Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

Dorothea Shefer-Vanson is a freelance journalist based in Mevasseret Zion, Israel.

Her published works, available on Amazon, include:

* All Quiet on the Midwestern Plains: A Tale of Deception, Betrayal, and Vindication

* The Balancing Game: A Child Between Two Worlds, A Society Approaching War

* Chasing Dreams and Flies: A Tragicomedy of Life in France

* The Diary of Anne Frank (Cliff Notes)

* Levi Koenig: A Contemporary King Lear

* A Ruffled Calm

* Time out of Joint: The Fate of a Family

Shefer-Vanson also is a Hebrew to English translator, with those works on Amazon including:
* The Rainy Day Man by Amnon Jackont

A 10-year-old boy encounters anti-Semitism

Albert Cohen wrote this book when he was eighty years old and approaching death, as he states early on in this book. It describes his experiences and emotions when, on his tenth birthday, he encountered a street vendor in Marseilles, where he was living at the time. A small crowd had gathered around, and the boy was fascinated by the colorful goods the vendor was selling, so bought some trinkets with the money his mother had given him for his birthday. The vendor noticed the boy’s dark hair and eyes and began insulting him for being Jewish, telling him to ‘shove off, scum,’ and ‘we don’t like dirty bloodsucking Jews here.’ The people around him either laughed or kept quiet, adding to the boy’s pain. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Jewish History

Stalemate casts pall over otherwise content Israel

Here in Israel all is not sweetness and light. Far from it. I have always tried to present the more pleasant side of life in Israel, and it certainly exists, political differences notwithstanding. But the grim state of public life at present cannot be ignored. After all, what sane country has to hold three general elections in the space of less than a year? [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Middle East

Australia’s wildfires are a warning to us all

It seemed only natural, after hearing and reading about the terrible conflagration in Australia, to reach out to our friends and acquaintances there to ask how they were faring. Most sent back fairly optimistic replies, reassuring us that their lives and homes were not in danger, though the ever-present smoke made daily life less pleasant. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, International, Middle East, The World We Share, USA

‘Lucky Ones’ suffers from poor writing, editing

I have very mixed feelings about this book {“We Were the Lucky Ones”]. On the one hand, it is a hearfelt attempt to reconstruct the experiences of various members of the author’s family (grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins) during the Holocaust. On the other, however, the writing does not flow easily, and the fact that the narrative is mainly (though not solely) in the present tense jars on my sensibilities as a reader. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, International, Jewish History, USA

Bought, borrowed or stolen? Art from the Gurlitt trove

At an exhibit entitled ’Fateful Choices: Art from the Gurlitt Trove,’ the Israel Museum’s Curator of European Art, Shlomit Steinberg, gave a fascinating talk about the history, geography, sociology and provenance of the huge collection of paintings, drawings, prints and lithographs found in 2012 in an apartment belonging to Cornelius Gurlitt, an elderly recluse living in Munich and virtually unknown to the German authorities. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, International, Jewish History, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts

Multiple-city itineraries can be exhausting

It seemed like a good idea at the time. A trip that would last just over three weeks, starting with a few days in Madrid, continuing with visits of several days each to cousins on the east coast of the USA. After that we were due to spend a few days with our son in Las Vegas, and conclude with a few more days in Rome. What a perfect combination of fun, family and art. Lots of art. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, International, Travel and Food, USA

Hitches, Glitches, Delays and Success!

In a stunning display of arrogance and stupidity, I ventured out into the wild and woolly world of self-publishing on Amazon’s KDP platform. I’ve done it before, five times in fact, twice with the help of outside agencies, and three times by myself. It’s been a little more than a year since I published my last book, All Quiet on the Midwestern Plains, and apart from help from my designer and computer-whiz son Eitan with the cover of the paperback version, I managed it pretty well by myself. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

The World War II bravery of remote French villages

The largely rural Vivarais-Lignon plateau enjoys a climate considered to be healthy during the summer months, resulting in the existence there of several hotels, children’s homes and convalescent centres for visiting tourists. In the winter, however, it was more or less cut off from the rest of the country by deep, long-lasting snow and its mountainous terrain. These conditions enabled the villagers to provide sanctuary for people – and especially children – seeking to evade capture and deportation to concentration camps. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, International

Memories of a childhood sukkah

The Jewish custom of once a year building a little hut or sukkah in one’s garden or backyard supposedly harks back to the time many thousands of years ago when the Hebrews were wandering in the wilderness after having left Egypt and had to live in makeshift huts or tabernacles, more or less in the way the Bedouin Arabs live today. Like many aspects of the Jewish religion, practice and history are bound up together. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, International, Jewish Religion, Middle East

Its people and geography make Israel special

Like every country, Israel has its advantages and its disadvantages. One of the former is its climate, which is on the whole pleasant (at least in Jerusalem) with sunny days throughout the summer, often with cool evenings and nights. It also has a long coastline giving most of the population access to the sea with all its benefits.

Considering its small size, the country encompasses a particularly wide range ofinteresting geographical features, with hilly areas in the north, and even mountains on which one can ski in winter. (To read more, please click on the headline)

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Middle East

‘A Trace of Smoke’ set in pre-war Berlin

Excerpt: I chose this book by Rebecca Cantrell because it promised to describe what life was like in Berlin in the early 1930s. I was not disappointed. Apart from the somewhat lurid plot of the novel, the book contains a vivid account of the way Berliners lived and loved at that time, the rising political power and physical presence of the Nazi party and – in a particularly sensational way – the life of the homosexual community there. (To read more, please click on the headline)

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

A nostalgic, educational visit to London

Excerpt: This year’s visit started with a bang, the sun was shining and we had been invited to tour the House of Lords by a sitting member who had attended the LSE at the same time as I had, but had gone on to have a stellar career in the law, eventually being made a baroness. She had seen my articles about life in Israel in the AJR Journal and contacted me last year, when we visited her in Oxford. Because parliament had been ‘prorogued,’ i.e., suspended, by the Prime Minister, the place was deserted apart from a few security personnel. Nonetheless, we were taken around the opulent building, parts of which date back to the thirteenth century, while much of it was restored in the nineteenth century after a fire. We felt very privileged to be taken around by our friend, who also treated us to a lovely meal at the Wolesley restaurant. (Please click headline to read full story)

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Travel and Food

The Talmud has defined the Judaism of today

In tracing the origins and development of the Talmud over the millennia in which it has existed in one form or another (first oral, then written, and eventually printed), Harry Freedman, a historian and expert in Aramaic and Judaic studies, introduces us to the different environments and cultures in which the Talmud emerged and eventually flourished, as well as giving us insights into the various rabbis, interpreters, and scholars who helped to formulate and establish it.

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Jewish History, Jewish Religion