly organized ones do not last, as attendees do not return. If it is a new conference, check who are the organizers and what is their track record. But don’t overlook those. A small, new conference with excellent instructors may offer the intimate, comfortable environment you need.

3) Start with a local writers’ conference, knowing that you will attend more.

4) Take your time to evaluate the stage of your manuscript or your idea (for non-fiction) and set your goal for the conference accordingly.

5) Google writers or industry professionals you particularly like and check which conferences they attend.

6) Be prepared to be friendly and make contact with fellow writers. They are an equally important benefit of your conference experience.

If you have attended good writing workshops and events, I invite you to respond to this post with your own suggestions.

Talia Carner

Talia Carner’s latest novel, JERUSALEM MAIDEN, (HarperCollins, June 2011) details the struggles of a young woman between passion and faith. Please check www.TaliaCarner.com

Hardcover, softcover--or e-book?--A novelist perspective

“Print on paper is out, digitalized words are in,” — or so is the current opinion expressed in social circles, the internet and publishing industry.

Is that really so?

There is no question that the e-book revolution is upon us with various choices led by Kindle, and iPad and Nook, leaving other starters such Sony Reader in the dust. "By this time next year," wrote technology expert Mike Egan two years ago, "e-books will be mainstream."

I’ve recently replaced my cumbersome and ineffective Sony Reader with a basic Kindle (Sony Reader required tech support each time the battery ran out—and it did run out freqently. If I left it plugged into my computer to recharge, the computer eventually went into save mode, causing the Sony Reader’s battery to drain!) By the time I deserted Sony Reader, it had over 80 books, mostly the free classic books, which I tend to read in my never-ending self-schooling in English Lit. The platform did not lend itself to transferring the books to my Kindle.

Besides being an avid reader, I am also a published novelist, and have collected statistics about my books sales: My first novel PUPPET CHILD, (2002) sold only one hardcover copy for every 100 softcover copies. And now, nine years after it was published, its various digital platforms sell twenty copies to each softcover book.

When my second novel, CHINA DOLL, was published in 2006, I told my agent and publisher not to bother with hardcover; I wanted readers—and I wanted them buying their own copies at the lower rate rather than waiting until the less-costly softcover version became available. Now, the digital selling ration is similar as for my PUPPET CHILD—about twenty-five to one.

Both novels are available in all digital platforms most of us have never heard of, yet are being sold, thanks to an innovative service, SmashWords.com .

Now, that JERUSALEM MAIDEN is out, we discover that each week about one-third of the sales are in digital formats.

If paper books continue to hold their place in the market for the many of us who love the feel and versatility of it (it is much easier to flip through pages or glance through sections in the paper version,) I must say that I have been right on one count: The print must be large enough not to require a second pair of glasses…. The font needs not be the industry-standard "Large Print" for the senior citizen shelves at the public library, but simply large enough to be easy on the eyes. That’s what I had requested from HarperCollins when they’ve recently published my new novel JERUSALEM MAIDEN.

The verdict? Hardcovers look great on the shelf, but cost too much in resources (paper, shipping,) and are the ones most likely to be replaced by softcover and digital versions.

Talia Carner’s most recent novel, JERUSALEM MAIDEN, depicts a young woman’s struggle for freedom within the confines of her society’s religious dictate. www.TaliaCarner.com

Public Thoughts To be Read At The Rosh Hashanah Table

Rosh Hashanah 2011— Year 5772 of proud Jewish history

By Talia Carner

The New Year has always been a time of reflection about life within the broader context of one's relationship with others and one’s relationship with God—or the moral values by which each of us chooses to live. It has been a time of spiritual reconnection with Jewish traditions and of remembering those who, over generations of persecution, were killed for the single sin of their faith.

The tradition of eating sweet foods carries with it the optimism of a sweet new year. A new beginning, a chance to start over.

