Making their mark on world

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

Unorthodox, confident, adaptable, determined, Jewish. These are the striking commonalities shared by Canadian Rabbi Jerry Steinberg, American composer and singer Michael Bolton, American songstress Barbra Streisand and ancient, long-dead historian Titus Flavius Josephus. And, oddly enough, all but the first of these four changed their given names.

For the most part, the Jewish Independent enjoyed the autobiography Rogue Rabbi: A Spiritual Quest – From Seminary to Ashram and Beyond by Steinberg (ECW Press, 2012), Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand by William J. Mann (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), The Soul of It All: My Music, My Life by Bolton (Centre Street, 2012) and A Jew Among the Romans: The Life and Legacy of Flavius Josephus by Frederic Raphael (Pantheon Books, 2013). The last was the best written by far, but the others have their charms, though Mann’s choice to relate the first portion of Streisand’s career (1960-64) as a novel will not appeal to all readers/fans.

Steinberg is likely the name with which most JI readers are unfamiliar. He is the one, however, who has lived in British Columbia. Initially wanting to be a medical doctor, Regina-born Steinberg followed his parents to Winnipeg when he returned from an approximately two-year stint in Israel in the mid-1950s at the Institute for Training Youth Leaders from Abroad (the Machon) – they had bought a clothing store and had moved to the city while he was away. Steinberg ended up at the University of Manitoba, where he was a member of Hillel. The Hillel director at the time was Rabbi Zalman Schachter (who became Schachter-Shalomi), founder of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, among other accomplishments. When Steinberg faltered in pre-med, he sought advice from Schachter, who suggested that he pursue rabbinical studies.

Skeptical, Steinberg followed the advice, although he took some detours to his Hebrew Union College ordination in May 1965. Still uncertain, Steinberg again asked Schachter for help, which led Steinberg to Yasodhara Ashram in the West Kootenays. In contemplating leaving the ashram in 1966 for a part-time position as the rabbi of a new Reform congregation in Winnipeg, he writes, “Our discussions led to an invitation for me to come to Winnipeg once a month to serve as their rabbi for one year, beginning in the fall. (At the same time, I was serving the Reform congregation in Vancouver on a similar basis.)”

Rogue Rabbi includes many of Steinberg’s childhood memories, highlights of his journeys to Israel, the ups and downs of his work as a rabbi, his time in Ottawa as “consultant to the federal government of Canada in yoga, meditation and altered states of consciousness as an alternative to problems of drug abuse” (it was the ’70s), his practise of unconventional methods of healing (notably, dream work), his personal life – marriage, children, divorce, poetry (poems appear throughout), unpublished stories (of which a few samples are given) – and more. It is sometimes too detailed, but he took such a unique path and looks back on his 77-plus years critically, which adds depth to his recollections. He also sums up some of what he has learned and observed in his life, about God, friendship, reality, intelligence, foreplay, mistakes and other topics.

Bolton, born Bolotin, takes a similar approach but doesn’t manage the gravitas. He is seemingly very open and honest in The Soul of It All, sharing the many failures he endured before becoming a star, how he had to panhandle at times for food in the early days, his use of drugs as a youth, his spiritual awakening that began with the help of guru Maharaj Ji, his difficulties in maintaining a lasting loving relationship, his bond with his daughters, etc., etc. Yet, despite apparently telling all, Bolton keeps his emotional distance. In Chapter 7 (of 15), he writes:

“Our guru, who is now known as Prem Rawat, held that ‘peace, enlightenment, love and wisdom reside within each of us.’ The Knowledge taught by him and his followers consisted of meditation techniques that allowed one to access those elements within.... The Knowledge fast-tracks you to a place where you can be wiser and not reactive. Whatever your hair trigger is, when you consistently meditate, you are calmer and you make decisions not out of anger or fear but from a more peaceful state of mind. You become more of an observer, and that allows you to be more compassionate instead of being a victim or getting caught in the stress and drama around you.”

A solid prescription for a fulfilling life perhaps, but it doesn’t translate into captivating reading. While he talks of rejection or other pain, the reader will find it hard to empathize, as Bolton is so positive about even the most difficult of hardships. Rather than allowing readers a glimpse into the soul of it all, he only reveals the surface.

