“COMIC BOOK SIDDUR FOR SHABBAT MORNING SERVICES,” by Howard Salmon (Comicbooksiddur.com, $24.95)

Once upon a time, Hebrew schools operated on the assumption that a working knowledge of Hebrew was such a basic skill for Jewish youngsters that they would be eager to learn it no matter how dry and formal the presentation. However, in our time, when young people live in a world where they are bombarded by all sorts of dynamic visual imagery, the traditional textbook is as outmoded as an eight-track tape. Publishers of Hebrew texts, like those of secular texts, must strive for excitement in order to compete.

While the title of “Comic Book Siddur” suggests that it is a prayer book, it clearly is intended more for study — specifically for pre-Bar/Bat Mitzvah study — than for use in a service. First of all, we should note that it is oriented toward the Reform liturgy, specifically Mishkan Tefilah, with its inclusion of the matriarchs in the opening section of the Amidah and the gender-neutral Elohei dororteinu in the Modim and its treatment of the Shema (omitting the verses from Deuteronomy which traditional Jews consider to be part of the Shema itself.)

The reason I say it would be of use more as a study tool than during a service is that it includes the entire text of the prayers in Hebrew, the English is only a summary, whereas most Reform congregations conduct much of the service in English.

What makes this book unique is the way in which the material is presented. Each Hebrew prayer is accompanied by one or more comic-book illustrations with some words giving an interpretation of the text or its place in the service. For example, the Chatzi Kaddish, which serves as a transition in the service, is accompanied by a picture of a super-hero proclaiming, “C’mon, team. We’ve got a date with destiny! We’re meeting God, so get yourselves ready.” The Shema tells us “God is Real! Forever! Don’t be fooled by imitations.” For the V’Ahavta, a cute bear tells us to “Give God a hug.”

The entire text, in fact, represents the progress of a group of superheroes bent on saving the planet. In particular, Captain Aleph tells us that he is on his way toward becoming a man by studying for his Bar Mitzvah.

Though roughly based on the type of super-heroes familiar to those readers familiar with the comic-book genre, the characters are original and not identifiable with any particular such heroes. The opening, however, clearly refers to the Superman myth, with its unmistakable parallels to the story of Moses in the Nile — in case anyone missed that point in the first Superman movie.

The principal message of this book, perhaps its raison d’etre, is that the traditional liturgy can be relevant and even exciting, that even superheroes can find it stimulating. Hopefully, this message will get across to its readers.

You don’t have to take my word for it — you can see samples at www.comicbooksiddur.com. If you like what you see, this could make an excellent birthday gift for the 12 year old on your shopping list. Anyway, my 10-year-old granddaughter thinks it’s “cool.”

Call for collaboration

The nature of the North American Jewish community is rapidly changing. Demographically, in greater Kansas City, the community is aging, congregations are shrinking in size, and resources are becoming more limited. Culturally, we no longer define ourselves in ethnic terms as much as a community of choice. Many members of our community were not born Jewish, and do not have childhood Jewish memories. People choose to opt in or out of the Jewish community. Families are considerably busier than one generation ago, and many more cultural options are available through the internet. Families that formerly would attend a synagogue for Jewish education and life-cycle events are now searching for meaningful activities that create connectedness and community.

Consistent with the rise of ethnic Judaism, congregations developed as discrete and competing ideological institutions. We belonged to movements encouraging different theologies and practices. Congregations competed with programs for members. Whereas competition may increase quality, it also is likely to increase divisiveness. Rather than seeing ourselves on a continuum of valid Jewish practices, we have often viewed congregations as somehow better than competing synagogues or movements.

But the future will not look like the past, and our practices need to change. Where once we competed, cooperation and collaboration will strengthen our mutual future as our demographics shift. What might that look like?

Certainly, worship styles and life-cycle celebrations will remain unique to individual congregations and movements. Yet, many areas of potential synergy exist. Adult education, for instance, can be planned and implemented across congregational and movement lines. Community members will be able to choose the most appealing course and teacher. But, the history of Kansas City has been that members of one congregation often do not attend functions in other congregations. Yet, so many more interesting options in Jewish education will be available to all of us when every congregation opens its doors to the entire community, and individuals think and at least partially define their activities communally rather than congregationally.

