Christal Rice
https://www.facebook.com/christalann.ricecooper
article with excerpts
2,060 Words
Tasting The Sweetness
“I gave it the title The Sweetness for the irony. The grandmother carries
only a jug of lemons and water when the family is forced out by the Nazis. The
child, confused, asks why. Her answer is:
only by tasting the bitterness of lemons will you remember better times.”
Sande Boritz Berger
In
Sande Boritz Berger’s recent novel The Sweetness,
two Jewish cousins, 7-year-old Rosha Kaninsky (modeled after Berger’s 2nd
cousin by the same name) and 18-yr-old Mira Kane (modeled after Berger’s own
mother) are separated by an ocean and continent.
Rosha
lives in Vilna, Lithuania, hiding in a root cellar from the Nazis; and Mira lives
with her immigrant parents Charles and Ina, older brother Roy, two aunts Rena
and Jeanette, and Uncle Louis in a well-to-do neighborhood in Avenue T in Brooklyn,
New York.
Mira
Kane dreams of becoming a fashion designer in Hollywood, and dressing the
famous movie stars of the day including Carole Lombard and Rita Hayworth.
She
attends New York City’s Rockefeller Institute of Design with her best friend
Faye, who also dreams of designing for
the famous stars of Hollywood.
Her
dreams are crushed when she is betrayed by her father Charles Kane, who owns
the successful Kane Knitting, whom the entire family, except for Mira’s mother,
is employed by.
Mira
finds true love and has a chance to
make her dreams of becoming a fashion designer come true, despite living in a
generation where women who had careers were frowned upon.
She
also finally discovered the little girl she knew existed….Rosha, and always
wondered if she were alive.
“Vat is dat shana?” “Oh, I’m studying fashion design.” The woman stared at her blankly, so Mira referred to her outfit, sweeping her delicate fingers along the buttons, then gesturing to her own trim waistline. Still no response, so Mira unzipped her portfolio and the woman shimmied in closer. Their heads touched slightly as they looked through the several sketches in Mira’s book. The woman reached out and ran her pinky over one of the drawings. Most were of attractive young women all wearing Mira’s designs. Some actually resembled Mira, especially those wearing beauty marks placed precisely on the left check. The fashions themselves were upscale and elegant, not what anyone would expect emanating from an eighteen-year-old’s imagination. Mira had used her palette of paints to simulate fabrics like shiny satins and textured velvets. Her brush strokes were so fine that she managed to create the illusion of fur trim along a sweeping dolman sleeve. She used sparkles of silver and gold glitter to indicate beading.
Her teachers had constantly showered her with praise, and some of their notes were written in the far corners of the sketches: “Spectacular, Mira!” or “Mira, no doubt you have a future in couture.”
Without hesitation the woman leaned over and planted a slightly moist kiss on Mira’s check. The
gesture felt so genuine that Mira was immediately overwhelmed with pride.
Again, the woman spoke, and although Mira
didn’t understand a single word of what she was saying, she could tell by her
exuberance that the woman was impressed, and so, to be respectful she nodded
her appreciation enthusiastically.
Excerpt from The Sweetness
Copyright granted by Sande Boritz Berger
Rosha’s
existence is almost mundane – she is a little girl living in a darkened root
cellar, never able to see the light of day or
commune with her own people.
She,
like Mira is a dreamer, except this little girl doesn’t dream about fashion or
stardom, but about her Poppa coming to the Juraska home to take her back to her
own home and family. Unbeknownst to Rosha, her grandmother Bubbe and her
parents are never coming back, all having reached an unimaginable end at the
hands of the Nazis.
Rosha finds some solace in her doll with blonde braids, and tries to mark the passage of time by writing the number of each day with a fork on the wall behind her cot.
Rosha finds some solace in her doll with blonde braids, and tries to mark the passage of time by writing the number of each day with a fork on the wall behind her cot.
Rosha
finds hope in the white wooden shelves the Juraska family built for her, where
she props up photographs of her family with stones. One of the photographs is of a beautiful,
black-haired girl named Mira.
