In an epilog to her new book Children of Paper, Martha Blum says she wanted to return to life the characters that inhabited the long dead Yiddish villages, or shetls, of Eastern Europe. She has accomplished that, and a great deal more.
Much has been written about the demise of these villages, which once dotted the northern rim of the Baltic states along to the Black Sea and Romania. Hitler’s Nazi armies obliterated them, consigning their people to slavery and death camps.
But for centuries these little pockets of humanity had existed, denying oppressors of various stripes who carried out intermittent pogroms, and in between denied them basic rights, such as the right to own land.
We know little about that; about how and why these almost medieval institutions survived and flourished in a hostile environment. Blum’s stories, albeit fiction, help us understand.
As was the case with her first book, The Walnut Tree, there is a strong autobiographical element in this collection. Blum’s own grandfather lived in a Jewish village in Ukraine much like the imagined Suczorno that provides the backdrop for Children of Paper.
The stories range in length from novella size to short anecdotes of just four or five pages. The book is organized into two sections. In the first, which takes up about two thirds of the 337 pages, we meet an array of unforgettable villagers.
Sarah, her three brothers and her parents Moishe and Leah are the principal characters in the first story, but we are also introduced to many of their neighbours who appear in greater detail later on.
Sarah represents one of the many paradoxes in shetl life. Though girls are not supposed to study the Torah, which is the main preoccupation of the male population, she learns it on her own. Though Jewish law forbids the drawing of images, she draws, and even commits the blasphemy of drawing her vision in the face of God.
And though arranged marriages are the strict custom, Sarah eschews all the possible candidates offered by her frustrated father and marries the man with whom she falls deeply in love. And true to form, thought custom dictates that she cut her hair when she marries, Sarah lets her luxurious mane grow and takes pride in its beauty.
Yet she is an accepted member of the community. And as the stories progress, it becomes clear that though the family unit is by law meant to be a patriarchy, in reality the women are equal, and often more than equal partners.
Blum describes the world of the shetl as intricate and deeply human, “a canvas of characters virtuous and not so virtuous, cheating and atoning, ready for argument and fierce debate at any hour of the day.”
And so her stories portray them in the first part of the book. Sarah’s brother Shimon is a scholar who travels to the city of Chernowitz to apprentice as a printer. His introduction to the secular world and western ideas comes as a shock. He is tempted, but the pull of home is strong and he returns to Suczorno to marry his childhood sweetheart.
There are no apocalyptic happenings. These are accounts of lives lived, lives devoted to peace, to justice, and to survival.
The people live simply. A small river divides the village, with the rich on the south bank and the poor on the lower north bank. But in truth little separates them.
The so-called rich may be elevated to that status because they have a two room house instead of one. All depend upon the vegetables they can grow, the chickens they can raise, perhaps a cow. Even the rich share teams of horses.
The synagogue is communally owned, as is the town fountain and well, and the spring-fed bathing facility where women perform the post-menstrual ritual mandated by the law. Divine law covers all aspects of living, and most villagers follow its dictates.
Internecine squabbles occur. Gossip is rampant, and privacy almost non-existent. But the village comes together instantly at the first hint of an outside threat, or a natural disaster. It is the duty of a Jew to share.
The second section of the book is given over to a series of shorter, often introspective stories in which old men look back on their lives and blessings.
Here we get perspectives, including some on the relationships that developed clandestinely between villagers and their non-Jewish neighbours. Jews often worked for Ukrainian farm owners, or sold them goods, such as clothing or dishes.
As with Blum’s first book, these stories are beautifully written in the sensuous, poetic prose that has become her trademark. They bespeak a time of great gentility, and of lives dedicated to human, and humane pursuits. We are enriched by them, as well as informed.
The author lives in Saskatoon, but was born in 1913 in what was then the Austrian city of Chernowitz (now Chernivsti in southwestern Ukraine). A Holocaust survivor, she and her husband immigrated to Canada in 1951. The Walnut Tree earned her two Saskatchewan Book Awards in 1999.
