Sunday, November 08, 2009

I Was Thinking Just The Same Thing

I was reading a book review of a book entitled MENNONITE IN A LITTLE BLACK DRESS, A Memoir of Going Home by Rhoda Janzen and came to this:

Janzen has clearly inherited her mother’s gift for emotional generosity and tolerance. She laughs lovingly at the oddities of her conservative upbringing, the horrible “shame-based” lunches she and her siblings were forced to take to school in diaper bags, the strict ethical and behavioral standards she was held to until she was old enough to flee. She takes us on a hilarious tour of Mennonite cuisine: borscht “looks and smells like milk gone bad,” with a “lingering afterwhiff” of soldiers’ socks, while a typical sandwich is made from ketchup, homemade bread and salty little meatballs...


and I began to say to myself, 'Mennonite? This is a Jewish situation'.

And then this appears:-

Her tone reminds me...also of the many Jewish writers who’ve brought mournful humor to the topics of gefilte fish and their own mothers, as well as to the secular, often urban, often intellectual world they call home now.

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