Book Review : In the Crook of the Rock

In The Crook of The Rock:
Jewish Refuge in a World Gone Mad
By Vera Schwarcz
(Academic Studies Press 2018)

Reviewed by Tiberiu Weisz

This book evokes deep personal and cultural transformations of a six year old Jewish girl who was uprooted from her home in a small town in Poland in 1940, and forced to travel from country to country, from culture to culture, from one part of the world to the other, without papers.  She became overnight a refugee, with no place to go. At the time, very few countries issued visa to Jewish refugees, so she joined the fleeing  European Jews to board the Trans-Siberian Railway in Russia even when they knew that “they could be dragged off the train at any point and sent to one of the many gulags…” (P.50).

Chaya Leah Walkin was caught in the whirlwind of World War II and her story is told in a cross cultural context of a Jewish girl with pleasant memories of Japan where she enjoyed: “ the beauty, the cleanest, the flowers, the gardens… the school I attended, and the Japanese friends and neighbors.” (p.54). In contrast “ in Shanghai, you always had to watch your back... you could not trust anyone. It was an “unterwelt” – a corrupt country”. (p.84)

 In the Crook of the Rock reads like a trip that Schwarcz could had lived through Chaya on this personal journey. Schwarcz bridged the gulf between her generation and that of Chaya through the words of Shir Ha’Shirim, The Song of Songs. “Following Chaya Leah’s childhood through the alleys around Liaoyang Road, I managed to find a story and a voice that countered the madness of the heartless world” (p. 290). Schwarcz followed Chaya through her childhood  (born in 1934), through events that led to her and her family being uprooted from her home in a small town of 500 Jews in Poland, through the cold and frightening train ride across Siberia, to the pleasant reception in Japan, and the cruel realities of Shanghai. Under these extraordinary circumstances, Chaya survived abiding by the Jewish customs of the Torah, by adapting to the circumstances in Japan and to the ghetto life in Shanghai.

I could not think of a more qualified author to portray Chaya Leah Walkin than Vera Schwarcz. Professor Schwarcz was born in Romania, raised in the Jewish Orthodox tradition, studied China and taught Chinese at Wesleyan university until her retirement. She has maintained a personal relationship with the heroine of the book, Chaya, and it is evident that they became emotionally close. She vividly described the personal feelings of this little girl who experienced both the Jewish  Hakarat ha tov –“ a conscious effort to express indebtedness in a world devoid of concern for refugees” (p.285) and at the same time a similar Chinese  concept of en “ reason over heart – kindness appreciation of being alive” (p.286).

While the government of Japan and China have lately taken credit for their en to the Jewish refugees in Shanghai, Chaya Leah expressed particular gratitude to Sugihara,  the Japanese  consul in Russia, who issued transit visas to Jewish refugees via Japan, and to Dr. Shen Fang Ho for “his heroic rescue of the Jews in Shanghai”. She was less generous in praising the many memorial services promoted by Chinese government to glorify their role in saving the Jews in Shanghai. In the eyes of Chaya, the Chinese just try to take credit for an inconvenient truth. “We were never fed by any Chinese organizations, no Chinese philanthropist or organizer sat on any of our committees…” (P. 284). In spite of the absence of en, the Chinese government shamelessly promotes exhibitions portraying “art from Shanghai Jewish ghetto”, which is nothing more than government commissioned paintings allegedly depicting imaginary life of the Jews in Shanghai ghetto.

Schwarcz felt that the voice of Chaya Leah was buried among “the numerous public commemoratives of the Jewish survival in Shanghai “ (p. 279) and it was time to commemorate a quieter voice that was “hidden in the rocks wanting to  sing her song”.

Chaya’s  voice was that of the the dove In the Crook of the Rock based on the Songs of Songs (2:14).

My dove in the crook on the rock,
In the hiding place of the steep.
Show me your visage,
Let me hear your voice.

Her voice “conveys the difficulties of surviving in the midst of hardship, the loneliness of being embedded in a foreign world” (p. xxix). This is Chaya Leah’s story.

The book is captivating, the narrative is flowing smoothly, though I found that on several occasion the in-depth supporting comments made my mind wander in other directions.  Yet they did not detract from the story. Schwarcz attained a delicate balance between the story of Chaya and a rebuttal of the glorification of the role of the Chinese government in the saga of the Shanghai Jews.

Tiberiu Weisz, author, has published a book and several articles on Judaism and China and two books about the Kaifeng Jews.