YOU SHOULD KNOW ...

SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
A n asymptote is a line that approaches a given curve but
never touches it. On a graph, the mathematical concept
looks like two functions moving closer toward one another
but never quite meeting or intersecting.

For the past five years, Jewish author Moriel Rothman-Zecher has
had something of an asymptotic relationship with his grandmother.

In 2017, Rothman-Zecher, 33, began writing “Before All the World”
— his sophomore novel loosely based on his hidden family history —
within months of his grandmother’s death. In July, he moved from
Dayton, Ohio to West Philadelphia, just 20 blocks from where his
grandmother and her sister grew up on Cobbs Creek Parkway.

Rothman-Zecher is interested in both the malleability and pre-
cision of time, a seeming contradiction that he has woven through
“Before All the World,” published Oct. 11 by Farrar, Straus and
12 OCTOBER 27, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Giroux. The novel is grounded in his-
tory, but is fiction; it’s based on real
people and places Rothman-Zecher
wants to honor, though he admits that
at least one of the stories he based the
book on could have been apocrypha.

The Jerusalem-born author’s deep
curiosity about his Jewish roots and
connection to the places his family lived
— Israel, Ohio, Pennsylvania — are a
common theme in his writing. His 2018
debut novel “Sadness is a White Bird”
was a finalist for the National Jewish
Book Award and earned Rothman-
Zecher recognition on the National
Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” list.

Rothman-Zecher teaches poetry and
fiction at the University of the Arts.

“I’m primarily a
novelist; I’m primar-
ily a storyteller, and
I’ve turned now —
for the last seven or
eight years — mostly
to fiction, in order to
tell the truth through
making things up,”
he said. “What I’m
most drawn to is the
truth of the story in
its kind of narrow
sense, in its kind of
spiritual sense, and
not necessarily its
factual sense.”
“Before All the
World” is set in
Prohibition-era Philadelphia in a time
when the word “pogrom” refers to both
the violence against Jews in Eastern
Europe and the violence against Black
people in America.

Leyb, a Jewish man, finds himself in
the city after escaping from the Eastern
European village of Zatelsk, where
most of the residents were taken to a
nearby forest and killed. At Crickets, a
speakeasy serving a mostly gay clien-
tele, Leyb meets Charles, a Black man
from Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward,
becoming fascinated with Charles’
ability to speak Yiddish, a language
Leyb has previously only thought to be
spoken by Jews.

Miraculously, Leyb also reunites
with Gittl, the other Jewish survivor
of the Zatelsk pogrom. The story of
unlikely survival of the three protago-
nists asks both the characters and the
readers to imagine a better world.

Though Zatelsk, Crickets and
Charles’ apartment addresses are fic-
tional locales, their coming together is
loosely based on real events.

Rothman-Zecher, who attends Kol
Tzedek, grew up very close with his
grandparents, but following the death
of his grandmother, he uncovered parts
of her life that were once hidden.

“We had really extensive, deep con-
versations about a lot of things. But also
in my early adulthood, I realized that
there were some subjects that had been
totally off-limits,” Rothman-Zecher
said. “Specifically, growing up, I had
thought that my grandmother had one
sister, Beatrice, who lived in Center
City for her whole life, and we would
visit her regularly. I think when I was
in my late teenage years, maybe early
20s, I realized that my grandma had
actually had two sisters.”
Rothman-Zecher’s grandmother’s
younger sister Leonore Steinberg
had a child with a Black man in the
1940s. Shortly after the child’s birth,
Steinberg was sent to a psychiatric hos-
pital, where she lived for the rest of her
life. The institution adopted her child.

Rothman-Zecher is unsure whether the
child was adopted for nefarious reasons
or whether Leonore was institution-
alized because her relationship with a
Black man was pathologized.

Rothman-Zecher also drew on a story
his grandfather once told him about
his experience at a speakeasy-turned-
gay bar, though Rothman-Zecher isn’t
entirely sure he remembered the story
correctly. As he tries his best to extract the
spiritual truth from his family’s sto-
ries, Rothman-Zecher has observed a
transformation in his relationship with
them. “Writing the book, researching the
book and living in the book and mov-
ing around the book was this opportu-
nity to be in conversation with people
who weren’t alive anymore,” he said.

