They Called Me Mayer July

"...a stunning and gripping volume"

They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Before the Holocaust is a stunning and gripping volume. The book is difficult to categorize: part art book, part memoir, part ethnography, part history; it defies and transcends conventional genres. It promises to stimulate attention across a wide array of interests and demographics. Some will flip through the book, admiring Mayer Kirshenblatt’s evocative paintings of Jewish life in interwar Poland.Others will study his meticulous instructions on subjects ranging from how to harness a horse to how to make a dreydl. Still others will peruse the author’s recollections of his early education in Apt, or of his emigration by steamship to Canada. My four-year old daughter, whose readings I never thought I would be referencing in an academic book review, loved the painting “Boy with Herring” and marveled at the idea of carrying home a fish wrapped in newspaper with brine dripping from the head and tail. Two generations removed, my parents both picked up the book and read it cover to cover during their week-long visit a few weeks ago. I can think of few books that could garner this much attention from such diverse readerships.

"...amazing book," Nancy Miller

I'm making my way through your amazing book. I am completely fascinated by it all--the paintings, of course, but the narrative--and the effects of documentation. As you know my ancestors come from farther east and emigrated earlier--but I find the details illuminating....

That's really what does it, the herring, all the how-to-make drawings--a dreydel!!!My maternal grandfather was someone who also could figure out how to make anything. I don't think we know enough about that kind of creativity and resilience.

You are so lucky to have this legacy and to have been able to record it for posterity.

Mazel tov,
All my admiration,

Nancy
October 25, 2008

"...absolutely stunning," Blu Greenberg

I have been wanting to contact you ever since my visit to Berkeley last November. I found your father's paintings and accompanying narratives to be absolutely stunning. What a remarkable talent he has! I felt privileged to walk through the streets of Apt with him,  almost as an insider. While viewing the exhibit, I did not have time to read through all of the narratives, but when I returned home, I sat down and did not move for hours, until I had read every page.  It is an extraordinary gift to Jews after the Shoah, and it will be a treasure for years to come.

 

What a beautiful thing  you have done as a daughter!  I have long admired your work, and now add to that admiration a new dimension--an appreciation of what a special human being you are.

 

May you and your father be blessed with many years to come.

 

Blu Greenberg
April 28, 2008

"... a marvelous book," Kristin G. Congdon, Journal of Folklore Research

This book would have been compelling if it had been only words or paintings with little description. But with both text and images, we have a treasure. Having studied that which many of us call “memory painting” for almost three decades, I now understand the full power of this genre. This is a marvelous book. I believe it will certainly live on long after all of us are gone. It’s that important.

Mayer July (Mayer Kirshenblatt) was a small, rebellious child, who grew up before World War II in Apt, the Yiddish name for Opatów, a small town in Poland. He played hooky often, which allowed him the time to explore his hometown, keenly learning about the work, play, and ritual aspects of his neighborhood. Encouraged by his daughter, co-author Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Mayer July tells the story of his youth in text and paintings. What is most striking about this lengthy book is how well he remembers life in his Jewish hometown.

In reading this amazing autobiography, we learn about varied customs, including writing petitions, performing black weddings, engaging in ritual baths, getting a circumcision, preserving eggs in limewater, and the shaving of corpses. Mayer July meticulously describes his town’s landscape, the buildings, trees, markets, cemeteries, and orchards. We get an understanding of what goes on in the town’s photography studio and soap and candle factories. We learn about fiddle players, singers, cellists, professional water-carriers, actors, postmen, chimney sweeps, dogcatchers, rope makers, tinsmiths, milk ladies, thieves, and wigmakers. The book is full of folklore about murders, plagues, rituals, ghosts, miracles, farewell gifts, menstruation, and the importance of looking after the dead.

J.I. Segal Award with Joe Somberg's family from Apt, November 11, 2008

 

"...absolutely incredible," Lawrence Kaplan tribute for J.I. Segal Award, November 11, 2008

"...the same personal, unmistakable voice comes through in both the text and pictures, the voice of a person on whom nothing is lost, of a person who sees everything, takes in everything, and reproduces everything with life, precision, exactitude, and fidelity, a shrewd, strong, honest, direct, clear, and unvarnished voice, a voice which while it is uniquely personal is, at the same time, the voice of the quintessential East European Jew..."

There were twenty-one books submitted in the prize category of English non-Fiction on a Jewish Theme--many of them truly excellent--on a dazzlingly variety of subjects, testifying both to the depth, breadth, and richness of the Jewish experience and the broad pool of exceptionally fine, talented Canadian authors with which we are blessed. But, particularly in light of the description of the work of J.l. Segal in the Jewish Public Library award brochure as "characterized by its deep lyric expression and evocation of the dignity of Jewish life in the Eastern European Shtetl and Canada," one book stood out from the rest--indeed it was almost a slam- dunk--They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland before the Holocaust, by Mayer Kirshenblatt, a 92 year old artist living and working in Toronto, with "A Daughter's Afterword" by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, the distinguished cultural anthropologist. (By the way, to clarify, Mayer July is the English equivalent of Mayer Tammez or Crazy Mayer. I personally would have entitled the book, "They called Me Dog-Days Mayer.")