Written by Barbara Artson, Odessa, Odessa is a family story. Interesting story of two brothers who lose track of each other after leaving a small shtetl near Odessa in western Russia. As the sons of rabbis and cantors, the two brothers have different ideas about how to live with the terror of Cossack pogroms. Anti-Semitism drives one brother to fight back and join the socialist underground to fight. The other brother brings his family to America.
Following the family through generations of life in America, some keeping old world traditions and others shedding their old world ideas and becoming more American. In the end there are some ties that are so tight that you are connected even through loss.
Artson has written a novel that is based on her family history. This could possibly be almost any Jewish American family’s story. The immigration story of relatives coming to New York CIty’s Lower Eastside before and during WWII. Escaping pogroms and danger in their hometowns, coming to a new country, where the customs are different and the language is difficult. Staying together in small living conditions in NY, until the next generation feeling more American and assimilated moves out to the suburbs, in this case, NJ. Leaving behind the customs of the old country and religious observances.
In this book we follow two sisters as they grow up and move on, until the death of their mother brings them back together and as they empty the house and reminisce about their family history. Now they are interested in finding the brother who did not come to America, but they find him and his family in Israel. The sisters travel to Israel and meet the relatives they never knew they had.
Interesting story and listening to the author, Barbara Artson in an interview made the novel more interesting.
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