THE BOOK FAIR

No Time

 for Tears

Review:

Cynthia Freeman, best-selling author, began her career of writing novels, which cover Jewish themes, during her later years.  “No Time For Tears”, offers the story of the Landau family, residing in a shtetl in Czarist Russia.  After a pogrom, the family is forced to leave Russia.  The family immigrates to Eretz-Israel.  Dovid and Chavala raise their children while they fight the brutalities and injustices inflicted on Jews by the Turks.

 

At the end of WW I, after the British supplant the Turks, Chavala leaves British occupied Palestine, for the United States.  David, heavily tied to the Yishuv, the Jewish community, chooses not to leave.  After WW II, and after making a fortune in New York working in the jewelry business, Chavala returns to the embattled, newly formed Jewish State.

 

Comments:

The saga of the Landau family proves lengthy and at times, somewhat dramatic.  Only a few of the characters are well formed and seemingly important events or relationships are often glazed over.  However, the characters offer a realistic portrait of love and loss, and though the author changes the names of historical figures at times, the history presented in the novel is factual.

 

Note:

The British renamed the area of Greater Syria, to “Palestine” after conquering the Ottoman Empire in WW I.  After the Jewish war failed against the Roman Empire and with the defeat of Judah, 2nd Century, CE, the Romans renamed Judah/Israel, Palestine, and dispersed the Jews throughout the Roman Empire.  Before 1948, Jews historically referred to Israel as Eretz-Yisrael, the land of Israel, and did not use the Roman or British term.