Comments (0)Shoshana: Memoirs of Shoshana Shoubin Cardin
May 8, 2009Phil Jacobs
Executive Editor
Shoshana S. Cardin, edited by Karen L. Falk
Jewish Museum of Maryland 2008, 202 pages (hardcover), $22
The serendipity of “Shoshana” has two separate layers. The first layer is for those who are fortunate enough to have met Shoshana Cardin. I hear her voice when I read the book, and that’s not something you can say about every book.
The second layer, though, is different. By sharing her life from her childhood, to mother of four, then to international Jewish leader, Ms. Cardin does a wonderful job in describing the nuances of decades of Jewish Baltimore. She brings out the smells, colors and sounds of neighborhoods, attitudes and Jewish family life. Ms. Cardin was a forceful voice in expanding women’s roles.
She writes about her late husband Jerry’s unfortunate incarceration as collateral damage from the savings and loan situation, told through subjective eyes. But I will tell that you she sat for days in an uncomfortable wooden courthouse chair supporting her spouse with every ounce of love she had.
You’ll read about her work in the areas of Ethiopian and Soviet Jewry; how she pretty much stood up to President George Bush the senior face-to-face; and close with the gratitude she feels to this day over the school that bears her name, The Shoshana S. Cardin School.
But if I may … it was during a General Assembly of an organization formerly known as CJF, or Council of Jewish Federations, of some 3,000 Jewish leaders, when she stood up, looked behind her at the multi-tiered dais of high-profile, powerful and wealthy mostly men. She told them that it wasn’t enough for them to express their Judaism through their checkbooks. She pushed them to know their Jewish history, their Bible, their Alef-Bet. To this day, it was one of the most remarkable speeches I’ve heard in a career of listening to speeches. Ms. Cardin’s book is a textbook of how a person gives and gives back.
“Shoshana” is on sale at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, 15 Lloyd St. Proceeds benefit the Cardin School.