All across the globe, Jews share these moments—and the hope carried in them. This sharing of rituals ties us all together and remind us that no Jew is ever alone.

Yet, as a community, we are alone. Friends of the Jews come and go, their loyalty never taken for granted. This year, Rosh Hashanah falls all too close to the Jew hate-fest that has seized the world, with its official governing body controlled by those committed to excising the roots of Jewish history and identity and thus removing them from their land. The new wave of anti-Semitism has already swept through Europe, Africa and Asia, and has landed right in our midst at the Manhattan's UN building, while it has long metastasized into leading universities, mainstream media and civic organizations claiming to be unbiased and inclusive.

Now Rosh Hashanah stands to remind us that hate can come knocking on our door first with words, with erasing of our history, with biased resolutions and economic boycotts, and then with guns, bombs, and showers of thousands of rockets that no empty promises of “never again” may be able to stop.

Let the fresh start of Rosh Hashanah therefore remind us how much pride we take in Israel’s extraordinary achievements in science, agriculture and technology—efficiencies, discoveries and inventions she has shared for decades with over 120 countries to help nourish children, improve global food production, and leap medical practices to better the lives of millions daily.

Israel makes us walk tall. Without her, Jews would have been like the Gypsies and Kurds of the world.

Yet, she is now in mortal danger of a war orchestrated by enemies delighted to sacrifice the lives of millions of their people to see the Jews disappear from the Middle East.

As we move into the New Year, let us bless all the good things the world has given us while we send our prayers for those who have already been taking the first bullet for us, and will continue to do so to preserve a home for all Jews persecuted in their countries. And as we do so, let us search within ourselves whether we have done all we could for Israel and its people who need us now more than ever.

A couple of years ago, Israel’s president Shimon Peres said that even Ben-Gurion had not dreamed big enough. Let us dream big tonight—stretch our dreams to encompass all the vast possibilities of hope, and let us dream tonight of a world of peace.

Let’s bless all the good things God has given us so far, and celebrate our resilience and our heritage of strong Jewish values that we have shared with the world over for centuries. And let's allow that dream bring joy to our hearts and to our Rosh Hashanah table.

Amen.

Author, speaker and activist Talia Carner lives in New York. Her latest novel, Jerusalem Maiden (HarperCollins, June 2011) is set in the early 1900 at the end of the Ottoman Empire rule of the Holy Land (http://www.taliacarner.com/).

The Day The World Took Notice

By Talia Carner

Having been a supporter of counter-terrorism intelligence in the United States, I attended in January 2001 a closed-group briefing by Richard Clarke, at the time US Counter-Terrorism Coordinator at the National Security Council and a chief counter-terrorism adviser to four USA presidents. He told the attendees about a man called Osama Bin Laden, a Muslim billionaire hiding in Afghanistan who had trained thousands of militants to attack the West. Bin Laden was the man behind the USS Cole attack and others, Clarke reported. The man’s overarching plan was to take over the West, the world of infidels.

Furthermore, Clarke pointed out, Bin Laden had already planted six-hundred highly trained militants in the US. Some of them were known to the security authorities, many were not.

The media would not report about any of it, Clarke explained, not because they did not believe the credible threat supported by mountains of evidence, but because editors did not wish to sound “alarmists.” Their perception was that their respective audiences did not wish to hear about looming catastrophes.

As a fiction writer, I decided to use the idea in my new novel, which I started in August 2001. At a dinner in New York with my agent and her husband, I outlined the story’s premise. I had barely finished delivering the first paragraph when I saw their eyes glaze over. “You seem to see a Muslim behind every tree,” my agent wrote to me later, ignoring my explanation about Extreme Muslims—not all Muslims—who pose a major risk to America.

Three weeks later, on September 11, at around 9 AM, I started my car at my beach house in Bridgehampton, Long Island, two-hours east of New York City. I had a writing group meeting later than evening at my home in Port Washington, twenty miles outside the city, a place known on literary maps as East Egg. I inserted a “book-on-tape” cassette into the slot and set on the road. Forty-five minutes later, the cassette ended. As it was ejected from the console, the radio took over.

