Sarit Yishai-Levi
THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF JERUSALEM: A NOVEL
Thomas Dunne Books, 2016, ISBN: 978-125-007-816-2
Reviewed by Beth Dwoskin1
A Popular Introduction to 20th Century Sephardic Jews in Israel for English Readers
In 2016, Anthony Berris translated Sarit Yishai-Levi’s 2013 Hebrew novel, Malkat HaYofi shel Yerushalayim into English and it was released as The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem. The book is a revolution in historical novels about twentieth century Jewish history, a book that could probably only be written by an Israeli author. It was a runaway success and was a finalist nominee for the National Jewish Book Award in the Book Club category.
The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem covers the same time period as many of the Holocaust novels about Western European Jews that regularly flood the literary market, but it takes place almost entirely in Jerusalem, from the period of Turkish dominion through the English mandate and the War of Independence, up to the seventies. The author mined her personal history as an eighth-generation Sephardic Jerusalemite. It’s the saga of a Sephardic family that first arrived in Jerusalem from Toledo through Salonica, speaking Ladino among themselves throughout their history. The book is peppered with Ladino phrases that this tight family uses in moments of frustration and of endearment, wai de mi sola (woe to my soul), pishcado y limon (fish and lemon), Dio que me mate (may God kill me). The culture of respect for parents, the patriarchal rule, the codes of familial honor, and the belief in spells, and curses, and the evil eye, are all critical elements in this story of twentieth century Jews, but they will probably sound bizarre to American Jewish readers.
The plot turns on three loveless marriages and the bitter and rancorous lives of the wives who are stuck in them. Mercada, the woman in the first marriage, ruins her son Gabriel’s life but then cures his depression with her famous livianos, magic spells that bring her renown throughout the city. Sarit Yishai-Levi’s use of this term may be familiar to Ladino language experts, but the small amount of Yiddish in the book contains some inaccuracies, including the loose application of the word, dybbuk, a common problem among Jews everywhere. In general, the editing of this book is somewhat sloppy, but not enough to interrupt the flow of the narrative.
Mercada’s belief in the evil eye is sincere and she practices her magic out of conviction, not for profit. She’s so fearful of the unnamed curse that she ties red thread around everyone’s wrist to keep demons away. But nothing can forestall the power of the beautiful Ashkenazi girl who bewitches Gabriel. As Mercada’s daughter Allegra tells it, “The Sephardim were so opposed to marriage with Ishkenazim that Sir Moses Montefiore himself offered a prize of a hundred gold napoleons to anyone entering into a mixed marriage. … nobody jumped at the offer”.
Though the main narrator is Gabriela, the daughter of the beauty queen of the title, the writer makes deft use of a constantly shifting point of view, and much of the narrative is told through the eyes of Gabriel, her grandfather. In addition to the beauty queen, the book is also about her daughter, her husband, her parents, and her grandparents, and we hear about all of them, quite a feat in a book that covers four generations in 372 pages. The theme is determinism, the curse on the family that forces the men to give up the women they truly love and to enter into a marriage that the family approves, or else it’s that the curse is duping the women into marrying men who love other women. Not such an uncommon theme, but here it plays out through the filter of Sephardic customs. These customs are not so different from Ashkenazic norms, but here we see them against the backdrop of a strictly religious but mercantile family, not disposed to Talmudic study but rather to building a Jewish future in “our Jerusalem.” The goal of the family is not to breed Torah scholars but to have the most successful delicatessen in Mahane Yehuda.
In true historical novel fashion, events in the history of Jerusalem are essential to the plot. The first generation sends its sons to America so they won’t be drafted into the Turkish army. Rosa, the matriarch of the second generation, sees her brother hanged by the Turks for avoiding conscription. The British who take over from the Turks become enemies to the Jews and the Sephardic community seethes with contempt for Jewish girls who sleep with British soldiers in exchange for assistance for their hungry families. Meanwhile, young men from the community join the British in fighting the Nazis in Europe. The family rejoices when the United Nations approves the establishment of the state of Israel, but then suffers through the War of Independence and the siege of Jerusalem, when even their water supply was cut off. Bombings, political and military resistance to the British, landmarks, and new and old neighborhoods, are all elements that unite to make the city itself a character in the story.
As a result of the extraordinary success of Shtisel, a large, multi-generational Jewish family in Jerusalem is suddenly ideal material for a television series. If a cast of frumpy Hasidim in modern-day Jerusalem are sufficiently exotic for an international audience, how much the more so for a show set against the action-packed background of war, with glamorous, colorful women, brave, handsome soldiers, and strong matriarchs whose cultural background is, like the Hasidim, completely foreign to outsiders. Thus, it’s not surprising that Yes Studios, the same outfit that brought Shtisel to the world, is already running The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem television series in Israel. Michael Aloni, the handsome heartthrob who plays Akiva in Shtisel, is cast as the patriarch Gabriel. Like other modern television production companies, Yes Studios brings lush, high quality production values to its films and TV series, and still photographs on the series website show sumptuous sets, with lavish costumes and makeup adorning impossibly beautiful actors. Reviewer Hannah Brown calls it “soapy fun”2 and notes that the TV series alters and compresses the book’s plot, which is generally a necessity when a book makes the transition to the screen. Ideally, the series will whet the international appetite for information about Sephardic Jewry and lead readers to this very accessible novel.
1 Beth Dwoskin is a retired librarian with expertise in Yiddish literature, Jewish folksong, and Jewish history.
2 'The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem’ makes its amazing, much-awaited debut: The Jerusalem Post, June 3, 2021: by Hannah Brown - Viewed July 16, 2021.