The
novel begins with 7 year Rosha old looking out the window, waiting for her beloved
father to return.
Like
Most Friday nights, I wait for Poppa by the parlor window. Leaning against the pane where someone
recently threw a fistful of stones, I run my fingers along the spidery
break. Bubbe looks up from her
crocheting (she is making a wool cape for me in this heat) and scolds. She warns me to move away from the
window. There is such fright in her
voice that all the hairs on my arms stand straight up. Yet still I don’t budge.
“They
might see you,” Bubbe says, “no matter what Rosha, you must not let them see you.”
But
because I am not certain who it is that may be watching me, and Bubbe’s words
create even more curiosity, I take one more peek.
“I
am watching for Poppa . . . what is the harm?”
Excerpt from The Sweetness
Copyright granted by
Sande Boritz Berger
Berger was born in Brooklyn and
raised on Long Island’s south shore by a traveling salesman father (like
Nathan) and a mother who dreamed of being a fashion designer (like Mira) but
gave it all up for wifehood and motherhood.
Berger
wrote her first creative piece when she was seven years old in protest of the
birth of her second brother, making her the only girl: “I stood on a chair and wrote little
complaints on my rose-patterned wallpaper.
My mom had just had another baby – another boy. I wanted a sister.”
Berger
always wanted to be a writer and considered writing her first love: “I knew I was a writer when I realized that
every birthday from the time I was a young girl, I composed a letter about what
it was like to be that particular age.”
Berger also wrote about the loneliness, sadness, and
depression she experienced being reared in a family that had so many family
secrets – secrets that they refused to talk about: “I felt there was so much more that I didn’t
know. I guess that void was enough to
create a certain sensitivity in me that eventually led me to want to unravel
the truth.”
Berger
received her BS in Education and Minor in English from Oneonta State
University, a college in upstate New York.
Berger taught English to fourth and sixth graders in
Montgomery County, Maryland.
Berger had two daughters Jennifer and Bari, 18 months
apart. She became a divorced mother
while the children were still very young, and once again, Berger found solace in her writing: “Poetry is what kept me sane when I was a
young mother. I would write poems stopped at traffic lights.”
She
pursued other career avenues in the Advertising and Marketing arena in New York
City; and became the President of Videowave,
working as a scriptwriter and video/film producer for Fortune 500 companies.
After
twenty years, she decided to close her business and take the big plunge and earn
her MFA in Writing and Literature, at Stony Brook Southampton College,
graduating in December of 2009.
“I’d heard great things about the program and
it was conveniently located near my home.
The faculty members were well known writers who were extremely generous
with time and knowledge. It was a gift
to have such an opportunity.”
Her
first creative piece published was her short story, “A Light From The Beach,” in a college literary review titled Reflections.
Her
thesis consisted of many short stories, which would later make up her debut
novel The Sweetness, earning her The
Deborah Hecht Memorial Prize in Fiction.
“I
wrote The Sweetness in parallel
stories between two protagonists and on two separate continents. I’d worked on Mira’s story almost
exclusively for years, never knowing about the other young girl Rosha.
When
I learned about my family’s history I began another shorter tale (Rosha’s
story) that I then merged with the first (Mira’s story).”
Berger
knew there was something about her family history that was a mystery, until,
one December day in 1999, she made a routine lunch visit to her Aunt Irene, 99
years old, at her tiny studio apartment in Brooklyn.
Her
Aunt Irene gave her niece a round metal cookie box full of documents, letters,
telegrams, and photographs – one in particular of her second cousin Rosha, who
is the little girl on the cover of The Sweetness.
“It wasn’t until she passed away that I began
writing my story. It was Rosha’s story, which I eventually alternated with
Mira’s story, which was nearly completed. And it was through the merging of
those two parallel tales that a theme finally became clear to me.”
Berger
spent many hours late at night reading the testimonies of actual Vilna ghetto
events and Nuremberg trial documents.