I heard that two planes had just hit the Twin Towers.

I thought of Sesnas and small commuter planes which I always distrusted. But two? The hair rose on my arms. The gears in my brains shifted. The synopsis clicked. This was a terror attack.

I pulled to the shoulder of the highway and called my husband back in Bridgehampton. “Turn on the TV. Now.”

When he did, he started screaming. He was incoherent.

“Tell me what do you see?” I shouted. “What is it?”

“Come back!” was all he managed to utter. “Turn around right now!”

“I can’t. I have my writing group tonight. What are you seeing?”

His screaming got under control only enough to tell me that the first building was crumbling. “The city will be closed. Long Island Expressway will be closed. You won’t be able to come back later,” he insisted.

The feeling of déjà vu--the events I've witnessed in Israel from close and far—settled on me with some strange remoteness. The wait was over. It had finally happened. I turned my car around at the first possible ramp and stopped again, heart pounding. We had children in New York City. “This is the moment that would change my life, our life, the world’s life,” I thought as I looked at the quiet blue skiy, the pulsating green of the grass and trees. I was too calm. I should panic. Something was terribly wrong with me.

I could not reach any of the children.

I called my husband again.

“Oh, my God!” he suddenly called out. “Oh, my God! The Building is falling down.”

“What do you mean ‘falling down?’ It’s just a small plane—”

“It’s a jetliner!” On the radio they told of a fire ball thirty stories high.

“This is the beginning of a war,” I said as I restarted the car. That was how things worked in Israel. Nothing was absurd anymore. Not if the World Trade Center tower fell down. Fell down? I still thought that only the top floors had collapsed, from the spot where the plane had hit, and upward.

How far could this attack go? Richard Clarke’s warnings banged in my head. My imagination in the novel I was working on hadn’t gone far enough. I hadn’t conjured anything like this….

One more plane had crashed in Pennsylvania, I now heard on the radio. I pulled to the side of the road yet again, and reached my youngest daughter. Her office was in the basement of an uptown building, and she shared a wall with one of the largest, busiest subway stations.

“Get out of the office and don’t come back,” I instructed her. There was no question of getting her out of the city as I did not want her taking the train. “Stay in your apartment.”

An hour later, I huddled on the couch with my husband, both of us in complete shock. We had supported investigators of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, an event that had left “only” six dead, too few to ring the alarm bells in the public’s consciousness. I now watched, horrified, as bodies hurled themselves off the buildings’ windows.

We got the news that our son-in-law walked across the bridge to Brooklyn, from where he hitchhiked home. My husband’s niece, a mother of three—the youngest only four months old—worked in the building across the street from the WTC. She managed to flee when her office was hit hard by debris. In the confusion and black cloud, she found herself on the Staten Island ferry, shoeless and bagless, and was taken into the home of a collegue. Ron’s two cousins who work on the 80th floor of the World Trade Center happened to be out of the office: one was away on a business trip, the other took their father to the eye doctor that morning! The old man’s progressive blindness had saved this son's life....


A few days later, at my local train station, I looked at the parking lot filled with unclaimed cars of people who went to work on September 11 and never came back.

In the coming months, I helped a friend who has been involved in fund-raising for social and psychological services for families of the deceased.

Ten years later, while I and the rest of the world have resumed our lives, there are over three thousand children in Long Island who suffer the irreversible, irrecoverable loss of a parent.

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Author Talia Carner’s latest novel, JERUSALEM MAIDEN, was just released by HarperCollins. Please see http://www.taliacarner.com/ .

No "Spring" for Saudi Women

In the midst of the Arab awakening, women fighting oppression—in Saudi or any other Muslim nation—is doomed to fade away into a dark night.