Then there’s Mann’s mini (in terms of years, not pages) bio of Streisand, in which he exposes her most personal insecurities, and how she overcame, bulldozed or circumvented them. According to Mann, the ugly duckling turned into, if not a beautiful swan, an awe-inspiring, vivacious one-of-a-kind talent between the winter of 1960, when she was a 17-year-old struggling actress from Brooklyn trying to make it in New York City, to the spring of 1964, after she had achieved recording, television and Broadway success (with Funny Girl) and had headed west to take on Hollywood.

While one can applaud Mann’s attempt to make mostly known material (for Streisand fans) fresh, the writing is pretty horrible. A straight-up biography based on all the research Mann conducted for this book – including accessing the private papers of Bob

Fosse, David Merrick and many others, and interviews with people who had known Barbara, and those who had only known Barbra, such as Streisand’s longtime friend Bob Schulenberg, fellow actor and one-time partner Barry Denner (called Barré in the book), actress Phyllis Diller, the list goes on – might have been engaging, despite all that’s been written about Streisand already. Instead, readers must endure passages like the following, for example.

Mann writes about one of Streisand’s friends, “Surely, at some point, Barbara must have wondered why. It was obvious that Terry, like no other man in her life, found her beautiful, even exquisite. He rhapsodized about her swan neck and long, graceful fingers. He adored the way fabric draped over her lithe, elegant, slender body. Yet standing next to him never produced the kind of charge she felt when standing that close to another man. It wasn’t because Terry was Chinese....” Cringe. In reaction to Terry’s eventual revelation about being gay, Mann writes that Streisand “accepted the news with nonchalance. This is why she loved Manhattan, after all....” And so it goes.

Raphael manages much more successfully to engagingly relate and analyze the life and works of Jewish general-turned-Roman historian Joseph ben Mattathias (37-circa 100). Initially, Raphael’s opinionated style was a little off-putting. He is up front about his non-belief in “any God, including that of the Jews” and, several pages later, one of Josephus’ arguments elicits the comment that, “In taking this line, he [Josephus] was the prototype of liberal Jewish apologists who give Yahweh credit for putting health warnings on shellfish and pork and attribute to Him the salutary rule that men should rest from their labors, as He did, on the seventh day.” Elsewhere, as another example, when a Roman soldier in the Temple colonnade mooned Jews who were making fun of him, Raphael writes that the situation was calmed when the governor agreed “to execute the wretched squaddy who had cheeked the pilgrims.”

But don’t let the tone fool you. Raphael offers much by way of the history of the period and Joseph’s transformation into Josephus, and insight into other Jewish heretics that followed Josephus, who “honored one tradition – denunciation is among the oldest art forms exercised in the Bible – and initiated another: the invective that Jewish writers and intellectuals so often reserve for one another.” Baruch Spinoza, for example, “was only the noblest example of Jews who attack Judaism to the satisfaction of Christians who lack the wit to see that, mutatis mutandis, his disdain for those who believe in miracles and resurrection applies, with even greater force, to their own faith.” Among the many others Raphael discusses are Yehuda Halevi, Benjamin Disraeli, Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin.

Raphael also offers articulate observations about Israel’s position in the world. “The increasing isolation of Israel and the routine of disparagement to which it has been subject in the Western media,” he writes, “coincided with the confidence of the Jewish state that it can be responsible for its own defence. The secularization of what used to be Christendom made it seem that hostility to Israel was either pragmatic (the French sought to endear themselves to the Arabs by cold-shouldering Israel) or moral (which sanctioned the fabrication of Jewish atrocities).... Israel’s insolence, in claiming exclusive control of Jerusalem, damaged the myth of Christian hegemony on which the vanity of Europe continued to repose. The Israeli victory incidentally refuted the age-old Christian belief that the ejection of the Jews from Jerusalem had proved that God had deserted them.”

Agree or not, debate whether all the comparisons are substantive enough, but there’s no doubt that Raphael offers much about which to contemplate. The copious footnotes are as interesting as the main text, such that it might almost be a better idea to read the book twice. The language sometimes bogs down the narrative, but it’s a lively work and a thoroughly enjoyable thought experiment.

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