Contemporary Jews are searching for meaning and connectedness. They are not as interested in institutional labels, competitions or theologies as were previous generations. The entire Jewish community will flourish and grow as we increase our interlocking activities and cease to duplicate programs in areas in which theological differences are insignificant.

Rabbi Alan Cohen
Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn
Rabbi Mark Levin
Rabbi Herbert Mandl
Rabbi Arthur Nemitoff
Rabbi Daniel Rockoff
Rabbi Debbie Stiel
Rabbi Scott White

QUESTION: How long should one sit Shiva? How do the holidays affect the mourning process? How often and why do we say Kaddish?

ANSWER: These are three very important and practical questions that you pose. Shiva, which means “seven,” is the deep mourning period that one observes for a shiva relative. A shiva relative is defined as a spouse, a parent, a child or a sibling.

Shiva commences immediately after the funeral. It ends the next week on the day before the funeral. In other words, if one buries a relative on a Wednesday, then shiva ends the next Tuesday morning. Since most of the laws of shiva are from the rabbis and not the Torah, the rabbis were lenient and ended the shiva first thing in the morning of day seven. Shiva really is practically somewhat shorter because there is always a Shabbat and the eve of a Shabbat where many of the shiva laws are not observed.

Any major Jewish holiday (this does not include Chanukah or Purim) terminates shiva! This takes place as long as one was able to observe at least a few minutes of shiva after burial. I have actually had a burial take place just a couple of hours ahead of a major Jewish holiday where the family simply changed their shoes to tennis shoes (one of the laws of shiva is not to wear leather shoes) in the funeral car on the way home and that was the full extent of their shiva. That was the case because there was barely time to get home and do anything else before the holidays started. As long as one observes any of the laws of shiva even out at the cemetery, Shiva is terminated when the holiday commences.

The reason behind this termination of shiva is that we join the rest of the Jewish people in celebrating a major Jewish festival and one cannot do that when one is in deep mourning. A death that occurs in the middle of a holiday falls into a different category of laws and regulations. Only if one has had the opportunity to bury one’s deceased relative prior to a major Jewish holiday is this shiva terminated.
One purpose of Kaddish is to help the soul of the deceased go through a period of trial and tribulation that is supposed to occur after death where one justifies one’s actions in life (good or bad.) In particular, a child of the deceased reciting Kaddish is supposed to make this process easier. It also shows the proper upbringing that that son or daughter had in their saying Kaddish. As any rabbi will tell you, Kaddish does as much with the person left in life as for the deceased as it enables them to work their way through their grief.
Kaddish is supposed to be said morning and evening every day for approximately 11 months.

Since I have been in the Midwest for the past nearly 35 years, I have seen all sorts of unusual things I never saw on the East Coast, at least as a youngster. I once saw several brothers take turns in saying Kaddish, one at each service. I guess to make it easier on them. Many people say Kaddish only once a day. I guess I am glad in this day and age that people say Kaddish at all, but the real obligation is to say Kaddish at every service.

As I stood in the arrival Hall of Ben Gurion Airport, I began to spot them. Women, without the typical “been on a plane for way too long,” glazed look on their faces. Rather, with looks of excited anticipation, lugging colorful backpacks marked with the now all too familiar letters, JWRP.

Flash back to five months earlier. An enigmatic email: Would you like to go on an all-expenses paid trip to Israel? Contact the KC Kollel! Just hit reply. So, I did, as did a dozen or more other local women. There was an application process which thankfully I successfully passed.

Wow! So what exactly did I sign up for? What exactly is this Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project? At our first group meeting in KC, I looked around the comfortable room at the home of our fearless leader, Esther Sokoloff, and was comforted to see there were a few familiar faces. As we introduced ourselves we all had two major things in common. We were all Jews and we were all mothers. That turned out to be the common thread that bound the experience together for the KC Kollel delegation to Israel.

Flash Forward, Ben Gurion Airport. Cell phones are distributed, money changed, busses loaded. We are introduced to our guides and to the Denver delegation, with whom we would be sharing a bus for the duration of the trip.

Immediately games of Jewish geography commence. Of course, the first person I speak with happens to be best friends for life with a Kansan, whose sister I have known since our early teens.