Earlier this year, the world watched with bated breath as Egyptian women took to the streets alongside men to protest Mubarak’s rule and demand democracy. Cynically, men encouraged women’s participation—only to betray them once Mubarak was removed. Merely a few months later, Egypt—formerly the more modern among Muslim nations—has regressed into gender apartheid the like of which the country has not been seen in decades, and “modesty squads” roam neighborhoods in search of errant women whose appearance or behavior defy the Extreme Islam’s dictates.

Does anyone believe that Saudi women will fare better in their quest for the right to drive? In 2010, the Global Gender Gap Report ranked Saudi Arabia 129th out of 134 countries for gender parity (down from spot #114 in 2006.) Islamic patriarchal system has kept Saudi women not just from driving, but from traveling, working and even signing medical forms without the permission of a male guardian—any male relative, even their own minor child.

Gender apartheid is the basis for the entire Muslim social structure. The Arabic word “fitna” means both civil disorder and beautiful woman. In his 2004 article, “Female Desire and Islamic Trauma,” Islam scholar Daniel Pipes explains:

“The entire Muslim social structure… goes to great lengths to separate the sexes and reduce contact between them. This explains such customs as the covering of women's faces and the separation of women's residential quarters, or the harem. Many other institutions serve to reduce female power over men, such as her need for a male's permission to travel, work, marry, or divorce. Revealingly, a traditional Muslim wedding took place between two men – the groom and the bride's guardian.” The reason, Dr. Pipes explains, is rooted by the view that a woman’s sexual desire is so great, that believers are obsessed with the dangers posed by her presence. “So strong are her [sexual] needs …she represents the forces of unreason and disorder. …She must be contained, for her unbridled sexuality poses a direct danger to the social order.”

For that reason, in 2002, in Saudi Arabia, religious policemen prevented fourteen-year-old schoolgirls from leaving a burning school building because they were not wearing their headscarves and abayahs. Fifteen girls died.

The Quran was written long before automobiles were invented. Therefore, it did not specifically prohibit women from driving. It did not even forbid women from riding horses or camels. And in a society obsessed with the modesty of women’s dress, cars actually hide women better than any other methods of transportation. Saudi Arabia’s leaders’ explanation that women driving is unsafe and leads to sexual impropriety is entirely false, as women are routinely pinched and groped through the chadors when walking in the streets, and are often sexually harassed by taxi drivers—or even raped by their own chauffeurs.

On the other hand, driving women around has created a source of income for many Saudi men: there are hundreds of thousands of chauffeurs in Saudi Arabia. Removing the religious fatwa against women driving would deeply affect an entire profession.

Phyllis Chesler has written extensively that subjugating women is behind the brutal misogynistic Islamic practices such as female genital mutilation, stoning and immolation of women, beatings, forced marriages, child marriages and polygamy. Now that Muslim feminists are taking to the streets in protest for the right to drive, they are beaten by mobs, yet have no legal protection even in cases of barbaric assault or rape. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, commented at FoxNews.com "… [Saudi] women's rights activists have very little [legal] protection for their physical well-being …This is the problem in a corrupt society…. Republics of fear oppress and repress their citizens by allowing criminals to do the dirty work of the government. It allows the government to keep [its] hands free."

Saudi Arabia is the only country that prohibits women from driving. But viewing the protesting women in context of the men’s dread of female power to cause civil disorder, it is clear that breaking any taboo carries the unthinkable threat of women seeking rights for representation in government, in marriage and divorce, or in property ownership.

In the midst of the Arab awakening, women fighting oppression—in Saudi or any other Muslim nation—is doomed to fade away into a dark night, because the power to relinquish control lies in the hands of their oppressors: men, government, and Islamic religious leadership.

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Author Talia Carner’s novel, JERUSALEM MAIDEN (HarperCollins, June 2011) is the story of a woman’s struggle for individuality and freedom within the confines of her society’s strict religious dictates. http://www.taliacarner.com/