She
also read books that helped inspire her writing in The Sweetness: Those Who
Saved Us by Jenna Blum; Night by
Elie Wiesel; Call It Sleep by Henry
Roth, and the works of Jonathan Safran Foer.
Berger
wrote The Sweetness in a variety of coffee shops and diners, which is strange
because she hates being indoors.
The
writing was emotional, especially since most of The Sweetness is factual and inspired
by true events that happened in her own family. The most difficult and emotional scene to
write from The Sweetness was when
Rosha and her father are separated during the round up of the Jews by the
Nazis.
“I felt my heart beating so fast as I wrote it and he ran with the girl through the ghetto.”
“I felt my heart beating so fast as I wrote it and he ran with the girl through the ghetto.”
“Come here my darling girl,” Poppa says,
scooping me up into his arms, holding me, his duffel bag, and mine. Mama presses her fingers into my cheeks and
kisses me on my lips. Hers taste like
salt, another opposite of sweetness.
Then Poppa takes off weaving in and out between people. Just like the little baby, Friedlich, I
stretch out my arms toward Mama, and stop my crying. I will go anywhere with Poppa, anywhere he
wants to take me.
The
soldiers do not see Poppa who starts running in the direction of the
marketplace toward Mrs. Juraska. All the
time he is reciting a prayer, and in between the words:
Baruchi
Atoi Adonai, he whispers my name, as if it were something really good,
something sweet and sacred.
Mrs.
Juraska holds a crumpled sheet in front of her as if she were to hang it out do
dry. “Please, please,” are the last
words I hear my father say. He places me
in the candle maker’s damp fleshy arms, turns, and is gone.
Excerpt from The Sweetness
Copyright granted by
Sande Boritz Berger
It
is the candle maker, Mrs. Marta Juraska, that Berger identifies the most in The Sweetness – the Catholic wife who saves Rosha by hiding her in her
root cellar for years.
“My
message and her selflessness is what I aspire to and what I hoped readers would
identify with, though I lived in many other characters as well for a time
being.”
“Please
child, don’t cry. Don’t you remember
me? Marta Juraska, the candle maker,”
she said over and over again, while she carried me in her arms. She had wrapped me in a pile of damp sheets
that felt rough and scratchy against my face.
My body was pressed tightly against her big bosom. So tight, I could smell the salty sweat as it
poured from her neck and the stinky odor from her armpits that reminded me of
soured milk.
She
moved quickly, like a zebra running through the jungles of Africa. I remember that above all the loud commands
and sirens that would not stop, all I heard was the sound of the candle maker’s
heart. It beat faster and faster as she
ran, pulsing through her big bones and soaked skin, drumming into my ears and
muffling everything.
Excerpt from The Sweetness
Copyright granted by
Sande Boritz Berger
The Sweetness, which Berger dedicated to her four grandchildren and
grandparents, is published by She
Writes Press and was released on September 23, 2014.
The Sweetness is
full of truth and fact; but the ending is somewhat different from reality. In fact, some readers wonder: What happened to the real Rocha?
“No one knows what happened . . . so I hope that she is alive
somewhere in her 80s enjoying life.”
Presently Berger resides in Manhattan and Bridgehampton with
her husband of 40 years Steve.
She is also taking
a short hiatus from writing in order to focus on marketing The Sweetness: “I look forward to mornings and late day
writing again soon. I’m not strict about
meeting my muse, sometimes, she comes with me shopping.”
Photograph Description And Copyright Information
Photo 1
Web logo photo of Sande Boritz Berger
Copyright granted by Sande Boritz Berger
Photo
2
Jacket
cover of The Sweetness
Photo
3
Girl
Holding Lemons
Painted
by William Adolphe Bouguereau in 1899
Public
Domain
Photo
4
Sande,
age 6, standing by her mother Manette Duchin Boritz
Copyright
granted by Sande Boritz Berger
Photo
5
Vilna,
Lithuanian ghetto
Public
Domain
Photo
6
Sande
Boritz Berger standing in front of her Grandparents home on Avenue T in Brooklyn,
New York, the same house that the Kane family resides in The Sweetness.
