The Rye Bread Marriage: How I Found Happiness with a Partner I’ll Never Understand by Michaele Weissman; Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books, © 2023, ISBN 9781643-752693; 278 pages including acknowledgment and notes; $27 on Amazon.
SAN DIEGO – This is a memoir of a marriage between the author, who is Jewish, and John, a non-Jewish, non-Christian, Latvian pagan who immigrated to the United States as a child following World War II.
For John, hearty, black-crusted rye bread was more than the proverbial staff of life; it was ingrained in the ancient, pre-Christian culture of Latvia, which he continuously sought to recreate.
John was a PhD hired by the University of Maryland to head a research program focusing on utilizing ion beams to repair microchips. Michaele was a freelance writer, whose subjects often were foods. He could be tremendously kind; yet he was taciturn while Michaele was chatty; he kept his emotions in check while Michaele gave free vent to hers; he had personally known hardship in his life, while Michaele had grown up relatively ignorant of how difficult life could be; he was the yin and she the yang of a marriage that somehow worked, despite these and various cultural differences.
There are several recurring themes in this book: the history of Latvia, caught between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia; love for food and its preparation, most especially Latvian rye bread; John’s usually-under-control bipolarism, and John’s and Michaele’s mutual love of travel, fine dining, and being with each other.
That many Latvians, including John’s family, fled to Nazi Germany in the face of their country being invaded by Soviet troops rankled Michaele’s Jewish consciousness. How could anyone flee towards Hitler, the worst mass murderer in history? And, what exactly did Latvians do during the Holocaust? The history of Jewish relations in Latvia was far from pretty.
While such issues were troubling to Michaele, even at times irritants, they did not seriously endanger their marriage. John was but a small child during the Nazi era; he had no role whatsoever in the mass murder of Jews. In fact, throughout his life he had enjoyed companionship and romances with several Jews.
Together John, the professor, and Michaele, the freelance writer, embarked in their later years on a rye bread venture: commissioning the baking of Latvian rye bread and selling it to specialty groceries. In the process, Michaele learned much about this special, chewy, even crunchy, bread by interviewing accomplished bakers in Latvia and elsewhere. She shares in this book much of what she learned about Latvian rye bread’s history and breadmaking techniques.
She learned a lot about Latvian rye bread. If only her usually charming husband were as easy to figure out!
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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com