Busy, busy, busy (3 cents)

This was a busy weekend.

1. The restaurants. There were three. Lunch on Saturday was at a restaurant in Glover Park with the intoxicating name of "Bourbon". It looks to be primarily a bar, with only a few downstairs tables, a series of green naugahyde booths upstairs and a large sun-drenched patio. We went there for lunch because we were there, and it was there. We had never heard of it. We had a salad and scrambled eggs. Just so-so.

Saturday night, we ate at St-Ex., on 14th and S (or is it T?), named after St. Exupery, the French aviator lost in the war, and filled with air pioneer photos and memorabilia. Blackfish and halibut. This is a good restaurant, very popular now, and very informal.

Sunday night, with cousins, we went to Addie's on Rockville Pike, short of White Flint, one of the Black's restaurants (along with the Blacks in Bethesda, Garrett Park and Palisades). I was disappointed. We both had salmon. The fish was good, but the restaurant was an ordinary, good restaurant, nothing special.

2. The Conversation. On Friday night, we had supper with our study group, and a guest, Gesa Ederberg, Germany's only female rabbi (and perhaps the first woman to hold that title since Regina Jonas was ordained in 1935). She is the Masorti (Conservative) rabbi of Berlin, and runs many community programs and a pre-school program there, and serves a congregation in the Bavarian city of Weiden in Bavaria, composed of Jews from the Soviet Union.

All that would be impressive enough, but she turned out also to be a very bright, and extremely engaging young woman. Born in Tubingen to a Christian family, she developed an early interest in Judaism and the holocaust, and visited Israel when she was 13. She studied and was converted to Judaism at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, and studied and was ordained by the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem. Her husband is also a German convert to Judaism, but they met after their conversions.

We talked about Judaism in Europe, Germany and Berlin. She is clearly the most liberal of the Berlin rabbis (there are now 7 operating synagogues in the city). She spoke of the openness of the Jewish community in Berlin, which has admitted her and the Masorti congregation which she helped found, into the Jewish Community. In Berlin, a Jew does not define his or her own denomination, and does not join a particular synagogue. You join the community, and all synagogues and rabbis are governed by the community, and paid and supported by the community. There are 12,000 members of the Jewish community of Berlin, and 100,000 of the Jewish communities of Germany. There may be twice as many Jews in Germany, with the others not affiliated.

Her activities can be viewed at www.masorti.de.

3. The festival. The flower mart at the National Cathedral was a treat. We had not planned on attending, but drove by, saw there was a used book sale, and found a good parking space. The sale was not large, although I found Bill Clinton's book "Between Hope and History" signed by him to Smith Bagley (he is someone, isn't he?) for $2. But we spent an hour or so wandering the craft booths, looking at the plants, and walking by the food. We found a very nice booth run by a older couple who make jewelry from leaves and bugs, with some system where they are coated with copper. We bought a gift, and my wife bought earings and a brooch. We found other gifts for the upcoming Israel trip, saw some people we knew, and the weather was beautiful.

4. The other book sale. There was a sale at Janney Elementary School. I did not find anything I wanted, but my wife saw some friends and bought a couple of cook books.

5. The mini-museum. We went to see the wooden architecture exhibit at the Embassy of Finland, on Massachusetts Avenue, just southeast of Reno Road, and to see the embassy itself. There is a tradition of wooden architecture in Finland, but the use of wood went out of favor and other, longer lasting materials were being used for much of the 20th century. But with better treatment, there has been a rebirth of wood as an external building skin. The new Sibelius Concert Hall in Lahti (is that near Helsinki?), is similar in feel and design to the embassy building. but there are also university buildings, private homes, churches and schools. The exhibit itself was not large, and was strangely designed. For each of the 20 or so featured structures, there were poster-sized photos, three dimnesional models, and written explanations and a series of smaller photos. But they were in three different places, all the posters here, all the models there, etc.

6. The maxi-musuem. We then went to the Sackler Asian Art Museum, on the mall, to return to the Hokusai exhibit. We had seen half of the exhibit a month or so ago. This time we walked quickly through the section we had seen before, and went to the second floor of this very large exhibit, to see his paintings (as opposed to block prints and books). Portraits, religious and mythic figures, landscapes and animals. Some very impressive.