Copyright
granted by Sande Boritz Berger.
Photo
7
Picture
taken in 1935 of the house on Avenue T. Brooklyn. Sande’s aunts and uncles, grandmother in
center, and mother kneeling. This porch was the gathering place for family and
where some of The Sweetness enfolds.
Photo
8
1940s
photograph of young woman walking in New York City.
Public
Domain
Photo
9
Carole
Lombard
Public
Domain
Photo
10
Rita
Hayworth
Public
Domain
Photo
11 and 12
Fashion
drawings by Sande’s mother, Manette Duchin Boritz
Copyright
granted by Sande Boritz Berger
Photo
13.
Jacket
cover of The Sweetness
Photo
14
Root
Cellar in the home of Yonah Steiner in Poland where he hid until he was found
by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz.
Public
Domain
Photo
15
Synagogue
burning in Vilna, Lithuania
June
1941
German
Federal Archive
Public
Domain
Photo
16
Ana
McGuffey Doll in 1937
Fair
Use Under the United States Copyright Law
Photo
17
Display
of numerous copies of The Sweetness
at a bookshop
Copyright
granted by Sande Boritz Berger.
Photo
18
Sande’s
parents Nathan Boritz and Manette Duchin Boritz
Copyright
granted by Sande Boritz Berger
Photo
19
Sande
Boritz Berger’s third grade classroom photo.
Sande
is 6 years old since she skipped a grade.
Front
row, fifth from right
Copyright
granted by Sande Boritz Berger.
Photo
20
1960s
photograph of Sande and her two brothers, Marv and Randy Boritz.
Copyright
granted by Sande Boritz Berger
Photo
21
Sande
Boritz Berger while attending Oneonta State University
Copyright
granted by Sande Boritz Berger.
Photo 22
Sande and her father Nathan Boritz at her first
wedding
Copyright granted by Sande Boritz Berger.
Photo 23.
Sande with her two daughters Bari and
Jennifer on Mother’s Day 1972.
Copyright granted by Sande Boritz Berger.
Photo 24
Sande Boritz Berger in New York City in the 1980s.
Copyright granted by Sande Boritz Berger.
Photo 25
Web photograph logo for Stonybrook Southampton
College
Fair Use Under the United States Copyright Law
Photo 26
Frank McCourt and Sande Boritz Berger. Sande
was Frank McCourt’s assistant while attending Stonybrook Southampton College to
pursue her MFA.
Copyright granted by Sande Boritz Berger.
Photo 27
Some of the family photographs Aunt Irene gave to
Sande in 1999. Copyright granted by Sande Boritz Berger.
Photo 28
Sande as a little girl with Aunt Irene and her
husband, Fred Klaber
Copyright granted by Sande Boritz Berger
Photo 29
More photographs and papers Aunt Irene gave to
Sande on that day in 1999.
Copyright granted by Sande Boritz Berger.
Photo 30
Rosha Duchin in 1941
Copyright granted by Sande Boritz Berger
Photo 31
Sande’s
mother, Manette Duchin Boritz
Copyright
granted by Sande Boritz Berger
Photo
32
Jacket
cover of Those Who Saved Us
Photo
33
Jacket
cover of Night
Photo
34
Jacket
cover of Call It Sleep
Photo
35
Winners
of the 2006 Moment Magazine Fiction Contest. Sande Boritz Berger, second
from right, Jonathan Safron Foer, far right.
Copyright
granted by Sande Boritz Berger.
Photo
36
Box
full of copies of The Sweetness
Copyright
granted by Sande Boritz Berger
Photo
37
jacket
cover of The Sweetness
Photo
38
Web
logo for She Writes Press
Fair
Use Under the United States Copyright law
Photo
39
Sande
Boritz Berger, second from right, with other writers She Writes
Press
Photo
40
Sande
and her husband Steve Berger.
Copyright
granted by Sande Boritz Berger
Photo
41
Sande
at her home in Bridgehampton
Copyright
granted by Sande Boritz Berger