Our first stop was Tiberius, the Northern-most point of our trip. Our first group event is dinner at Decks, a fabulous restaurant on the shores of Lake Kineret. This is where I get a glimpse of things to come. They begin by bringing course after course of beautiful salads and appetizers.

We begin to eat, when all of the sudden, music blares over the hidden speakers of the outdoor venue. Nearly everyone in the entire restaurant, packed by our group of 300, begin to dance to a spirit-lifting combination of disco hits mixed with familiar Jewish and Israeli folk songs. Women clasp hands and begin to whirl around the outdoor decks, until we collapse in our seats in a state of utter exhaustion. So began a unique adventure.

The JWRP was the culmination of a meeting of a handful of Jewish women brainstorming at a mountain retreat just a few short years ago. Since that meeting, thousands of women have traveled to Israel for the experience of a lifetime.

We were treated as a group of intelligent women who had a right and a duty to know what Judaism has to offer us. We were treated to speakers of the highest caliber and thought-provoking seminars on a variety of topics — raising children, assimilation, what our families and marriages mean to us and what we can do to make them better.

Highlights of our activities included visiting an army base to present soldiers with thank-you gifts, rafting down the Jordan River, camel rides and climbing Masada where some women chose and were given Hebrew names for the first time.

The most glorious moment for me came at our first Shabbat dinner. We sat in the great Hall at Aish HaTorah, the Talmudic learning center that hosted many classes for our group. The room was bathed in the glow of hundreds of candles, lovingly lit by 300 mothers from every walk of Jewish life, as the Sabbath was ushered in. The quiet hum of conversation was suddenly interrupted by the sound of teenagers singing at the top of their lungs. The doors bust open and 60 or 70 visiting college students — Birthright Israel participants — danced their way into the room. They wove in and out of the tables singing familiar Sabbath songs, but with such joy, we were transfixed. Shabbat had come to us and we felt it in a way I feel confident in saying, most of us had never felt it before.

This trip was coordinated locally by our Kansas City Kollel as an effort to inspire us to think about how we as Jewish women choose to lead our lives. It is about finding what, as a contemporary woman, you can do to give your family a chance to know who they are and where they come from.

We learned that the little things do matter, whether it is ensuring that your children have a Jewish education or lighting candles on Shabbat. The sad truth is that we as Jews are becoming more and more assimilated. But maybe, just maybe, in this new age of enlightenment we can take baby steps to ensure that doesn’t happen.

If you have the opportunity to go on this Kollel/JWRP trip in the future, you should certainly consider it. You will definitely get more than you bargained for!

The “diner” notion means many things to many people. In Kansas City, Town Topic has been (for me) the “diner” gold standard — particularly since the classic Nichol’s Lunch closed years back and the venerable Corner Restaurant (in Westport) shut down, more recently. A solid diner brings to bear a certain nostalgic vibe that somehow takes patrons back to a different era. Good burgers. Better chili. Eggs. Eating at the counter. Nothing fancy.

The 119th Street Diner, located at 14178 W. 119th St. in Olathe, strives to bring the “diner” concept into the modern era. The décor has a contemporary feel, with its bright yellow walls and colorful paintings of vertical and horizontal stripes. A big mirror makes the dining room look bigger than it is. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with this atmospheric approach, 119th Street Diner doesn’t frankly feel much like the “diner” it purports to be — at least not in any conventional sense.

One night, our waiter (who met us at the front, asking whether we wanted a booth or a table) led us to a small, purple-walled room partitioned from the rest of the establishment. The place was not especially busy on this particular week night. We felt like we had been sent to time-out, before we had even misbehaved. Our foursome was dining without the customary two children (ages 3 and 6) this night, and we hardly felt like we needed to be separated from the more civilized patrons. What had we done?

Our waiter intimated almost immediately that this was only his second day on the job. He was earnest and pleasant, though quite unfamiliar with a number of menu items. The soup of the day? He would have to check. The vegetable? He would get back with us on that, also. As the meal progressed, he seemed to settle into a decent groove —though maybe that was because, at some point, we stopped asking so many questions.

