Sabra Waldfogel
liked how complex the characters here were, Jewish people who used to be slaves in Egypt are now in the position of slave owners.
Adeliade who has her own half sister as her lady's maid, teacher her how to read and protecting her from her fist fiance, then later hating on her when Rachel becomes her husband's mistress.
So much hypocrisy and passive aggressive behavior in every page it's just gold, This isn't a feelgood book, but it's a pretty good book if you're interested in reading about Antebellum South and the complex relationships that existed then.
A challenging read for the end of Passover! This story chronicles the experiences of Jewish slave owners and their slaves in the antebellum south.
“My earliest readers were surprised that Jews, with their long history of persecution in Europe, suffered so little from antiSemitism in the South and given their long memory of enslavement in Egypt became slave owners with so little difficulty,” Waldfogel wrote in the authors note of the Lake Union edition of her book.
Fun fact: she first selfpublished said book, and then it was picked up by Amazon! Theres a lot of philosophy, psychology and social history that could be delved into within that statement.
But this is a novel, and, as such, characters are inhibited by personal choices and beliefs above a more comprehensive understanding.
I have my own theories, based on research and speculation, but they may or may not match whats on the page.
We are following the Manheim and Kaltenbach intermarried families, who live as planters in Northern Georgia.
Mordecai and Rosa Manheim immigrated from Germany some decades back, and now own a prosperous plantation with fifty slaves.
They are looking to marry off their daughter, Adelaide, and after a scandal in Savannah, Mordecai kinda cooks the books with another, more recent German Jewish immigrant named Henry Kaltenbloch.
Henry wants to start his own plantation, which means a wife and slaves to help with the labor, and he quickly finds himself in debt to Mordecai.
Mordecais driving ambition seems to be greed/money obsession, and in a couple of scenes it made me wary, what with the inherent antisemitic canard.
But it turns out his main antagonist is another Jew Henry, so, I hesitate to say Henry is Mordecais main victim since the man owns slaves, Hes not a sadist, like Samuel Prichard in THE LOVE SONGS OF W, E. B. DU BOIS, but he buys into the racist paternalism/”lesser beings” aspect of antebellum slavery, whenever anyone challenges him on the subject.
Mostly, hes just comfortable with his own status quo,
Henry is a more empathetic man and a more hypocritical one, He leaves his family to come to the States after failed revolution in Germany, and the promise that as a Jew, hell never be a full citizen.
He immediately understands the cardinal sin of slavery in a socalled democracy, But he wants the financial advancement that planting cotton brings, and so with Mordecais help he buys slaves.
He may toil with them in the work and treat them with seeming dignity, but he still owns them.
Our primary Black viewpoint comes from Rachel, who is Adelaides personal maid and also, it turns out, her sister.
She turns Mordecai in particular into a more complicated character, because despite his many flaws, he cares for her in a way.
He teaches her mathematics and she becomes a help to him in running the plantation, She ostensibly gets more education than Adelaide, who longs to write and attend higher education, but instead is set to the ladys work of snagging a husband.
After a first, failed attempt with a passionate but philandering man, she lands with steady, kindhearted Henry.
But their relationship turns stale due to differing backgrounds Adelaide comes from more wealth and is much more comfortable with shrugging off slavery, and then Rachel and Henry start a romance.
The drama continues from there, but I dont think its too soap operaishwell, besides for Mordecai railroading Henry into the Confederate Army, lest he call in his whole debt early.
But Waldfogel has too much sympathy for her characters to turn them into complete caricatures, They grow and change along the waymaybe too fast near the end, or maybe I expected too much handholding.
Shrug.
I think the biggest challenge in reading from ast century perspective is understanding their feelings and actions from within their societal construct.
Most of the slaves are deferent, even encouraging Henry to be more hard sometimes and Henry and Rachel find themselves legitimately in love.
I dont want to dismiss the culpability of slave owners, but it did make me think about how society can force people into roles.
Henry couldnt go into equal business with his slaves, or free any of them until he died, under Georgian law.
Adelaide and her mother struck out against Rachel because their voices carried little weight with the men in their lives.
And many of the slaves, it seems, would find it easier to promote positive feelings for their masters, or even acceptance of their place in the social order, lest they rebel and even worse things happen to them.
Or maybe its some form of Stockholm syndrome, But its real for these characters in this context,
The Jewish content felt like an interesting inbetween place, Living so far from a Jewish community, the Manheim/Kaltenblochs were much more involved with their gentile neighbors, and often didnt observe halacha to the letter.