Hokusai lived to be 90, and worked for about 75 of them. What struck me this time, was his sense of color. He was just a very, very skilled artist.

We also went quickly through an exhibit called History of History, put together by photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, whose photographs continue on exhibit at the Hirschhorn, and which impressed me so much when I saw them (actually I saw them twice). This exhibit will take another visit. There are fossils that are millions of years old, including some enormous ones from Morocco. There are clay figures that may be 8000 years old. And everything in between. Very impressive items; but I have not figured out yet exactly what the exhibit is trying to say.

7. The book talk. We went to Candida's, the travel book store on 14th street, to attend a book presentation by David Fairley and Jessie Sholl (never heard of them), who had edited an anthology called "Prague" as part of the "travelers' tales" series. Had not heard of the series, either, but basically, the book contains about 40 short first person memoirs of people who have traveled to Prague (generally for more than a two day stay) and give their impressions. Some of the authors are from Prague, some have lived there for long periods of time.

Two stories were read, which were quite nice. There are a number of well known authors. We bought the book.

8. Theater. After our dinner at St-Ex, we went next door to see "The Play's the Thing", by Ference Molnar, as adapted by P.G. Wodehouse. It was put on by the Washington Stage Guild, which has been around about 20 years, even though we did not know them. The actors, and the audience, were older than other theaters we have attended in town. The production was quite well done. The play, which was fairly long (two intermissions) had some dull, and some very enjoyable, parts.

Basically, a young composer is in love with and engaged to a prima donna, and when he and the playwrights with whom he is traveling, go to the Italian villa where she is staying, they take the room next door to her and hear through the walls her intimate conversation with an old boyfriend, an older married actor. The fiance is distraught, but the lead playwright has an idea, and convinces the old actor/boyfriend and the diva to pretend that they were rehearsing a play. Staying up all night to write the script, the play within the play is put on at the villa, and everyone winds up happy.

It is the play within the play that contains the best lines and leads to the loudest laughter. The first two acts are much slower. Except for Chris Davenport, who played the young composer and who was too silly and impossible to love, the cast was excellent. Particularly, Bill Largess as the playwright, Jeff Baker as the butler (Dwornitschek), and Michael Glenn as the secretary.

9. The Presentation. Today was the annual Guardian of the Righteous program at Adas Israel, honoring someone who helped save Jewish lives in Europe in World War II. This time, the honoree was Jaap Penraat, who was a young architect in Amsterdam. The story is extraordinary. He started by helping a Jewish friend hide on the farm of a gentile farmer. Then, he became a forger, forging papers for Jews to pass as gentiles. Then, he obtained stationary of a German corporation and set himself up as its representative in Holland to find workers for a factory in France. How he did this without being caught is hard to comprehend.

Penraat is quite frail. He must be close to 90. He spoke sitting down. And the speech, when he went through the history of how it happened, was riveting. Over 400 people were saved. Once they got to France, there was an underground network that got them to Spain and Portugal and beyond. All 400 were saved; none were lost.

In addition to Penraat's speech, representatives of the Dutch and Israeli embassies gave very nice presentations.

10. The book. I finished a short novel called Island of Saints by Andy Andrews. It was a bit too preachy, but the premise of the novel was interesting, and the prose not bad. Nazi U-boats off the Alabama coast during World War II, and their attacks on merchant ships, which were hushed up by the American press. But a German goes overboard, winds up on shore wounded, is nursed back to health by a young American war widow, winds up staying, marrying her, and becoming a real American (although an illegal alien). The format is unique, because the author writes in the first person, as if he is actually interviewing elderly residents of the area who help put the story together, finding out at the very end that this couple that he has known for years are in fact the central features in the story. He promises not to publish the story, unless he can convince his publisher to categorize it as fiction.

Would I recommend the book? I would not go out of your way for it, although the information about the Nazi infiltration of the Gulf is worth learning about.

On Amazon, this book got 5 stars from 9 commenters. How is this possible, since it is clearly not a 5 star book? My guess is that the reviewers were not strangers to Mr. Andrews.