Diner food should really have a made-from-scratch element to it. In this regard, 119th Street Diner succeeded, on a number of levels. Once we received word of its identity, we tried the Soup of the Day ($3.95/$5.95) — Chicken and Dumpling. It was a hearty, peppery broth laden with onions, carrots, celery and herbs and big hunks of roasted chicken. There were scarcely any dumplings in the soup, however. Two of us shared an entrée Caesar Salad ($7.95), covered in a tremendous, creamy dressing with a rich anchovy prominence. 119th Street Diner makes all of its dressings in-house, evidently — a keen touch. At nearly $8, though, the Caesar was not of adequate size to warrant entrée pricing.

We dabbled in the breakfast, sandwich and dinner entrée realms. Within the breakfast arena, we checked out the Smoked Salmon Benedict ($9.49), a solid variation of the breakfast classic. The salmon was of good quality, and the dish was generally well-executed. Some places over-poach the eggs, though the yolk really needs to be running into the Hollandaise. This Hollandaise was good, but not really in sufficient quantity to serve as an adequate dance partner with the runny yolk. Respectable hash browns came alongside. A diner should have a good Reuben ($8.95), and this was a decent version. It is probably too much to expect a “diner” to stack the corned beef on its Reuben like a classic New York deli might. Still, the portion was not skimpy, either, and this was a good sandwich on a nice light rye. Crispy shoestring French fries — only lukewarm, at best — were served with it.

In terms of entrees —deemed “Diner Favorites” — one companion complained that the menu was noteworthy for its absence of meatloaf. A real “diner” would serve meatloaf, she insisted. We opted one night for the Fish and Chips ($11.99), and were disappointed. The crispy batter served on the fish was unexceptional, though the fish itself was fairly moist. But the portion was glaringly small — three filets of only a couple bites or so, each. The sweet potato fries were crispy and solid. We asked about the “Roasted Chicken Dinner” ($15.95) — specifically whether it was a boneless breast or served on the bone. I wholeheartedly prefer the latter. Our young waiter had to check, of course, and returned to tell us it was a generous half bird and the chef had given it his highest recommendation. It was ample, though somewhat bland, and did not seem to warrant the chef’s glowing accolades. The vegetable of the day turned out to be big, round chunks of fresh carrots, yellow squash and zucchini (far superior to the awful canned renditions some restaurants — diners and otherwise — have the nerve to serve).

The 119th Street Diner served some outstanding desserts one night — one made in-house and another made, according to our waiter, by a “European lady who bakes these pies in her house and brings them in the morning.” Regardless of her continent (or country) of origin, this lady knew how to assemble Banana Cream Pie ($5.95), with a flaky crust, rich custard filling and loads of banana. But we especially loved the unique and decadent, house-made Blueberry “Lasagna” ($5.95) — a large bowl/layered mess of plump blueberries, creamy cheese, vanilla ice cream and ribbons of pastry. The desserts evidently change (no specific desserts are set forth on the menu).

Though it may defy comfortable characterization as a traditional “diner,” 119th Street Diner certainly adds a worthwhile piece to the Southern Johnson County restaurant landscape. Even without the requisite meatloaf.

Out of Four Stars:
Food: 2½
Service: 2½
Atmosphere: 2½

Poverty is among us

Last week’s article (Sept. 1) regarding the state of the economy in regards to the Jewish community needs some clarification regarding Yachad-The Kosher Food Pantry.

The article stated that we service approximately 15 families each month. That figure only represents the private appointments Rabbi Mendy Wineberg or I see. These households can consist of a single person, or just as easily be a family with eight mouths to feed. Not included in these numbers are the families we see during our walk-in hours.

Then there is the food that goes out for Simcha Box, a joint project of Jewish Family Services and Yachad. This past week our volunteers visited 98 addresses and delivered 130 boxes accompanied with additional bags of fresh fruits, bread and reading materials. Many of these delivery stops have multiple recipients in the household. There are multi-generation families receiving up to three boxes along with the fresh items we include. Many of these families also receive WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children) and/or food stamps and still find themselves lacking basics.

Recent publicity in The Chronicle has led to an increase in donations to help fill our shelves over these past few weeks. As we begin to celebrate the New Year, we hope those who are able will continue to participate in food drives sponsored by local congregations, and send in donations to help feed those who are hungry in our Jewish community.