Of course Waldfogel paid particular attention to including a few Passovers in the plot, usually for Mordecai or Adelaide to ignore the obvious slavery connections, or for Henry to grapple with them.
There was also, I think, a compelling scene where Adelaide tried to come to terms with some of her shortcomings in time for Yom Kippur.
Maybe thats my bias, because Judaism for the most part in this story was perceived as some sort of burden or requirement, not something with intrinsic value.
Though there was some affection for familial heirlooms and recipes passed down, Basically, Im trying to be very liminal with something Waldfogel wove into the background fabric, heh,
Overall, I liked this story and it made me think, Also seems apparent that the author did her historical research, The ending was a little neat, with noble Union soldiers being convinced of the familys goodness so that they wouldnt lose everything in the war the Union torched a lot of planting land as they went through the south.
Its certainly nice to think of the Manheim/Kaltenblochs and their former slaves being able to go on in more equanimous circumstances.
Reconstruction was the promise of something good, alas, before white supremacy found a new form, But looks like Waldfogels sequel novel might stay in that fleeting stretch of time, It's not perfect, but I'm giving it five because of how interesting I found it,
Also posted sitelink HERE,
This is an epic sort of story, one that seemed to take me a while to read, but one Im very glad I did.
Dealing with slavery and sisterhood in the leadup and duration of the US Civil War in the midnineteenth century, Sister of Mine is told from the perspective of two young Southern women, one the daughter of a rich Jewish landowner in Georgia, and the other her slave and secret halfsister.
If youre not from the United States you might want to familiarise yourself with the basics of the war and where the various states are positioned before starting if you want to get the most out of the book.
I cant tell you if every detail of the history is correct, but there does seem to be a staggering amount of research that went into this.
Its not that it overpowers the story, but that the casual mentions of everything from foods to fashions seemed to have been carefully researched before being put on the page.
This is historical fiction, which means theres plenty of sadness to go with the better times.
There are a few points in the story where youre going to find some of the major players very difficult to like, but that seemed realistic to me, and it left lots of room for them to change and grow over the years and through the war.
Nobody is perfect here, and it is all much more complex with the topic of slavery and seeing a war through the eyes of the losing side, especially as some of it is told from the perspective of people who own slaves.
I thought it was really brilliant how the author managed to turn characters minds around, and how she found a way for them to be on both sides of the conflict sometimes at the same time.
Mostly, this is a bittersweet sort of story, Its not fluff that you read through in a few hours, and it was exactly what Id been looking for after one Regency ballroom too many in my recent reads.
copy provided by NetGalley, This turned out to be a very interesting love triangle between a slave, her sister and her master.
This book had history and romance with a splash ofshades of grey, what made this story unique is that I usually read about Christians owning slaves but this time around the author focused on a Jewish family that owned slaves.
I really appreciate when the author's research shows in the writing, My only flaw with this story was that some parts were too wordy, Its a big book that could have been shortened by at leastpages, This book was great! The narrator did a wonderful job reading this story, I hated for the story to end, This is an excellent and well researched historical novel, Made all the more interesting because I was unaware
that there were planters of the Jewish faith in the antebellum south.
Adelaide is the spoiled and pampered daughter of the richest planter in the county, Rachel, a kitchen slave, is gifted to Adelaide and the girls form a bond, Eventually they realize that they share the same father, Sisters often have complex relationships, Adelaide and Rachels relationship, slave and mistress, rivals and allies, is profoundly explored in this powerful novel.
When Adelaide marries a man she does not love, the relationship between her and Rachel becomes even more difficult.
As the Civil War looms the sisters experience betrayal, distrust, and bitterness,
The war brings a different set of problems and while Rachel has always been the stronger of the two, Adelaide is forced to grow up and acknowledge some grim truths about herself, her father and her marriage.
I really could not put the book down, This is one that will stay with me for a while, If you like reading books about this time period, I urge you to get a copy of Sister of Mine.
Im sure you will enjoy this reading as much as I have,
Adeliade who has her own half sister as her lady's maid, teacher her how to read and protecting her from her fist fiance, then later hating on her when Rachel becomes her husband's mistress.
So much hypocrisy and passive aggressive behavior in every page it's just gold, This isn't a feelgood book, but it's a pretty good book if you're interested in reading about Antebellum South and the complex relationships that existed then.
