JEWISH WORLD

Elizabeth visits. It’s freezing, and Amy Elizabeth scowls almost the entire time. Because everything is better in Houston. “In Houston, people who have pets don’t have pooper-scoopers because they have lawns.” (Grandma’s dog, Alexander the Great, gives her the side-eye.) In Houston, there are no annoying protest marches. “I explained to Grandma that in Houston when people march and carry signs, there is also a band, and it is a parade.” In Houston, the signs are all in English. “In my town, Chinatown would be another country like China.” And when Grandma makes them take the bus to the Empire State Building because “no one drives in New York City,” Amy Elizabeth casts a gimlet eye at the traffic and notes acidly, “There were hundreds of cars with hun- dreds of drivers who didn’t know that no one drives in New York City.” A my Elizabeth is a pill, basi- cally. And Grandma is a saint. This is enjoyable for the adult reading the book aloud to a child. Like the more recent Caldecott-Medal-winning Nana in the City , Amy Elizabeth’s Grandma is a bracing antidote to all the passive, soup-making, rocking-chair-dwelling grandmas in entirely too much Jewish kidlit. Young listeners will also be amused by Grandma’s and Amy Elizabeth’s endless failed attempts to get to Bloomingdale’s; there’s always something exciting going on in New York City that stands in the way. “I have had an excellent time not getting there,” Amy Elizabeth tells Grandma at the end, when she’s finally warmed up to the joys of the city and time spent with Grandma and Alexander the Great. I love this book, and not only because it’s a portrait of a bygone New York. It’s hilarious and snarky and deadpan. But not everyone was a fan. In her out-of- print 1995 memoir, Talk, Talk: A Children’s Book Author Speaks to Grown-Ups , Konigsburg recalls a meeting with a young book editor on the West Coast. “This is where right-on-red came from,” Konigsburg drily points out. “This is L.A., the city where the phone is a prosthesis. She asks if we can do a deal. I know she means a book. I tell her I’ve been thinking about a book. This book will be a picture book. My second grandchild will be a character. I have a title: Amy Elizabeth Explores Bloomingdale’s . She expresses enthusiasm. We part, mellowed out on champagne and promise.” Konigsburg continues, “I sub- mit the manuscript. I do not receive a reply – not even an acknowledgment of receipt – for more than a month. Uh-oh. Experience has taught me that when a response to a requested manuscript is long in coming, the manuscript is in trouble. I was right. What experience had not prepared me for, however, was the source of the problem. In her letter, the editor wrote: “‘What confuses me however, is that the title is misleading, and I think the reaction of sales reps and booksellers will be negative rather than positive. The book is about something completely dif- ferent than the title suggests and I think the reader will ultimately be disappointed. It seems to me that it could be called Amy Elizabeth Tries to Explore Bloomingdale’s or Amy Elizabeth Doesn’t Explore Bloomingdale’s or per- haps more clever than the above that conveys to the reader that the book will be satisfying even if you don’t get to go to Bloomingdale’s. I also think that reviewers would object to the book disappointing the child’.” Ultimately, Konigsburg and the editor part ways. Her new editor understands the joke and gives her helpful notes. The book debuts to some positive-to-raptur- ous reviews. Konigsburg informs us, “Subsequent to its publication (October 1992) not one reviewer, bookseller, or librarian has objected to the title.” Moral: Do not mess with E.L. Konigsburg. Nowadays, my children’s New York bubbe can’t take them to Rumpelmayer’s or the Carnegie Deli. She does take them to Dylan’s Candy Bar and the Second Avenue Deli. The city changes and the city remains the same. Konigsburg died in 2013, but her work lives on. Marjorie Ingall is a columnist for Tablet magazine, and author of Mamaleh Knows Best: What Jewish Mothers Do to Raise Successful, Creative, Empathetic, Independent Children. Tabletmag.com But continued from page 10 and not historic Israel’s national needs – must come first. Here too Moses took them to task. The Ohr Hachayim approaches the situation in its simplest, most “religious” terms, suggesting that the two and a half tribes built their argument around divine interven- tion: “The land which God con- quered on behalf of the congrega- tion of Israel is a land for cattle, and your servants have cattle.” (32:41). In other words, this is the land that God conquered for us and therefore this is the land we wish to remain in. If God wants us somewhere else, let Him take us there, let Him conquer that land too. Until then, this is where we’re going to stay and this is where our cattle will stay. It is good for our cattle and therefore it is good for us. In many ways, the Ohr Hachayim’s reading sees the two and one half tribes as being the counterparts of the devotees of Natura Karta. They are waiting for God Himself to bring them to Israel – and if not God, then at least His Messiah! When God is good and ready to redeem Israel completely, He’ll do it in His own time. Everything depends on God, and we are more than happy to wait it out in our pleasant grazing land until then. T he truth is that Gad and Reuven had forgotten their history. They cannot rest on their grazing laurels while the rest of the nation fights their wars for them. When the Israelites reached the Red Sea chased by the Egyptian hordes they asked Moses to pray to God. “‘Why are you crying out to me?’ God says to Moses. ‘Speak to the Israelites and let them start moving’.” (Exodus 14:15) The sea does not split until Nachshon ben Aminadav and Caleb ben Yefuna jump in. Similarly, when Moses tells Gad and Reuven that they have to bear arms and fight, he’s really pointing out that God’s promise to Israel is that everyone has to be partners — God with the nation, and the nation with one another, sharing in a mutu- al responsibility and privilege. At the end of the day, if our fledg- ling state proves to be even more vulnerable than we think by dint of less manpower in war and a smaller population than is required, Jews will have only themselves to blame for not rising to the challenge offered by the greatest Jewish adventure in 2000 years. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is Chief Rabbi, Efrat Israel. Land continued from page 7 30 JEWISH WORLD • JULY 13-19, 2018 La Salle is described as both paternal and stern, but also repeatedly rapes Sally. While in California, a neighbor grows suspicious, and Sally eventually confides in her that La Salle is not her father. The neighbor helps Sally call relatives, who alert police. La Salle is arrested (and later sentenced to 30 to 35 years in prison, where he dies in 1966) and Sally returns home, but her sad life ends tragically two years later in a car wreck. Weinman’s crisp writing style keeps the action moving swift- ly, making The Real Lolita an engrossing read. Less interesting is Weinman’s exploration of Nabokov and the parallels found in Lolita with Humbert Humbert and Dolores Haze. In part, that’s because the subject has been discussed plenty of times before. Weinman does note that Sally is directly mentioned in Lolita when Humbert ponders, “Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank La Salle, a fifty-year-old mechanic, had done to eleven- year-old Sally Horner in 1948?” Andy Gotlieb More continued from page 9