Review of “Eskimos of Jerusalem”, by Naomi Ragen

29/6/01

The perfect lift

By: Naomi Ragen

Eskimos of Jerusalem (and other Extraordinary Israelis) by Sam Orbaum. Jerusalem, Jerusalem Post Publications. 400 pages. NIS 64

    What I loved most about Sam Orbaum's latest book - subtitled “The Best of 'Not Page One'' - was the feeling that I was discovering my city, and country, anew.
    Orbaum's witty, astute and surprising stories - based on his popular Jerusalem Post column - about some of the unique personalities who inhabit this strange and wonderful little corner of the world, was like finally getting introduced to my neighbors and finding out what interesting and fascinating people they are.
    While I always knew Jerusalem was a magnet for strange and wonderful people, I'd never heard of Ya'akov Castel, an 18th generation Jerusalemite whose mother calls her husband's family 'new immigrants' because they came to Jerusalem 'only' during the Spanish Inquisition. Her's has been here since the Second Temple (talk about native 'Palestinians').
    Or Eric Knutsen, the Aleut Eskimo whose wife became the only Jewish girl in Naknek before they moved to Jerusalem. By profession a harbormaster and an experienced forester, Eric opened a hairdressing salon in Beit Hakerem. While he loves his work - 'Perhaps cutting hair reminds him of forestry,' Orbaum suggests - 'the rest of the time, he finds it difficult being a dyslexic Eskimo harbormaster in a landlocked Jewish city.' I can just imagine.
    What I couldn't imagine is that one of his biggest problems is the climate here. No, not the heat. The cold.
    'In Alaska it could be 35 below but it's going to be 72 indoors. Here, in the winter, the houses are not well heated. It's cold here.' Orbaum, where did you find him?

I KNOW where he found Benjamin Harry Bloom, a 24-year-old suffering from severe cerebral palsy, and a gutsy, outgoing, in-love, millionaire (thanks to an out-of-court settlement with the British hospital which oversaw his bungled delivery).
    He found Bloom at one of the esoteric Scrabble tournaments so popular with certain types of people here in the city (I myself would love to try, but I'm chicken). Despite his handicap, Benjamin has earned a BA in the double major of philosophy and mathematics and plans to pursue an MA in fine arts or creative writing. 'That is, if he can overcome his other double major, laziness and procrastination. Well, that's how he describes himself,' says Orbaum.
    Responding to a sore loser at one event, who grumbled about his luck in getting all the good tiles, Bloom 'leaned right into her face, gave an extra-big shake of his gawky limbs, and his mouth contorted, he laboriously and loudly responded: 'Lady, you call this lucky?''
    I'd love to meet this guy (but not play Scrabble. I know I'd lose.)
    And, sometimes, Orbaum forces you to meet people you didn't think you wanted to know. Take the much vilified doctor, Eliezer Rachmilevich, accused by a former patient - a lovely teenager, the late Dassy Rabinowitz - of vindictively refusing her a blood transfusion because she'd dared seek a second opinion. I thought I knew all about the story, until Orbaum forced me to reexamine it. As a patient himself in the doctor's care, Orbaum wrote that 'his hematology ward [was] a model of professionalism, dedication, [and] compassion.'
    As a columnist in the same paper who usually concentrates on the negative (I don't know, those stories just find me, what can I do?), I read Sam Orbaum's column as an antidote. It's great to read about so many wonderful, giving people all around me. Reading about them all in one swoop is even more uplifting.
    And in these days, when all of us who love this country and her people could certainly use a little lift, it's a perfect read.