Sherrill Parkhurst
Volunteer director
Yachad-The Kosher Food Pantry

“Thank you Kansas City and the Jewish Federations of North America for your incredible generosity: You help people in need, everywhere, everyday!”

Those were the words I heard several times while traveling on a Jewish Federation mission this summer to Moscow and Israel. And I want to echo the sentiment by thanking everyone, particularly the board of directors of the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City, for sending me.

I went on the mission to better understand the programs we fund, and to meet the people we help. What impressed me was the professionalism of the staff, breadth of the projects and gratitude of the recipients. Through our generosity, the gifts we give to the Jewish Federation provide a lifeline to those in need. Not only are we helping people, we are changing lives.

What follows are some specific examples of our generosity as seen in Moscow and Israel:

In Moscow, 165,000 seniors rely on a network of chesed programs for food, medicine, health care and physical and intellectual stimulation. At the Chesed Chama Senior Center, we saw art and music activities, and helped assemble and deliver food bags for homebound seniors. I took a bag to 94-year-old Raisa, who is confined to her sixth floor, one-room apartment. Raisa greeted us warmly and with appreciation. She regrets not going to Israel 20 years earlier. Now she is alone, visited occasionally by a distant relative. Thanks to our generosity, Raisa — and thousands of others — live in dignity with their health and nutrition needs met.

Moscow teens enjoy hanging out with friends. They gather at their newly remodeled Jewish Club in downtown Moscow for classes or to socialize. For some, this is their only connection to Judaism. Other teens attend a 10-day summer camp, such as the one we visited two hours outside Moscow.  Together with the teens, we did interactive, hands-on activities involving Bible verses — we had as much fun as they did! Who would have guessed I would be speaking Hebrew in a Russian forest with Liza, a 16-year-old blonde beauty who attends high school in Israel on the Na’aleh Program. After graduation, she will join the IDF and make aliyah ahead of her family. The smiles on the faces of these grateful teens said it all.

Similarly, teens in our sister city, Ramla, Israel, are all smiles over the Net@ program, a computer-based after-school youth movement that is changing the lives of at-risk youths in smaller cities around Israel. Galit, a Net@ participant, originally hated computers. Now she is a leader and spokesperson for the program. In order to understand the impact Net@ has had on her life, Galit insisted on taking us to meet her grandparents at their house and synagogue.  We joined Galit and her Ramla Net@ participants (including Israeli Arabs and Christians) on a scavenger hunt through their local market before going to the Net@ building. According to the Net@ founder, the IDF has noticed the youths’ exceptional computer skills and has placed them in very prestigious units. This transformative program is changing the lives of teens and having a positive impact on their futures.

In Ashdod, ultra-religious Jews’ lives are being changed by the Mafteach program that provides job training and counseling and is the literal key to breaking the cycle of poverty for these families. Religious women find jobs that accommodate their religious and family needs. Religious men are encouraged to enter special IDF units that help provide education and job training. The program has the support of local and national rabbinic leaders. The recipients we met were very grateful.

Often recipients do not realize who is helping them. For example, our group leader explained to 30 Russians making aliyah on our El Al flight that the state of Israel — together with the Jewish Federations of North America — fund their move and integration into Israeli life. Shlomo Moula, a Knesset member, expressed his gratitude to us on behalf of the Ethopian community for the ongoing support that brought him to Israel 30 years ago. Finally, we attended an amazing concert in Tel Aviv, along with 3,000 Taglit-Birthright participants. Most participants only view the experience as a “free trip” — they do not realize that the trip is funded jointly by local federations and the state of Israel. And yet, the appreciation of recipients is palpable. Just look at the smiles.

I returned with a renewed sense of purpose: To continue raising awareness and funds to meet current and future needs locally and around the world. The gratitude I felt was icing on the cake. I will forever remember Raisa, Liza, Galit and the many grateful people I met on the trip.

The upcoming Jewish New Year is a good time to reflect on our lives and consider the needs of those around us. Thanks to your generosity, the Jewish Federation is helping people everywhere, everyday …  as far away as Moscow and Israel, and right here in Kansas City.

Unfortunate date choice

Thank you for allowing the Kansas Association of Counties the opportunity to respond to your Aug. 25 story “Kansas celebration scheduled for Yom Kippur in Wichita.”

