My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner

May 23, 2011
In this tender, hilarious memoir of his grandparents' early life as new settlers to Palestine, Israeli author Shalev (A Pigeon and a Boy) evokes all his idealism and disappointments in Zionism. A new GE vacuum cleaner sent by Uncle Yeshayahu in America underscored for the hard-working migrants from Russia to mid-1930s Palestine their poverty and their pride: while Uncle Yeshayahu had gone to Los Angeles to become a rich businessman, his brother, Aharon, and sister-in-law, Tonia, migrated to Palestine, resolved to plow the land, creating a socialist state and "foothold for persecuted and wandering Jews." However, it was undeniably backbreaking labor, especially for the author's grandma Tonia, a woman originally from the Ukrainian village of Rokitno, who is obsessed with cleaning the dust from her house and jealously guards the "svieeperrr" in the locked bathroom, never to use it again, mostly because it too will get dirty. The author joyfully remembers those days he spent as a boy with his grandparents in the bucolic Jezreel Valley, and in this quirky tribute commemorates the spirit of an exacting, tireless character who was "the purified essence of us all, for better and worse."

July 1, 2011

Breezy chronicle of life with a hardworking Russian family headed by an obsessive matriarch with a "dirt phobia."

Award-winning Israeli writer Shalev's (Beginnings: Reflections on the Bible's Intriguing Firsts, 2010, etc.) delightful family memoir focuses on a joyful boyhood spent with his grandparents Aharon and Tonia through the decades following their migration to Palestine in the 1920s (both elders hailed from small Ukrainian villages). The author's grandmother, Tonia, a practical, tightly-wound cleaning sensation, had always been a woman who methodically carried a dust rag on her shoulder, but the gift of a powerful General Electric vacuum sent from Shalev's uncle was completely unexpected. The present both surprised and irritated Tonia and Aharon. Tonia was used to doing her own housekeeping unassisted by mechanical intervention, and Aharon felt it was a offering from a relative who'd swapped their adopted Zionistic beliefs for "American capitalism" by emigrating to Los Angeles, changing his name and becoming a businessman who reaped more self-satisfied rewards than the rest of the family. The author gleefully describes his hardworking grandmother's eccentricities with affectionate amusement and without mockery. As a young boy, to help prepare for the family Seder, Shalev was allowed access to Tonia's forbidden rooms, where he discovered abandoned furniture draped in "old-sheet shrouds," as well as inside the typically locked, second bathroom, where the vacuum cleaner (her "svieeperrr") sat, unused, for fear that it would become soiled if operated. The author unveils Tonia's stringent unwillingness to allow visitors to traipse through the clean, carefully segregated house, preferring to entertain outside, and her startlingly outspoken declaration that "a young man should change girls like he does socks." Rife with colloquialisms and native dialects, Shalev's personal reflections of quirky uncles, family squabbles, the rich history of his Jewish heritage and the legacy of the omnipresent American vacuum touch the heart and tickle the funny bone.

An unconventional and quite hilarious family scrapbook.

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September 1, 2011
Award-winning Israeli author Shalev delivers a punchy family memoir that examines his relationship with his grandmother. Grandma Tonia, whoas a young woman immigrated to Israel and married, is obsessed with cleanliness. When her husband's oldest brother sends an American vacuum cleaner from Los Angeles, however, she locks it in the bathroom, where it lives in dark and lonely confinement wrapped in its white shroud and as clean as the day it was born, untainted by dust. Clearly and accessibly translated by PEN Translation Prize finalist Fallenberg, this memoir composed of a series of engaging anecdotes, mostly about Shalev's training in Grandma Tonia's University of Cleaning, grants readers a glimpse into the zany aspects of immigrant culture and acclimation. Shalev strives to gain a deeper understanding of his grandmother through her past, mannerisms, and behavior, and thereby presents a unique, three-dimensional character. Ultimately, his memoir celebrates family, quirks and all.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)