“It has been a special feeling, to feel the
presence of my family members, both
literal and literary, as the book goes out
into the world.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com Courtesy of Moriel Rothman-Zecher
Moriel Rothman-Zecher



nation / world
USPS Issues Chanukah Stamp
The U.S. Postal Service announced on Oct. 20 the release of a new Chanukah stamp.

“I remember looking forward to Chanukah as a child, especially the traditional
foods, gifts and games,” said Lori Dym, USPS managing counsel for procurement and
property law, who served as the dedicating official at an event at an Ohio synagogue.

Chanukah begins this year at sundown on Dec. 18.

The stamp art features the design from an original wall hanging. The fiber art
was hand-dyed, appliquéd and quilted to form an abstract image of a hanukkiah.

Blue and purple represent the sky, while greens and browns represent the earth.

The bright yellows and oranges represent the Festival of Lights. At the bottom of
the stamp, the words Hanukkah, Forever and USA appear in white capital letters.

‘Hitler Truck’ Inflames Tensions in Berkeley
Three weeks after a prominent pro-Israel activist accused the University of
California, Berkeley of creating “Jew-free zones,” two trucks rolled into town to
address the controversy, JTA.org reported.

One displayed a massive picture of Adolf Hitler.

“All in favor of banning Jews, raise your right hand,” read the billboard on the
side of the truck.

The truck was dispatched by a political advocacy group called Accuracy in Media,
which has a history of finding ways to provoke liberals and progressives. The group’s
president Adam Guillette told J. The Jewish News of Northern California that the
truck was part of a larger campaign to combat antisemitism on college campuses and
was meant to oppose the Berkeley Law student groups that recently announced they
had adopted a bylaw pledging to bar Zionist speakers from campus.

“The amount of hatred, intolerance, and antisemitism is morally outrageous
and it’s time for us to (non-violently) fight back,” Guillette said.

But whatever the truck’s intended effect, its presence frightened students and
drew condemnation from the local branch of the Anti-Defamation League,
Berkeley Hillel and the local Jewish Community Relations Council, along with
offers of emotional support from university administrators. Some passersby
threw rocks at the vehicle.

Exclusive Women’s Apparel Boutique
Made in USA
Custom designs, color options and
free alterations available
Evening Gowns
Suits/Separates Cocktail Dresses
61 Buck Road
Huntingdon Valley,
PA 19006
elanacollection.com/shop (215)953-8820
Make an appointment
to consult with the designer
Monday-Friday 10am-3pm
In Reversal, Australia Won’t Recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital
Australia’s new left-leaning government is reversing the decision made nearly four
years ago under a conservative administration to move the country’s embassy in
Israel to Jerusalem, JTA.org reported.

Then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced in December 2018 that
Australia would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The move put him in line
with then-U.S. President Donald Trump, who made a similar announcement a
year earlier, pleasing his base, and had already opened an embassy in Jerusalem.

But it made Morrison an outlier among the vast majority of world leaders, who
have long held that whether Jerusalem is Israel’s capital should be negotiated as
part of an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord.

Australia’s embassy never moved from Tel Aviv. And now, Morrison’s successor
is returning the country’s official position to the one it maintained until 2018.

“Australia is committed to a two-state solution in which Israel and a future
Palestinian state coexist, in peace and security, within internationally recognised
borders,” Penny Wong, Australia’s minister for foreign affairs, said in a statement.

“We will not support an approach that undermines this prospect.”
Israel, Bahrain Sign Accord on Agricultural Cooperation
Israel and Bahrain on Oct. 19 signed an agricultural cooperation declaration on
the sidelines of the first-ever International Summit on Food Technologies from
the Dead Sea and Desert that took place in Eilat, JNS.org reported.

The conference, an initiative of Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural
Development, was attended by 70 senior officials, who focused on promoting coordi-
nation and innovation in aquaculture and the overall battle to combat food insecurity.

The declaration calls for the promotion and expansion of cooperation between
Jerusalem and Manama in the fields of agriculture, livestock and food security,
and the sharing of related knowledge, technology and diverse products. JE
— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb
FREE ESTIMATES
PERSONALIZED SERVICE
SENIOR DOWNSIZING
DECLUTTER / HOARDING CLEAN OUTS
ALL ITEMS SOLD, DONATED, OR REPURPOSED
RESPECTFUL OF HOMES WITH
ACCUMULATIONS OF 30+ YEARS
JOLIE OMINSKY
OWNER SERVING PA, DE, NJ
JOCSERNICA@YAHOO.COM 610-551-3105
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 13