The Kansas Association of Counties was invited to “sponsor” the event. One generally interprets a sponsorship to mean we donated financially to the cause and participated in planning the event. We did neither. We were asked to publicize the event to our member counties, which we have done by sending notice about the event to Kansas counties, inviting them to participate if they so choose. That is the extent of our involvement.

We regard the choice of date as unfortunate. One need only look at a calendar to realize the conflict and we are unsure how the mistake could have been made. Because we have affiliated ourselves with the program by offering ourselves as sponsors — no matter the small role we play — I apologize on behalf of my association for our lack of attention and sensitivity to Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people.

Melissa A. Wangemann
General Counsel
Kansas Association of Counties

It is a small world after all ...

I am writing this column sitting in the veranda of my hotel in San Cristobal, Tachira State, Venezuela. This town of about 400,000 people is perched in the Andes. Even though it has had Jews for almost a century, I felt like we were able to create a unique moment in Jewish history recently. I will tell you why.

Jews began to come to this agricultural area of Venezuela near the Colombian border in the 1920s. Most, if not all of them, were from Bessarabia, an area between modern Romania and Ukraine. Curiously the majority were from one town, Nova Sulita or Nova, where my wife’s grandparents came from! I had the opportunity of visiting Nova Sulita and reciting Kaddish at the local cemetery last year during my sabbatical.

At a meeting arranged with the few remnants of the local Jewish community in San Cristobal, I was thrilled to meet my wife’s landsmen (the people from the same shtetl) and they were really excited to hear about a place their ancestors came from but that no one had ever returned to visit. We arranged a visit to the local Jewish cemetery to recite Kaddish. There I was able to verify that about half of the 25 graves indeed listed the deceaseds’ place of birth as Nova Sulita, its old Romanian name.

In its heyday, San Cristobal had as many as 60 Jewish households; that population has drastically declined due to intermarriage and immigration both to Caracas or Israel. Today very few Jewish families remain. They used to hold religious services at the home of Israel Cusnir, who died three years ago. Yet, even today a special room remains in his widow’s home where an ark holds a Sefer Torah and other Jewish ritual objects. The Torah is quite a curious piece because the scroll is an Ashkenazi one but it is encased in gorgeous silver Sephardic tik, so it is read standing rather than laying on the reading table. For many years they would hire a chazzan  for the High Holidays from the United States, but that has also stopped. Dr. Ingrid Cusnir, Israel’s daughter, acts as the local Jewish leader because she seems to either be related to or to know everyone that has any Jewish connections in town. She is an extremely dedicated woman, who unfortunately faces huge difficulties, mostly coming from the official rabbinate in Caracas. They reportedly appear to be determined to take away the community’s Torah, even though it was acquired by the local Jewish families a long time ago.

I was visiting San Cristobal to finalize the conversion process of 28 people that have been studying with me for quite a long time over the net. Some of them were descendants of Jewish families while others were formally devout Christians who realized that Judaism appealed to their souls, hearts and brains.

It was a very intense visit. Over a four-day period I lectured, counseled, converted, married four couples and even met with another group of about 30 people that wish to convert in the future. I had no moment alone, every meal was offered by a family that went out of their way to host and pamper me. Every moment that I was quiet someone came to ask deep and meaningful Jewish questions, some that even stumped me!

No evening was over before 1 a.m. because they were eager for knowledge and asked questions about Jewish life, history and tradition. Their love and care for Judaism was evident in their devotion, curiosity and joy in everything Jewish. I absent-mindedly commented on a certain kind of Venezuelan chocolate that happens to be my favorite. Upon my departure, it seemed like every one of the people I met with brought me some bars of that chocolate, almost 40 in total!

The nicest thing about my stay in San Cristobal was that some members of the old Jewish families came to the formal conversion ceremony and brought their treasured Torah to be used as part of the ceremony. It was a nice sign of support and collaboration between both groups that augurs a bright Jewish future in San Cristobal.

I am grateful to Mike and Karen Herman who helped subsidize the teaching and travel involved in making this a reality.

“The Debt” is a spine-tingling espionage thriller that holds the audience spellbound with all its twists and turns. It is directed by Academy Award nominee John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love”) and based on the 2007 Israeli film “Ha-Hov.” The movie opened yesterday (Wednesday, Aug. 31) in wide release.