A challenging read for the end of Passover! This story chronicles the experiences of Jewish slave owners and their slaves in the antebellum south.
“My earliest readers were surprised that Jews, with their long history of persecution in Europe, suffered so little from antiSemitism in the South and given their long memory of enslavement in Egypt became slave owners with so little difficulty,” Waldfogel wrote in the authors note of the Lake Union edition of her book.
Fun fact: she first selfpublished said book, and then it was picked up by Amazon! Theres a lot of philosophy, psychology and social history that could be delved into within that statement.
But this is a novel, and, as such, characters are inhibited by personal choices and beliefs above a more comprehensive understanding.
I have my own theories, based on research and speculation, but they may or may not match whats on the page.
We are following the Manheim and Kaltenbach intermarried families, who live as planters in Northern Georgia.
Mordecai and Rosa Manheim immigrated from Germany some decades back, and now own a prosperous plantation with fifty slaves.
They are looking to marry off their daughter, Adelaide, and after a scandal in Savannah, Mordecai kinda cooks the books with another, more recent German Jewish immigrant named Henry Kaltenbloch.
Henry wants to start his own plantation, which means a wife and slaves to help with the labor, and he quickly finds himself in debt to Mordecai.
Mordecais driving ambition seems to be greed/money obsession, and in a couple of scenes it made me wary, what with the inherent antisemitic canard.
But it turns out his main antagonist is another Jew Henry, so, I hesitate to say Henry is Mordecais main victim since the man owns slaves, Hes not a sadist, like Samuel Prichard in THE LOVE SONGS OF W, E. B. DU BOIS, but he buys into the racist paternalism/”lesser beings” aspect of antebellum slavery, whenever anyone challenges him on the subject.
Mostly, hes just comfortable with his own status quo,
Henry is a more empathetic man and a more hypocritical one, He leaves his family to come to the States after failed revolution in Germany, and the promise that as a Jew, hell never be a full citizen.
He immediately understands the cardinal sin of slavery in a socalled democracy, But he wants the financial advancement that planting cotton brings, and so with Mordecais help he buys slaves.
He may toil with them in the work and treat them with seeming dignity, but he still owns them.
Our primary Black viewpoint comes from Rachel, who is Adelaides personal maid and also, it turns out, her sister.
She turns Mordecai in particular into a more complicated character, because despite his many flaws, he cares for her in a way.
He teaches her mathematics and she becomes a help to him in running the plantation, She ostensibly gets more education than Adelaide, who longs to write and attend higher education, but instead is set to the ladys work of snagging a husband.
After a first, failed attempt with a passionate but philandering man, she lands with steady, kindhearted Henry.
But their relationship turns stale due to differing backgrounds Adelaide comes from more wealth and is much more comfortable with shrugging off slavery, and then Rachel and Henry start a romance.
The drama continues from there, but I dont think its too soap operaishwell, besides for Mordecai railroading Henry into the Confederate Army, lest he call in his whole debt early.
But Waldfogel has too much sympathy for her characters to turn them into complete caricatures, They grow and change along the waymaybe too fast near the end, or maybe I expected too much handholding.
Shrug.
I think the biggest challenge in reading from ast century perspective is understanding their feelings and actions from within their societal construct.
Most of the slaves are deferent, even encouraging Henry to be more hard sometimes and Henry and Rachel find themselves legitimately in love.
I dont want to dismiss the culpability of slave owners, but it did make me think about how society can force people into roles.
Henry couldnt go into equal business with his slaves, or free any of them until he died, under Georgian law.
Adelaide and her mother struck out against Rachel because their voices carried little weight with the men in their lives.
And many of the slaves, it seems, would find it easier to promote positive feelings for their masters, or even acceptance of their place in the social order, lest they rebel and even worse things happen to them.
Or maybe its some form of Stockholm syndrome, But its real for these characters in this context,
The Jewish content felt like an interesting inbetween place, Living so far from a Jewish community, the Manheim/Kaltenblochs were much more involved with their gentile neighbors, and often didnt observe halacha to the letter.
Of course Waldfogel paid particular attention to including a few Passovers in the plot, usually for Mordecai or Adelaide to ignore the obvious slavery connections, or for Henry to grapple with them.
There was also, I think, a compelling scene where Adelaide tried to come to terms with some of her shortcomings in time for Yom Kippur.
Maybe thats my bias, because Judaism for the most part in this story was perceived as some sort of burden or requirement, not something with intrinsic value.
