Bobish: A book review
This poetic tour de force by Magdalena Ball is more than an historical verse memoir of her great-grandmother Rebecca Lieberman; it is reverent, loving homage to a woman who, in fact, represents millions upon millions of Jewish men and women forced from their homes by their oppressors, eventually to wash up on the shores of America in the great emigration from Europe than began in the middle of the 19th century.
How stunning is Ball’s ability to capture both the fears and the hopes of Rebecca, who, destitute, faced not only with being stripped of her humanity, but of her name as well. (Did you ever wonder why there are so many Cohens and Levys in the United States?)
Not even the smallest detail escapes Ball’s all-knowing pen. Something as small has how her mother combed here hear before her departure for America is captured in this tender passage:
“her mother pushed back her hair
the day she left
a barely exhaled puff into the air
travelling on that endless railway car across time
slowly burning, dawn breaking behind a shadow”
These words were particularly meaningful to me, My great-grandmother, Blume Levy, had her hair cut extremely short prior to her departure for America in 1865 so as to make it easier for her father, Abraham, to pass her off as a young man on the voyage, thus protecting her from the gangs that roamed about their ship.
For countless reasons it’s a tragedy Rebecca Lieberman’s story is the story of Ball’s and my Jewish ancestors’ history:
“The history of my family is
the history of breezes.
And the exodus, the getaway:
my grandfathers, one carrying
a barber pole, the other
a tailor’s needle.” *
But the miracle of the exodus is, when you think about it, how the decision by one person, in this case Rebecca Lieberman—Bobish—to leave everything behind and emigrate to America changed the lives of so many who followed in her footsteps, especially those to whom she gave life.
*“History of the Invisible” from The Missing Jew, Time Being Books: St. Louis, Missouri, 1992, p. 17
https://www.amazon.com/Bobish-Magdale...
How stunning is Ball’s ability to capture both the fears and the hopes of Rebecca, who, destitute, faced not only with being stripped of her humanity, but of her name as well. (Did you ever wonder why there are so many Cohens and Levys in the United States?)
Not even the smallest detail escapes Ball’s all-knowing pen. Something as small has how her mother combed here hear before her departure for America is captured in this tender passage:
“her mother pushed back her hair
the day she left
a barely exhaled puff into the air
travelling on that endless railway car across time
slowly burning, dawn breaking behind a shadow”
These words were particularly meaningful to me, My great-grandmother, Blume Levy, had her hair cut extremely short prior to her departure for America in 1865 so as to make it easier for her father, Abraham, to pass her off as a young man on the voyage, thus protecting her from the gangs that roamed about their ship.
For countless reasons it’s a tragedy Rebecca Lieberman’s story is the story of Ball’s and my Jewish ancestors’ history:
“The history of my family is
the history of breezes.
And the exodus, the getaway:
my grandfathers, one carrying
a barber pole, the other
a tailor’s needle.” *
But the miracle of the exodus is, when you think about it, how the decision by one person, in this case Rebecca Lieberman—Bobish—to leave everything behind and emigrate to America changed the lives of so many who followed in her footsteps, especially those to whom she gave life.
*“History of the Invisible” from The Missing Jew, Time Being Books: St. Louis, Missouri, 1992, p. 17
https://www.amazon.com/Bobish-Magdale...
No comments have been added yet.