Rachel Singer (Academy Award winner Helen Mirren from “The Queen”) attends the 1997 publishing launch of her daughter’s new book about a heroic secret mission that took place more than 30 years ago. She and two men, all young Mossad agents, were sent to capture and bring to trial in Israel the Nazi war criminal known as the “Surgeon of Birkenau.” Their assignment supposedly ended with this evil monster’s death on the streets of East Berlin.

Her ex-husband, Stephan (two-time Academy Award nominee Tom Wilkinson from “Michael Clayton” and HBO’s “John Adams”) brings Rachel shocking news about their former colleague, David (Ciaran Hinds from “Munich” and HBO’s “Rome”). He also tells her that a journalist from a newspaper in Kiev has found a man claiming to be the nefarious doctor from World War II. Since Stephan is in a wheelchair, it is up to Rachel to go back to Eastern Europe to uncover the truth and confront the obligation owed to her country, her comrades and herself.

Rachel begins reading a passage from her daughter’s book at a celebration dinner and the movie takes us back to 1965. A young Rachel played by Jessica Chastain (recently seen in “The Help”) is greeted at the border by David (Sam Worthington from “Avatar”) posing as her husband. He takes her to the safe house where she meets team leader Stephan (Martin Csokas from “Alice in Wonderland” and “Kingdom of Heaven”). Both young men are strangers to Rachel. This is Rachel’s first time in the field after serving as a translator. Rachel poses as an infertile patient to get close to Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen from “Everlasting Moments” and “Quantum of Solace”), a fictional Joseph Mengele-style SS doctor who is practicing medicine as an obstetrician/gynecologist.

Although concentrating on their assignment, these three strangers get to know each other while living and working together in cramped quarters. They become very close and sexual sparks are ignited as their operation becomes more dangerous.

On her third office visit, Rachel puts her martial arts training to good use. The trio is able to kidnap the doctor. Their intricate plan to transport him out of the country goes awry. They are forced to remain in hiding until a new exit strategy can be worked out.

The ruthless doctor, who performed horrific acts on imprisoned Jews during the Holocaust, begins using mind games preying on the weaknesses of these three vulnerable individuals in an effort to drive them mad and gain a psychological advantage. Rachel, Sam and Stephan take turns feeding and guarding their prisoner. While being cooped up in this tiny space, Rachel becomes pregnant and finds herself grappling with romantic feelings. A rift develops between Sam and Stephan on how to complete the mission.

Madden whets your appetite in the present day, but spends the bulk of the first half in 1965-66 uncovering the mystery of what actually transpired. You get a chill running up and down your spine every time Rachel gets in the stirrups and is examined by this creepy doctor. The character development and relationships with one another are masterfully done. The suspense builds in intensity and keeps you on the edge of your seat. Madden does a good job of differentiating between two different decades as the emotional and moral stakes heighten over time. When the storyline returns to the present day, the movie focuses on Rachel’s sense of duty to face up to her debt and take matters into her own hands.

Acting accolades go to Mirren and Chastain, who pass the baton in playing the part of Rachel. Mirren is a class act who brings dignity and grace to this role. Chastain carries the film on her shoulders in every scene that she appears in. She uses her beauty and talent to score a knockout. She is carving her name into acting history with a string of unforgettable performances this year.

Christensen’s performance rises to the level of the Academy Award-winning turn of Christoph Waltz in “Inglourious Basterds.” You hate him with every fiber of your being. His derogatory comments include “You Jews only knew how to die and not to kill.”

Besides the splendid acting and the riveting story, the movie’s other strengths include the fight choreography and an original musical score by composer Thomas Newman (“American Beauty” and “The Shawshank Redemption”). The movie makes effective use of its principal filming locations in London, Tel Aviv and Budapest, Hungary.

The movie was honored with the Special Police [Jury] Prize at the 2011 Beaune International Thriller Film Festival.
It brought back for me memories of political thrillers like “Three Days of the Condor” and “Marathon Man” and more recently “Black Book.”

The dialogue is partially in German with English subtitles. The movie is rated R for violence and language. It has a running time of 114 minutes and merits my rating of GOOD (3 stars out of 4).