Though there was some affection for familial heirlooms and recipes passed down, Basically, Im trying to be very liminal with something Waldfogel wove into the background fabric, heh,
Overall, I liked this story and it made me think, Also seems apparent that the author did her historical research, The ending was a little neat, with noble Union soldiers being convinced of the familys goodness so that they wouldnt lose everything in the war the Union torched a lot of planting land as they went through the south.
Its certainly nice to think of the Manheim/Kaltenblochs and their former slaves being able to go on in more equanimous circumstances.
Reconstruction was the promise of something good, alas, before white supremacy found a new form, But looks like Waldfogels sequel novel might stay in that fleeting stretch of time, It's not perfect, but I'm giving it five because of how interesting I found it,
Also posted sitelink HERE,
This is an epic sort of story, one that seemed to take me a while to read, but one Im very glad I did.
Dealing with slavery and sisterhood in the leadup and duration of the US Civil War in the midnineteenth century, Sister of Mine is told from the perspective of two young Southern women, one the daughter of a rich Jewish landowner in Georgia, and the other her slave and secret halfsister.
If youre not from the United States you might want to familiarise yourself with the basics of the war and where the various states are positioned before starting if you want to get the most out of the book.
I cant tell you if every detail of the history is correct, but there does seem to be a staggering amount of research that went into this.
Its not that it overpowers the story, but that the casual mentions of everything from foods to fashions seemed to have been carefully researched before being put on the page.
This is historical fiction, which means theres plenty of sadness to go with the better times.
There are a few points in the story where youre going to find some of the major players very difficult to like, but that seemed realistic to me, and it left lots of room for them to change and grow over the years and through the war.
Nobody is perfect here, and it is all much more complex with the topic of slavery and seeing a war through the eyes of the losing side, especially as some of it is told from the perspective of people who own slaves.
I thought it was really brilliant how the author managed to turn characters minds around, and how she found a way for them to be on both sides of the conflict sometimes at the same time.
Mostly, this is a bittersweet sort of story, Its not fluff that you read through in a few hours, and it was exactly what Id been looking for after one Regency ballroom too many in my recent reads.
copy provided by NetGalley, This turned out to be a very interesting love triangle between a slave, her sister and her master.
This book had history and romance with a splash ofshades of grey, what made this story unique is that I usually read about Christians owning slaves but this time around the author focused on a Jewish family that owned slaves.
I really appreciate when the author's research shows in the writing, My only flaw with this story was that some parts were too wordy, Its a big book that could have been shortened by at leastpages, This book was great! The narrator did a wonderful job reading this story, I hated for the story to end, This is an excellent and well researched historical novel, Made all the more interesting because I was unaware
that there were planters of the Jewish faith in the antebellum south.
Adelaide is the spoiled and pampered daughter of the richest planter in the county, Rachel, a kitchen slave, is gifted to Adelaide and the girls form a bond, Eventually they realize that they share the same father, Sisters often have complex relationships, Adelaide and Rachels relationship, slave and mistress, rivals and allies, is profoundly explored in this powerful novel.
When Adelaide marries a man she does not love, the relationship between her and Rachel becomes even more difficult.
As the Civil War looms the sisters experience betrayal, distrust, and bitterness,
The war brings a different set of problems and while Rachel has always been the stronger of the two, Adelaide is forced to grow up and acknowledge some grim truths about herself, her father and her marriage.
I really could not put the book down, This is one that will stay with me for a while, If you like reading books about this time period, I urge you to get a copy of Sister of Mine.
Im sure you will enjoy this reading as much as I have,
When two Union soldiers stumble onto a plantation in northern Georgia on a warm May day in, the last thing they expect is to see the Union flag flying highor to be greeted by a group of freed slaves and their Jewish mistress.
Little do they know that this place has an unusual history,
Twelve years prior, Adelaide Mannheimdaughter of Mordecai, the only Jewish planter in the countywas given her own maid, a young slave named Rachel.
The two became friends, and soon they discovered a secret: Mordecai was Rachels father, too,
As the country moved toward war, Adelaide and Rachel struggled to navigate their newfound sisterhoodfrom love and resentment to betrayal and, ultimately, forgiveness.
Now, facing these Union soldiers as General Sherman advances nearer, their bond is put to the ultimate test.
Will the plantation be spared Or will everything theyve lived for be lost
Revised edition: Previously published as Slave and Sister, this edition of Sister of Mine: A Novel includes editorial revisions.