George Prochnik.
Heinrich Heine: Writing the Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. pp. 336. $26.00 (Hardcover)
Heinrich Heine was the first Jew to become a cultural icon in Germany. While Moses Mendelssohn achieved fame as a philosopher in the German Enlightenment, Heine’s poetry was beloved by a much wider circle of the culture. His “Lorelei,” an ode to the personified siren of the Rhine was so iconic that the Nazis, who burned his books, had no choice but to preserve the poem but to label its author “unknown.” While Heine converted to Christianity in 1825 (part of a wave of such conversions by the first generation of German Jews to attend university or otherwise partake in German society), he never abandoned his identity as a Jew, even as he gave it a most idiosyncratic definition.
Many leaders of Bay Area Jewish organizations are admired. Many are passionate, many effective.
Avi Rose, who steps down this month after 15 years as executive director of Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay, is all that, but he is also beloved.
“Avi inspired a culture of warmth and support and true caring that all of us staff treasure deeply,” said JFCS development director Holly Taines White, who has worked closely with Rose for 14 years. “It’s part of what makes working here such a joy. His passion for the work is obvious to everyone, but he also created something special inside the agency that only staff members really got to see.”